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Analyst Summary:GreatCall | Lively Mobile Plus
The Lively Mobile Plus Medical Alert is one of our top picks in the mobile alert category. It includes fall detection and GPS location capability, and has a number of pluses in addition (see below).
To see a detailed review, scroll down.
To see how this product stacks up against the competitors, see:
If you are interested in this product, you will likely also want to consider a newer category of products which we call the “Smartwatch as Medical Alert“.
Third Generation GreatCall Medical Alert
The Lively Mobile Plus, launched in April 2019, replaced the Lively Mobile, which in turn had replaced the GreatCall Splash which featured heavily in many of our prior detailed comparative analyses.
This product had a product recall which led to it being unavailable through most of 2019, but it was relaunched in 2020, after some reengineering to fix prior problems.
Below you can see the three consecutive genarations of the Great Call Medical Alert products. Gen 1 was the Splash. Gen 2 was the Lively Mobile, and now Gen 3 is the Lively Mobile Plus.
We have acquired and tested all three of these products over the years. This review focuses on the Lively Mobile Plus, which is a worthy successor to the Splash, which also did very well in our prior tests.
The Lively Mobile Plus — the latest version of GreatCall’s mobile medical alert — is quite similar to the original Splash we reviewed back in 2015.
Whereas the Lively Mobile (now discontinued) was an attempt to significantly reduce the size and weight compared to the Splash, with the Lively Mobile Plus the product has grown a bit, presumably to accomodate a larger battery. This is good news, as the extra weight is not very noticeable, while battery life was a definite problem with the Lively Mobile for some customers.
On our kitchen scale, the Splash weighed 2.0 oz, the Lively Mobile weighed 1.5 oz, and the latest Lively Mobile Plus is back up to 2.0 oz.
Key Differentiating Features
The Pluses
It’s fairly small, and fairly lightweight.
This product comes with the GreatCall 5 star responder service which has an excellent response time. In addition, this monitoring service encourages you to reach out to them in a range of “emergencies”, not just life threatening ones. See below for more on response time.
Purchasing and on-boarding can all be done online, and is fairly easy. Although we have noticed customer service is less “excellent” than when we first dealt with the company back in 2015.
The cost of this product compares favorably with many of the competitors.
It’s waterproof (IPX7: 1 m depth for 30 minutes), as are most competitors.
In terms of battery life, in our tests we found this product to hold a charge for over 3 days, using it every day.
GPS locating capability is (as best we can tell in our evaluations) as good as any of its competitors (ie good but not “perfect”).
Response Time is Excellent
This aspect of the product is especially important.
GreatCall has made a concerted effort to have an industry leading response time, and our evaluations have shown that to be the case across all three generations of their mobile alerts. [See more details about how GreatCall approaches monitoring here.]
For example, here is what we found when we did a comparison of response times across multiple medical alert vendors for an earlier comparative evaluation of mobile medical alerts.
“An area where the GreatCall monitoring service really excels is speed of response.
In our tests, the average time from pressing the button to hearing a responder was 16 seconds, and only thrice was it over 30 seconds in 19 trials spread out over a month (faster than 30 seconds in 84% of events). The maximum was 53 seconds. The second longest time was only 40 seconds.”
From our tests, we didn’t think there were really any minuses about this product — other than those that come with the mobile alert category as a whole.
So it’s not very attractive, although less ugly than most.
And you do need to charge it (see below).
And the “wearable” is larger than the “traditional” type of medical alert that works only in your home.
Some other categories of medical alerts (eg those for home use only) do have much longer battery life, if this is a critical parameter for you. You can see more about tradeoffs with respect to battery life in our course on Selecting the Right Medical Alert System (see the Learning Module).
If you are interested in this type of medical alert, you should also read our rather extensive comparative analysis of mobile alert systems in which we test all sorts of aspects of different products in this category. We try and keep our “recommendations” up to date in our section “Just Tell Me What to Buy“.
Where to buy it or learn more*: (this takes you away from our website)
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*Disclosure: The research and opinions in this article are those of the author, and may or may not reflect the official views of Tech-enhanced Life.
If you use the links on this website when you buy products we write about, we may earn commissions from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate or other affiliate program participant. This does not affect the price you pay. We use the (modest) income to help fund our research.
In some cases, when we evaluate products and services, we ask the vendor to loan us the products we review (so we don’t need to buy them). Beyond the above, Tech-enhanced Life has no financial interest in any products or services discussed here, and this article is not sponsored by the vendor or any third party. See How we Fund our Work.
Is Lively Mobil Plus Is Lively Mobil Plus available without the Urgent Care feature? Is it available from Amazon Prime?
My Mobil Plus arrived on a
My Mobil Plus arrived on a Friday, by Monday I decided to cancel my subscription. During that time I had tried to create an account, but was told I already had an account. Then, tried ti sugn on to my account, but was told an error had occurred and that I should call them. When I called them I was put on hold and finally disconnected. I was placed on hold and then disconnected four more itmes before someone answered and arranged a password and security question for my account. But when I tried to sign onto my account, I was again told an error had occured and I should call them. And again I was placed on hold several times before being disconnected. I decided it was time to find a different product. This adventure cost me $64, at least an hour of wait time, and lots of emotional wear and tear.
Is Lively Mobil Plus
Is Lively Mobil Plus available without the Urgent Care feature?
Is it available from Amazon Prime?
My Mobil Plus arrived on a
My Mobil Plus arrived on a Friday, by Monday I decided to cancel my subscription. During that time I had tried to create an account, but was told I already had an account. Then, tried ti sugn on to my account, but was told an error had occurred and that I should call them. When I called them I was put on hold and finally disconnected. I was placed on hold and then disconnected four more itmes before someone answered and arranged a password and security question for my account. But when I tried to sign onto my account, I was again told an error had occured and I should call them. And again I was placed on hold several times before being disconnected. I decided it was time to find a different product. This adventure cost me $64, at least an hour of wait time, and lots of emotional wear and tear.