Honeywell VISTA 20P vs VISTA 21iP

hi DIYs Joey here from alarm grid and today we're going to talk about the differences between the Vista 20p and the vista 21ip now these two panels they share a lot of similar features they both are able to support up to 48 zones they both are able to support up to 48 user codes they each have eight hard-wired zones right on the front of the panel you can connect a phone line directly to each of the boards and they have a lot of other similar stuff that is exactly the same between the two panels the biggest difference is the communication path options that you have for each system now if you're in the market for a new panel you're always going to want to go with the 21ip instead of the 20p as it will save you some money in the long run and actually has some additional features which are better to have out of the box compared to the 20p but with that said they're both great panels to use and if you have either one installed in a home or apartment or place that you're going to live up there both equally fine as a security system and even as an automation system with its z-wave edition let's check out the two panels though and see the different the differences between the two and check out some of the different communication paths that you have so over here we have the Vista 20p and as you can see it's a smaller size board your power terminals are right here on the first two terminals the next four are your ECB bus and then the rest of them are your zone zone terminals those are where you're going to land contacts or sensors right onto the board and this is where it supports its eight onboard hard-wired zones over here these terminals are for your phone line if you're going to connect one it's not recommended to use phone line right now as everything is a VoIP and it's very unreliable as far as alarm communication goes but you do have that option if you want it and that's pretty much the board right there in the middle you have your your prom ship and then on the side you have your flying leads for your for your backup battery now if we go over here I'm gonna look at our 21ip it's slightly larger the terminal is pretty much are the same thing you have your power connection over here you have your ECB bus right there you've your zone terminals and then you have your telco on the side now and it I mean the back of battery leads the same also now the difference is is if you take a look at the board right up here on the 21ip there's an onboard Ethernet jack and you can actually plug the system directly into a router and have it be monitored right through that jack so right out of the box if you only want to use the 21ip on Ethernet you can do so just install it plug it in and you'll be able to get it monitored the 20p on the other hand doesn't have any onboard communicator rather than the phone line it is compatible with Honeywell's remote services but you'll need to add an external communicator to either get the ethernet or cellular communication to this panel so one of the big reasons of why getting a 21ip is superior to the 20p out of the box because it's able to be communicated with all of Honeywell's current remote services through the ethernet jack on the board now you'll also notice that in the in this side of the board there's a chip right here what this is this is called the Vista GSM 4G it's a proprietary cellular communicator and it clips right onto the 21ip board using this in conjunction with the Ethernet jack gives this system dual path communication it can use both paths of communication and if the ethernet goes down it's going to automatically switch over to cellular you can also set it to work with only cellular if you want again the 20p you can use cellular communication which we're going to show you some different communicators that are available for it but you have to add it to the system and if you want dual path Ethernet and cellular on the 20p you'll have to get a dual path communicator for the system now on the 21ip if you do want to add an external communicator you certainly can do so it's just that when you do that you're going to disable the in the internal Ethernet port on the system so it's always best to use the Vista GSM 4G if you're adding cellular to the 21ip now if we go back over to our 20p what we have mounted up here on top this is called the GSM x4g this is a Sailor only communicator it mounts right to the box you can also mount it on wall if you like and it connects to the ECB bus with a four wire connection right there this will give a cellular path of communication to the system it's not going to give you dual path another communicator option that you have there's two different models that look exactly the same as this they use the same housing and even the board inside looks pretty much the same this is the IGS MV for G there's also the GSM v4g the eye indicates that it has an Ethernet path of communication the gsm v 4g is a cellular only communicator similar to the gsm x 4g now if we take a look inside of this one you'll notice you have a bunch of terminals on this side right here is your Ethernet jack and then up here is your cellular communicator now on the up and the GSM v4g you won't be able to connect the ethernet as it's only going to work on the cellular this is the communicator that you'll need if you want to add dual path communication with Ethernet and cellular to the 20p it connects right to the the ECB bus with a four wire connection and it's a very popular communicator now you could install this on a vista 21ip but you're going to spend less money if you install a vista gsm 4G proprietary module right onto the board if you do if you're in a situation though where you only have one of these kind of communicators and you do have a 21ip you can't install it just know it's going to disable the internal Ethernet jack on the board and whenever you install an external communicator on the 21ip you have to adjust these jumpers on this side to the down portion what that's going to do is is going to turn off the internal IP communications on the system and have it look for an external communicator such as the GSM X 4G or the I GSM v4g that's pretty much the differences between the two systems they're both great to use as a hardwired system they're very common and more often that we have quite a few customers that come to us with one of these systems looking and get monitored those are the different communication options you have if you have any questions feel free to head over to the website shoot an email or give us a call if you did enjoy the video hit the subscribe button below and if you want to be updated when we post future videos hit the notification and we'll do so thanks for watching and have a great day