YALE Keyless Connected Smart Lock - CHROME PLATED

This review is after the first 24 hours so the opinion may change - but I doubt it.This was purchased not so much to allow us to open the door but to release the door for visitors as we live in a town house with three flights of stairs to negotiate to tell salesmen to 'go away'.First ImpressionsThe lock was purchased together with a Smartthings adapter. The lock seems a solid piece of kit, as I would expect from Yale. The adapter is a tiny lump of plastic that plugs into the lock battery box.InstallationInstalling the lock was pretty straightforward. The only problem is it needs an existing or new lock with 60 mm between the edge of the door and the key. I did not realise that there were different locks and found ours was 40 mm. That would have worked still but the wide Yale unit would have interfered with the door frame. The easiest answer was to buy a 60mm lock and install it near the existing lock, which now adds security when we are away from home.Installation was a simple matter of the usual carpentry jobs of drilling holes and chiselling that are required for any lock. If it is replacing an existing Yale type key cylinder on a 60mm lock it is just one extra 20mm hole in the door.Once installed, without the Smartthings adapter, it is just a case of following the clear instructions of setting unlock codes..In UseTo release the lock one can either place one of the supplied cards and tags on the lock or enter a personal code and it releases. To be honest it is just as easy to use a key so there is little advantage other than being able to give others a code so they can get access without having to hand out keys. It is possible to set codes that die after 24 hours or delete a code which is no longer required so this could be good when tradesmen need access. 20 codes are possible. The lock becomes a different animal once the Smartthings option is added.SmartthingsThis needs a small dongle to be plugged in to the battery box and the lock 'twinned' with Smartthings. Having read critical reviews on this option I was a little concerned but did not need to be. Having entered the code shown on the instructions into the lock I asked my SmartThings app to look for items. It took about 0.5 seconds for Smartthings to connect to the lock. I did this with the lock on my desk before installing and was a little concerned that the front door is a long way from my router in a steel framed house that is not good at sending wi-fi around. Our Ring doorbell needed a wi-fi extension near the door to work reliably but I need not have worried as the Yale works perfectly when twinned to the main router in our living room.Once twinned the lock can be opened by a one button press on a Smartthings app and it's also possible to set up actions so that when the lock is opened any SmartThings lights, etc. are turned on.. The lock is now really useful. I can release it if required from anywhere in the world I have internet access, let people in without needing to go down three flights of stairs and release the front door as I get out of my car in pouring rain. Love it. I can also check, if required, which user opened the door at which time by looking at Smartthings log.Amazon Alexa.Once the lock is twinned with SMARTTHINGS It can also be twinned with Alexa but before reporting why this is useless a note on using the lock. When the lock is unlocked it is possible to set a time delay before it automatically relocks - which makes sense. The auto relock function can be cancelled so then a separate signal is needed to relock. Not sure why you would want to do this though. Having spent some time linking the lock to Alexa I found that any command to unlock is blocked and only relock commands are possible. Thinking about it this makes sense. If it was possible to say "Alexa unlock front door" it would be possible for any thief to shout through the letterbox !!ConclusionSo far I am impressed. The kit was easy to install with little or no reference to instructions and it seems to work well. Using a code to enter is, I think, the last resort if you close the door and don't have a card or mobile phone to unlock with as it’s no quicker than using a key. With the Smartthings option (at extra cost) it fits in well to a modern connected household. If, like me, it's a long trek down stairs to the front door to let visitors in it is a useful energy saving option as well.One small snag.If I have a visitor who rings the Ring doorbell my phone opens the Ring app. I tell the visitor to come in but in order for him/her to do so I need to close the Ring app, open the Smarthings app and press the door release. By the time I have done all that the visitor has pushed the door and found it would not open as I am still changing apps. Not insurmountable but it would be great if I could release the door from within the Ring app. Makes sense and I now see this is possible with many remote operation locks but not Yale. come on Yale. Get together with Ring and get your locks integrated as well.UPDATEAfter a month of faultless use with code and SmartThings it has failed. In normal use the handle spins freely when the door is locked and after inputting code etc a sound is heard which must be some sort of internal bolt which connects the lock to the handle. Electronically it still works and the bolt can be heard to move. The snag is it no longer connects with the handle properly so although it unlocks the door when turned one way it now spins free the other way. The good news is having phoned Amazon on Saturday evening a new kit was delivered by Sunday lunchtime and is now fitted and working. I love the system so hope I just had a faulty product.

Honestly I was unsure when ordering as you hear lots of things about these smart locks. However k was very pleasantly surprised. Great quality. Really sturdy. Fitting template that comes with it is really helpful and simple to use. The installation video was great. A little unclear to me on the battery fitment. After I watched it a few times it became clear to me. There is a thread in the top of the lock that the bottom of the battery section bolts to through the bottom metal bracket. Coding the fobs took a few attempts but once I got the hang of it, it was smooth sailing. Would 100% recommend

Good quality

Has been on the door for a few months now, I added the z-wave interface and connected it to my Home Assistant which makes managing entry codes a lot simpler - nfc tags can't be managed this way unfortunately, but that is a very mi or shortcoming since one would need to be at the lock to add one anyway - but it would be nice to be able to block a tag remotely as soon as realising it had been lost or stolen.Batteries are still the ones that were supplied with the lock and still show 90% (they started at 90%, but haven't dropped yet). As an insurance against the possible inaccuracy of the battery life reported over z-wave, I have a brand new lithium 9v battery safely stashed near the front door in case of emergency.The lock is extremely sturdy - I have zero concerns about its resilience to an attack. The buzzer that sounds if the front of the lock is separated from the battery box on the inside of the door is a bit weak though - it wouldn't be very loud outside. To mitigate this (not that I believe it would be an issue anyway, but Home Automation is a lifestyle/hobby as much as it makes any real world sense!) I have a z-wave siren mounted on the ceiling (9ft high open porch) which is programmed to sound if the lock tamper alarm is triggered (the z-wave standard has a message type covering exactly this scenario) which would scare the living s*** out anyone within 3 feet of it and certainly attract the attention of the neighbours if they weren't already aware of the noise of tampering with the thing.Installation was fairly easy - I already had an ERA BS Nightlatch on the door with a Schlage cylinder, so fitting was simply a case of drilling the additional hole for the battery cable / upper sconce mount. The home I had for the cylinder was a bit oval though, so required a bit of massaging with a file as the cylinder part of the lock is round (as it should be, really) so this is something to be aware of if your existing lock hasn't been installed to the highest standard. I also have a draught excluder strip around the outside edge of the door frame - this doesn't actually interfere with the lock, but it is a tight squeeze. Not something most will need to be concerned with, but good to be aware of.The installation instructions say to cut the bar that engages with the latch with pliers/cutters. Do not attempt this! The bar is impressively hard steel, and required a decent hacksaw blade to cut. There is no way on earth it is being cut with any kind of pliers, maybe bolt croppers, but not cleanly. A carefully wielded dremel might do OK with a suitable cutting/grinding wheel if a hacksaw seems a bit too much like hard work.