Wyze Lock and Keypad review


Wyze Lock and Keypad review

There’s no lack of smart locks available on the market these days. Some will cost you $300 or more. So when Wyze introduced its Wyze Lock for a fraction of that price, I initially wrote it off. How good could a $107.98 smart lock be? After using one that Wyze loaned me, I found an answer to that question. It’s actually a reasonable option, provided you understand and accept some of its quirks.To get more news about wifi smart door lock, you can visit securamsys.com official website.

Right off the bat, the Wyze Lock looks good, at least to me. It’s also easy to install. Unlike the Nest x Yale lock that I currently use, the Wyze Lock attaches to the back of an existing deadbolt lock. Because of this, Wyze’s product is really a smart lock motor of sorts, similar to the August line of locks.

Easy to install
This helps make the installation simple. And from the outside of the house, you can’t tell that a smart lock is installed. That’s because the keyed part of your existing traditional deadbolt doesn’t get replaced. Instead, the Wyze Lock replaces your bolt and the interior handle to lock and unlock the bolt.

As a result, you just swap out the bolt and add the modern-looking Wyze Lock housing on the inside of your door.Wyze includes a mounting plate for the housing, screws to attach it, and the back cover with a deadbolt turner for manually locking and unlocking the door.

All told, it took me around 10 minutes to physically install the Wyze Lock and add the four included batteries.But there’s more to do because you have to pair the lock with a WiFi network. And to do that, you need the included Wyze Lock Gateway which has Bluetooth, Zigbee, and WiFi radios inside.The Wyze Lock itself only has Bluetooth and Zigbee radios, which is why the small gateway module is required: It can’t access your home wireless network with those.

I’m not a fan of using yet another electrical outlet for specific purpose bridges and gateways. To be fair though: My Nest x Yale lock requires one too. This is one of the reasons I’m waiting to buy a new smart lock: I want to see more of them that use Thread mesh networking.
In any case, the Wyze Lock Gateway is a small device. I plugged it in and paired it with the Wyze app on my phone in about a minute. After that, I pressed a pairing button in the Wyze Lock to connect it to the gateway, which was even quicker. At that point, the Wyze Lock is connected and can be controlled through the Wyze app.

I liked how the Wyze app walked me through this entire process. It also guided me to “calibrate” the lock by instructing me to manually lock and unlock the door a few times. The calibration helps detect when your door is open or closed; something my current lock can’t do. Again, this was generally a simple process and shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes in total from beginning to end. All of the tools and screws are included in the box.

A very quiet lock with more features than I expected
Once installed, I tested remotely locking and unlocking the door from the Wyze app. I was immediately impressed by how much quieter the Wyze Lock is compared to my current smart lock. You can hear the Nest x Yale turning the bolt from three rooms away, for example. With the Wyze Lock? I can barely hear it when I’m in the same room!

Except for voice controls (more on that shortly), everything about the Wyze Lock is handled in the Wyze app. And there are quite a few features here that I didn’t expect.

Sure, there’s the basic tap to lock and unlock. But you can also “share” access with other people in your house if you want to see who is coming and going. That’s not necessary but I know some parents who prefer this type of data. You can also configure an auto-lock time after a certain number of minutes. I had to manually set up an automation for that feature on my current lock. You also can have the Wyze Lock make sounds if the door is jammed or left open. So there’s quite a feature set here at this price.

 

Notifications are also available from the Wyze app to tell you when the door is locked, unlocked, opened, or closed. I found that to be a bit “chatty” but it’s easy to configure the push notifications however you want.