Best Smart Lock for New Home Construction

The new home will be ready to move in soon and I am trying to choose a smart lock for the front door. Specifically, I’ve been looking at the Schlage Connect branded smart locks. I have some confusion though as to whether the Schlage locks are fully supported in Smartthings.

I’ve read on this forum about various problems with pairing, reporting, and reliability. All these seem to be a couple years old or more. I contacted the manufacturer about the current firmware on the lock and was told that Smartthings has dropped Schlage as a supported “works with” device.

Meanwhile, the Smartthings “works with” indicated Schlage locks are supported.

All this has left me confused. I’m looking for any current user experience on this lock, or input on another brand which may provide a better Smartthings experience.

Thank you for any input!

1 Like

There’s no one “best“ because different people have different preferences, needs, and budgets.

Schlage locks have been tricky to pair from the beginning and, as you noted, even certification is weird because smartthings does still have them on the official list but the manufacturer says they are not supporting the integration. It’s a complicated question. They are obviously a well-known brand and they do offer some colors which the other lock manufacturers do not, but at this point if you intend to use either smartthings or Hubitat, I think I would probably skip them.

The main alternative is Yale or August (which is now owned by the same company that owns Yale). There are many variations of these, including “Yale Connected by August.” So it depends whether you want a keypad on the exterior side, or a retrofit option where you don’t see anything on the outside, whether you want a lock which also works with Homekit, etc.

If you want a budget lock, so basically “good“ where Yale would be “better“, then some community members have chosen Kwikset.

There are a couple other lesser-known brands as well on the list, like Danalock, and usually that means there’s a specific feature that someone is looking for.

But the easiest answer is Yale or August. I personally like to have a keypad on the exterior door because there are people that I give the pin code to on specific time schedules, so I would myself choose Yale by August. But there are multiple models to consider.

@RBoy is an expert on locks and may be able to say more. He runs a paywall site, www.Rboyapps.com , which is very popular in the community. You pay a one time fee of about $40 and then you get access to all of his code, including several with advanced lock management. He is also very active in this forum and offers a lot of free advice. Just be aware that if he starts talking about code, it’s probably on the paywall site.

It depends on what features you’re looking for from your SmartLock. Alarms, AutoLock, Privacy modes, Flexible code lengths?

To get start I would recommend looking at the table in end of this post which compares lock features. Once you know what features you want it’ll become easier to choose your brand: [RELEASE] Universal Enhanced Z-Wave Lock Device Handler for Schlage, Yale, Kwikset, IDLock, Popp, Danalock, August Pro, Keywe, Philia, Samsung

1 Like