Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsFlawless operation, the hardest part is making sure your door is ready. Love it-- can't imagine going back to a regular lock.
Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2015
Now that I have this I can't see how I lived without it for so long. It is tremendously liberating not to have to worry about your key and I feel the house is much more secure than previously. I matched it with a simple Schlage Century passage handle (about $40).
I did not have a deadbolt installed in my exterior door and decided to install it myself. This meant the door had to be drilled and chiseled, etc. I bought the Milwaukee door lock installation kit (about $35) and watched a few Youtube videos and I was able to pull off a pretty decent installation that looks very clean and functions well. You will also need a chisel to set the strike plates. This is easier than you would imagine. Thank you Youtube !
The main thing I did not expect about installation of this lock is that the most important thing is preparing your door. The motor that drives this deadbolt is lightweight and it needs the door to be perfectly aligned so that the bolt can open and close with no added pressure or drag. So if you have a door that you have to lift up or press in or pull out or otherwise wiggle to get the deadbolt closed, you are going to have to do some work on your door until it is all properly aligned so that the deadbolt can click open or closed easily with no interference or drag. Apparently Schlage customer support does have some tricks up their sleeve like differently shaped strike plates if needed. But that is the first thing you need to start with .... how your door and current deadbolt fit and work and do you need to adjust the door itself.
Schlage says that with correct fit the batteries will last over a year but they recommend replacing them annually anyway. However the first time your bolt tests the installation in the door it uses a low power mode to lock the bolt. If it is unable to successfully complete its "low power" cycle due to drag somewhere in the fit, after 3 unsuccessful tries it will go into a "high power" mode permanently. This will result in shorter battery life. You can check your battery level in the app. After a few weeks of constant use the batteries are still showing at 100%.
Schlage also has a nice video about installation that is available in the app or on Youtube. I was amused to see that the very first thing in the instructions is that they tell you "FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS!". For example you do not insert the batteries until a specific time and if you insert them too early you can foul up the lock's programming and self test cycle. So, READ AND FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS STEP BY STEP.
For extra reinforcement, Schlage provides a heavy duty backer to the strike plate on the frame and super long screws to secure it through your door frame. You may really want to have an impact driver to set these long screws. We didn't and stripped it using our regular electric screwdriver but finally got them in.... only to discover the placement was slightly off and we had a slight drag on the operation of the deadbolt. And there was no way those screws were coming out without a fight. So if I was doing it all over again, I would have set the strike plate only using the small screws until I fully tested the fit of the lock. In our case we were able to adjust the lower strike plate for the door handle inward to get the deadbolt back to non-interference operation, so we were OK.
Once physically installed, the HomeKit setup and lock programming was quick and easy. The first thing the lock did was update its firmware and I had not a single hiccup with the HomeKit. I have a 3rd generation Apple TV that's about 10 feet away from the front door and it is turned off in power saving mode most of the time but I have not noticed any problems with remote access when I have tried it. Works perfectly.
So how do we actually use the door? Well, you can assign up to 30 codes for entrance and those codes can be set to work during all hours and days or limited hours and days. It does warn you that whatever number of digits you pick for your codes that will be permanent. So we went with 4 digit codes since that's what most people are used to for their PINs. Longer codes would obviously be slightly more secure, but if you stand at the lock and try various combinations you can only make a few attempts before it sets off a built-in internal alarm. The alarm is loudest in the house and doesn't carry outside too strongly but loud enough to make the person attempting to guess your code feel uncomfortable standing there. You only get a certain number of tries before it won't accept any more and sounds the alarm.
So there are two of us in the house and we each picked a four digit code and that's what we use as our key. You can lock and unlock it using the app, but it's easier just to walk up to the door and type in your code. You can use the app to check the lock status and lock or unlock it remotely (works perfectly with our HomeKit setup) and also to view an extensive log of who has locked/unlocked the door and when. You can set the door to auto lock at the interval of your choice. On the exterior, as soon as you close the door you can press the Schlage button to lock the door immediately without waiting for it to auto lock. Once inside we are making it a habit to manually lock the door upon entry to save battery so it doesn't auto lock every time.
So I always used to be stressed out about "did I have my key with me" and now ... I just don't need a key. The door is locked a lot more than before. It has a built in alarm that responds to tampering. It keeps a record of when it's been opened and closed. And I can remotely allow access to someone if needed which is a huge comfort given that my dogs are left in the house a lot and I'd always worried about how I would handle that if I was stuck somewhere and needed someone to go in and take care of them.... now I can do it easily from wherever.
Documentation of HomeKit features is sparse but I expect that to improve over time. For example the one time I set off the lock's alarm by typing in the wrong code repeatedly, i would have expected it to send me a notification that the alarm had been set off. It did not and I have no way of knowing if it was supposed to or not or how to set it to do that if possible.
IN SUMMARY, I LOVE THIS LOCK. For a future upgrade, I can see the value of adding an automatic door closer so I am considering adding one of those to my door to make sure it closes fully on its own so that the auto lock can be completely successful without my remembering to fully manually close the door.
