Smart Lock - Keyless Home Entry with Your Smartphone - Dark Gray

If you live alone and only have one door, this smart lock is all you need. It locks the door behind you when you leave, it unlocks the door for you when you arrive back home, and finally, it locks the door again a couple of minutes after you enter. What else do you need? I really don’t see the point in spending the extra $70 for the wi-fi adapter. I got this one on sale for under a hundred bucks on Amazon and especially compared to all the alternatives in the two to three hundred dollar range, it is a real bargain! Installation is a breeze. Total time to physically install the lock is 5 minutes. It takes longer to get the Android app configured. I did not install the “door sense” feature as I am not sure it is needed. Again, I live alone and am pretty good at closing the door behind me. I may change my mind at a later time and will update this review if I do. Unlike some other reviewers, I have not had a problem with the Bluetooth connectivity. Using the android app to manually open and close the lock, I find the Bluetooth range to be at least 30 feet from the lock both from inside and outside of my front door. I can even unlock the front door with the app from my bedroom which is upstairs and on the opposite side of the house. I also don’t find it necessary to have wi-fi turned on on my phone as the instructions recommend (I have an unlimited data plan so I usually leave wi-fi turned off to save battery life). Still, the lock seems to know I’m home as I am parking in my garage as I get a notification on my phone. Some reviewers have complained about the Bluetooth being slow and lagging, but I haven’t noticed that. Maybe it’s because I have a detached garaged and it takes me a while to get to my front door. My existing door hardware is a dark bronze color, and the dark gray August Smart Lock 3rd Gen is a pretty good match so it looks smart and yet unobtrusive on my door. The fact that low-tech people can still use a key to enter and manually lock or unlock the door on the inside is a big plus. Overall, two thumbs up and five stars for the August Smart Lock 3rd Gen!

I have had several August locks over the years and they are amazing! They work great and are mostly very reliable. ...but....I recently had 2 issues: The first was with the keypad which would not respect the settings. Annoying but not critical. Then a lock that was less than 3 years old up and stopped working, it acts like it's closing because the internal gears are broken. August's support was helpful and nice but in the end, they say that's too bad here is a 20% off code to buy another one. But their Amazon store is already priced ~30% off so that does nothing for me. But bigger the issue I have with this is that August does not care to even get the device back to test why it failed and to fix the problem in the future. Better yet, if they are able to fix the problem and resell it as refurbished. But no, I have yet another paperweight of worthless tech in a paperless world.

I bought this lock as a stand-alone item (not tied into my network with the optional network interface). It works as expected and I would purchase it again. Notes: 1) Physical installation: Simple and straightforward - takes about 20 min. If you can operate a screw driver and follow directions, you can do this installation. Start by installing the app on your smart phone and fire the app up. That will walk you through the process of doing the physical installation of the hardware. 2) Minor installation issue: One of the side wings that keeps the lock unit on the door keeps drifting open. I keep pushing it back in - the unit has never actually fallen down / off, but this is slightly annoying. 3) Installation note: As advertised, this product does not interfere with the use or appearance of the outside lock or your existing key. 4) Unlocking: I have it set up to unlock the door when I get back within range of the house. Around 2/3 of the time as I'm walking up to the door from my car my phone will vibrate and I hear the door lock unlock. The other 1/3 of the time I either have to wait a few minutes or pull out the phone, open the app and unlock the lock. (I have an iPhone 6. However, cell service stops working about 4 blocks from my house and "comes back" via WiFi connection when I arrive home.) Once the app realizes that I'm back home, it always opens the door. 5) Locking: I found the automatic locking via a timer to not work for me because I go through this door a lot when I'm home. You have to be a good solid block away before "away" mode is triggered. I expected this behavior and I have just been using my house key to lock the door when I leave. I haven't tried telling Siri to lock or unlock my door. I would give this product 5 stars if it would always unlock the door when I come home and if the attachment wings would stay put. I still rate this product as a 90-95%, not the 80% that a 4 star rating implies.

Ok so we have gone on vacation and found the last one out forgot to lock the door. Several times. Duh-Oh. Fortunately the alarm was on. Anyway this seemed like a good solution. Installation was great, works with the existing lock so you dont need to change keys it just replaces the inside manual latch part. Also adds a magnet to detect if the door is actually closed. Its bluetooth so you need the accessory bridge to your wifi network also that plugs into a nearby outlet. Having lived with it for a while now, I can say it works great. The door auto-locks after a pre-set time and sends you a notification. I get LOTS of those telling me indeed the kids dont lock the back door when they tumble out to school and it has auto locked. It can also auto unlock just ONE preset of the doors in your house ( come on, it should be able to tell which door you are at) just by proximity of your cell phone which could be a useful feature but I dont use that. I instead use the unlocking app. Note to evil dads- if you have the Ring doorbells you can tell when your brats step outside for a minute and can manually lock them out from afar, like halfway across the country and then have a droll conversation with them across the Ring app. before they call Mom and bust your chops. Ive done that when I am in boring business meetings. Lol. Just in case you have that streak in you. Havent been able to integrate with Alexa yet but eventually I guess it will.

August is the perfect example of a heavily VC-backed company that is trying to scale up before they've got their act together. First, the good: it's pretty clever that the kit is easy to install across multiple different brands of locks. The little locking "wings" on the side are a bit problematic though -- I had to shorted on with a handheld grinder so it would clear the door glass's frame ... not a big, but come on guys, I'm not the only person who has a window in their door with a frame extending close to the latch. Second, the bad: the software is just about as shabby as can be. First of all, little niggly things: at least in IOS 13, you can't change the name of the lock, so you have to tell Alexa to "unlock Front Door" because no matter where it's installed, the August app won't hold any name other than the factory one, which is "Front Door". Also, you can't turn off "Lock Sound", which is super annoying ... you can click the radio button off in the app but it won't hold the setting. You can close then reopen the app; makes no difference. Second of all, the implementation of the auto-unlock function is so shaky as to be unbelievable. First of all, why you have to travel at least 1/3 mile away from your house to activate the unlocking system is beyond me (they say 200 meters but I have found it's about 500 ... should be ~30). Second of all, if you close the app, or your phone goes flat, or you reboot it, it will lose the settings and not unlock for you at all. Guys, this problem has been SOLVED: look at how it works in a Tesla car ... simple and foolproof and designed by actual grownups. Why you're making this so hard, I have no idea. Third, the Connect module which makes the whole system wifi-capable is really really dodgy (as you can see from the other reviews here). The Bluetooth connection -- without which the door won't auto-unlock when you get home -- is unbelievably faint. 6 feet line-of-sight and the connection is "Poor". Just for fun, I got out an extension cord: 6 INCHES line-of-sight and the connection is only "Fair" or "Good". Now, I realize you don't want a wide Bluetooth field, because the door should only unlock when you're right there, but still this is just ridiculous. Fourth, the touchpad is just a complete joke. You wouldn't wish it on your worst enemy. It works about 40% of the time. It provides no tactile feedback of whether a button has actually been pressed. Then you have to wait 5-10 seconds for the door to open. Remote locking/unlocking with the thing connected to wifi works just fine; not exactly sure when I'll use that feature but it does work. The thing absolutely, positively swills down AA batteries, even with the deadbolt perfect aligned, lubed and smooth as glass. This problem needs to be solved; I think the best way would be to have a rechargeable battery cassette that pops in there, sort of like on a cordless drill. There is one obvious feature that should be part of the system, but isn't. August has figured out how to geofence just fine. The system should notify you if you leave your neighborhood and you door isn't locked. That's the easiest thing in the world to implement, but these guys haven't!!!! F'chrissakes people. Part of it is probably that it's hard to find good coders in Silicon Valley these days ... if you're any good, you go to work for Google or Amazon or Tesla, not August. The app is _that_ bad. It really is!! Basically this is a beta product. You have to be willing to put up with tons of bugs in the belief that the core premise could one day be useful. However, the price does not reflect the fact that it's a beta. For heaven's sake, with this level of dodginess, they should be GIVING these away to trial users to get some meaningful feedback. I can't imagine working in customer support at this company. They must get billions and billions of super-frustrated calls. All in all, the un-smart lock and key system has been perfected over thousands of years and there's a lot to be said for just sticking with it.

I have been using the 3rd Gen smart lock with the August Connect Wifi Bridge for about 3 months now. I found it very easy to install. The entire process of installing the lock and setting up the wifi bridge took about 15-20 minutes. I use the auto-unlock feature and about 90% of the time I do not have to even take my phone out to unlock the door upon arriving home. Additionally, I use Google Assistant almost exclusively to lock the door upon laving my house. I have found the "Door Sense" feature very reliable with only a handful of false positives. My only complaint is that it that unlocking the door with Google Assistant is apparently not yet supported. There is one critical caveat to how well the smart lock functions, and I suspect it is the reason for many of the negative reviews. If you have an older house, doors that do not sit well in the frame, thick weather stripping, or anything else that prevents your door from easily closing and aligning the deadbolt you will have issues. You door should not require ANY finessing to get the deadbolt to easily engage. A small misalignment can easily prevent the smart lock from locking/unlocking the door.

Overall I was impressed by the ease of installation of the lock. I got the dark grey one and it looks and feels good. The installation instructions in the app are easy to follow and well made. The lock works well with the app. i have not yet tried auto-unlock. The lock is a little noisy but then again so is using a key... The door sense however is not working properly. My door swings outward and I mounted the door sense magnet on the door frame (inside), close to where the dead bolt goes into the frame (like shown in the instructions, although an inward opening door is shown there). Calibration worked fine but the door shows open when it is ajar and closed when it is open enough that a person fits through. This is makes door sense unusable to me as, if auto lock is activated, the system would think that the door is closed and lock it, when in real life it's still open. This is especially concerning if you want reliable door feedback if you are not at home. I contacted support and sent them pictures. Support said that my installation was wrong and I should follow the instructions (again, the door in the instruction opens inwards). So I installed the magnet on the outside of the door but then the system would not let me calibrate the door sense and I ended up moving it back inside so I can at least have some feedback. I honestly don't know why it would matter in which direction the door moves away from the magnet but apparently it does. I have not heard back from support in 24 hours and am debating to return the lock.

Bought this lock because I have 4 children that do not know how to lock a door and the front door was many times unlocked when I woke up in the morning or came back from work. Someone could easily walk into my house and steal us blind or murder us in our sleep. Buying the lock with a bridge opens up a whole host of options with a minimal cost (less than $50). I can check the status of the lock at all times (I travel the country frequently and have no problem checking the status). I can open the lock from anywhere if someone is at the door that I want to let in. I have to lock set up to close 10 min after the door is shut. Works like a champ. The auto unlock also works without any problem is you have the bridge. The auto unlock feature works by recognizing when you leave the house by 200 M and will auto-unlock when you come back within 200M. All of my kids were invited as guests and use the app to get in/out of the house without a hitch. I can see where if you do not have the bridge there may be issues with getting the blue-tooth to work exclusively. I have attached a couple of pictures to show where I have the bridge in location to the lock. The app says the blue-tooth connection is weak with the bridge, but so far any communication between the bridge and the lock has worked flawlessly. Overall this lock has added a peace of mind to me as I have worried about this situation for at least a year. Given some of the negative comments I have read, I was hesitant to buy. However, I think all of the problems people have is completely remedied if they buy the bridge with the lock. Too bad the lock was not designed to just do what the bridge does, but I think it was done this way to conserve battery life. The bridge does the heavy lifting and can do so because it is plugged in. The lock can stay in a "low power" bluetooth mode to conserve battery life. I highly recommend this lock if you are faced with my situation.