Eufy Security—Anker’s sub-brand name spanning just about anything from movie doorbells and safety cameras to toddler monitors—has now moved into the planet of intelligent locks, hitting the industry with a svelte piece of components that’s loaded with attributes. And most of them operate perfectly.
The Bluetooth-only lock gives a really interesting layout, decked out entirely in black. Adopting the now-common upright rectangle design and style, Eufy retains the chassis skinny both equally within and outside the house your door, where the escutcheons jut out from the surface only about 1.5 inches and 1 inch respectively.
This evaluation is part of TechHive’s coverage of the very best intelligent locks, wherever you will discover evaluations of competing merchandise, in addition a buyer’s guideline to the features you should think about when buying.
Set up hiccups
Installation is outlined in a in depth, printed manual, and the numbered bins within the kit support novices retain track of what is what. The whole affair goes collectively merely and typically: You bolt the exterior escutcheon to an interior mounting plate, and then hook up that to the inside escutcheon. 4 AA batteries energy the device, and Eufy states they must previous a whole calendar year.
You just drag down from the heart of the display screen to open up the lock utilizing Eufy’s app.
You’ll need to have the Eufy Safety app—not the EufyLife or EufyHome applications, which are reserved for other Eufy smart house gear—to configure the lock. Sadly, the application wasn’t operating when I 1st tried to set up the lock it wouldn’t even allow me established up a username and password. After some troubleshooting, the enterprise explained it was a short term server issue on its conclusion.
The future day, the application choked yet again through set up, a bit even further alongside. Once once again, the business blamed a server mistake. Considering that I was testing the lock a couple of days right before its formal launch, it is tempting to chalk this up to beta pains, but given that the application (and Eufy’s servers) have been close to considering the fact that at the very least 2018, the several-working day hiccup feels alarming.
Right after the server troubles had been fixed, I experienced no other genuine troubles with set up other than for a buggy calibration method that would not convert the deadbolt at all. Thoroughly loosening some of the bolts—a prevalent fix—got things transferring, though Eufy’s motor seems like it struggles more than most when functioning the lock.
Ecosystem limits
Again, the lock is Bluetooth only, so it does not seriously combine with other sensible house equipment (outside the house of just about anything you could possibly now be employing within just the Eufy Stability application), together with voice assistants. Apple HomeKit assist is also not in the playing cards. In addition to working with the app to run the lock, you also get a few added strategies of gaining accessibility: numeric keypad, physical key, and fingerprint reader.
Christopher Null / IDGThe application suppliers a strong and comprehensive log of when the door was unlocked and by whom.
Eufy’s app is pretty clear-cut, building it effortless to function the lock on need, set up accessibility for more customers, and see a background of who’s occur and absent. The options menu provides a significant depth of further options, together with a lock-out procedure that restrictions the lock’s usability when incorrect PINs or unregistered fingerprints are scanned and a scrambling procedure that permits customers to input dummy digits just before or soon after their PIN as an additional stability measure (decreasing the chance of a criminal deducing the genuine PIN by scrutinizing which quantities have fingerprints on them).
Auto-locking can immediately lock the door soon after up to 3 minutes and can even be set to function only for the duration of certain hrs. One particular of the lock’s killer functions is an built-in gyroscope and geomagnetic sensor that can identify whether or not the door is ajar—without demanding a common, exterior magnetic sensor—allowing it to lock the door quickly when it’s shut.
A flaky fingerprint reader
All these characteristics labored very well in my screening, with 1 exception: The fingerprint reader is decidedly erratic. Though it is straightforward to sign up prints, it felt practically random as to whether or not the lock would basically go through my print when I tried to scan it and unlock the doorway. Very watchful placement of my thumb or finger enhanced my achievement fee, but some of the time the lock would just refuse to identify my print no make any difference what I did.
I hardly ever located significantly of a pattern in any of this. One particular moment the print wouldn’t scan, the next it would perform great, despite the fact that it absolutely worked finest with thumbs vs. smaller fingers. If you use the automated lock-out feature, this can create a serious issue. And curiously, whilst the method supports up to 100 end users, it can keep only 50 fingerprints.
A further helpful function is the inclusion of a microUSB port on the base of the exterior escutcheon. This can be applied to briefly energy the lock from any other USB-connected machine, in lieu of the extra usual 9-volt terminal, if its internal AA batteries die. Arguably, it is a lot easier now to scare up a microUSB cable than it is a 9-volt battery then all over again, you can always preserve a bodily important as your unexpected emergency accessibility system, also. Eufy’s important mechanism is a high-safety form that is substantially much more difficult to pick or copy.
Bottom line
At $249, The Eufy Clever Lock Touch is competitive in selling price with other fingerprint-reading locks, but the top secret sauce of any lock is its ability to do the job perfectly just about every time—or at least shut to it. As it stands, Eufy’s lock is superior enough to go muster, but it requirements to function a bit greater in advance of earning a strong suggestion.
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