Saturday, July 18, 2015

Bought an August Smart Lock for the house. First impressions

So I bought an August Smart Lock on Amazon's 'Prime Day' (what a let down that was).  Here's my first impressions.   It's very nicely packaged.  They took a page from the Apple playbook and made the unboxing experience elegant.  No blister packs to cut open, just some tape holding the lid of the box closed. There's basically 3 parts.  The smart lock, the mounting plates and the adapters.


Now the website claims:

UNIVERSAL
Package includes deadbolt attachment adapters to accommodate standard deadbolts sold today.

Which is true for the most part, but when you get the instruction booklet out, you see a few asterisks, but they're for only a couple of variations and they advise contacting support.  I suspect they have adaptors or alternate screws for those models.


Anyway, you mount the appropriate plate, put the appropriate adaptor on the deadbolt shaft, and then mount the unit.


It goes on in minutes, and batteries are included!



Now's when I'm realizing I've made a mistake in color choice, although champagne might not have looked any better, and the black and red would have been just as bad.



And as you can see by my hand, this thing is big.  I mean way bigger than I thought it was going to be.  It's also a lot thicker than I thought it would be. I don't think the pictures on the website give you a true picture of just how chunking this thing is. It looks awkward on my door since it's so much bigger than the actual door nob.

Ok, moving past it's bulk, it works just like I hoped it would.  First you have to sign up via the app, then you calibrate the open and close positions and you're ready to go.  I was done in 15 minutes.  Waiting for the app to load download was one of the longer parts of the entire process.  The lock opens and closes smoothly and has indicator lights and an audible chime (which can be turned off) when it's done.

It's not all hugs and lollipops however. As the website claims, you can still open it the old fashion way.  Simply turn the incredibly large nob, which is ok for grownup hands.  However, my kids hands aren't so big.   When you grab it with smaller hands and with the palm covering the face of the unit, you often times pop the cover off unintentionally without unlocking/locking the lock.


My hands are big enough that it's not a problem but my kids, who grab with the grip in the photo, pop the cover off rather than unlocking the lock. I think they'll get used to it eventually.  

Now we just sit back and wait for the Xfinity Home folks to make good on their commitment to integrate with 3rd party devices



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