Smart Home

When Your Smart Lock Fails… Climb Through The Window

Running a “smart” home is often fraught with peril. For example, during an Internet outage you might actually have to get off the couch to manually adjust a light or thermostat. The horror! Adding insult to injury, there are also times you may have to actually break into your own home to overcome its “smarts” … as Consumer Reports analyst Dan Wroclawski just discovered.

This is basically the worst case scenario for a smart lock. While this sort of catastrophic failure (you had one job) wouldn’t surprise me from Wyze, this possibility is shocking from industry leader Yale and their newest offering, the Assure 2. (I do not feel at all ‘assured.’)

Yale is currently investigating the incident with Dan to determine what failed and how to prevent a repeat. However, I’m a bit shook and suggest only contemplating keyed smart locks when going down this path. Fortunately, Yale does offer keyed Assure 2 variants. Also, I was previously satisfied with an August lock retrofit (same company), while others seem to appreciate Level’s low-profile approach.

(Header photo by 7th Army Training Command via CC BY 2.0.)

Published by
Dave Zatz