A smart lock review is acually a first for me, so I decided to slow things down, and
I ended up spending just over two months testing the August Smart Lock Pro and the Connect
before sitting down to make this review for y'all.
One of the things that makes this lock unique is that it retrofits your existing deadbolt.
From the outside, nothing changes, and you can still use your old school key if you want.
On the inside, your deadbolt is replaced with this crazy huge thing.
The August Smart Lock Pro also ships with a Doorsense sensor that lets you know if your
door is opened or closed.
And a Connect, which lets you control your lock from anywhere.
Of course, the beauty of a smart lock is intelligence, and all things smart come from the mobile
app which is available for iOS and Android devices as well as Apple Watch.
From the app, you can control your lock, view a thirty-day history of events, and of course
lock and unlock your door.
If you have an iOS device, you can also use 3D touch to quickly lock and unlock the door
or create an August Widget, both are huge timesavers as they allow you to control the
lock without messing with the app.
If you want to automate the process, August has both auto lock and unlock features.
Auto-Lock is based on a time set by you.
If you leave the door unlocked, it can lock itself any time between 30 seconds and 30
minutes after that happens.
Auto-Unlock is a little bit more complicated as its tied to your phone's presence.
When you're home, the feature is disabled.
When you leave, it's enabled and the lock starts to listen for your presence when you
return via Bluetooth.
While I tested this feature, I didn't test it much as I don't use the front door a whole
lot, and the lock would unlock even when I entered through the garage door which is obviously
not what I wanted to happen.
Thankfully, you can set up auto-unlock notifications.
In fact, August can let you know of a few things like if your door is locked or unlocked
manually, if it's locked or unlocked by a specific user, if you leave your door ajar,
and of course, Auto-Unlock
You can drill down on each of these by setting a time range.
For example, let me know if the door is locked on weekdays between 3 PM and 4 PM or let me
know every time my kids unlock the door.
The door is left ajar rule is tied to DoorSense.
During testing, this feature was problematic, although I'll admit also self-inflicted because
I have something called door armor.
DoorSense senses when your door is opened or closed.
And from the mobile app, you'll help calibrate it so that it can sense the difference between
closed, open, and ajar.
The problem here is that my door isn't consistent because of the door armor.
Sometimes to get it closed just right you gotta put a little hip into it.
With DoorSense enabled, my door would often fail to lock and unlock itself.
When I disabled DoorSense, for whatever reason, I didn't have any problems locking and unlocking
the door.
Unfortunately, disabling this feature also means losing intelligence as with DoorSense
the app will show a dashed yellow circle when your door is open and unlocked and a dashed
red circle when it's open and locked.
Without DoorSense you have green circle for unlocked and red for locked, and problematically you
can lock the door when it's open without issue.
So with all the locks out there, you might be wondering why August?
And the answer is Works With August.
The August Smart Lock Pro uses Z-Wave Plus, and it also works with Amazon Echo, Google
Home, Apple HomeKit, Nest, IFTTT, and More.
I tested August by pairing it via Z-Wave to my Alarm.com panel and was disappointed in
the integration.
It was both slow and laggy.
I was also disappointed by the Nest integration.
I was hoping that I would be able to answer Nest Hello calls and unlock the door from
the same screen, but apparently, that awesomeness is reserved for those who buy the August Doorbell,
but there were other integrations I enjoyed, like HomeKit.
Hey Siri, lock my August Smart Lock.
Your August Smart Lock is locked.
If I had to give a second answer to the why August question, it would be multi-user access.
You can have both owners and guests.
Owners can do everything we just talked about.
Guests can only lock and unlock the door and you get to decide when they can do that.
You can give them access always or you can create a reoccurring rule which allows the
user access on the same time and day weekly.
Finally, temporary access has a set start and end time and date.
That pretty much wraps up the August features, but there is one concern I think we should
toss about and that's battery life.
This smart lock is battery powered.
The promised battery life is 6 months, but there's no way to check on that from the app.
Instead, August promises to send a notification when your battery level is low.
Also, the lock uses 4 AA standard alkaline batteries, and August specifically calls out
that you should not use rechargeable batteries, which is kind of a bummer, but overall August
still gets a thumbs up from me.
Before you leave, subscribe because I have a lot of great content coming up.
Also, let me know what smart lock you prefer because I'm definitely interested in testing
more of them.
So, I appreciate you all being here, and I will see you soon.