AUGUST WIFI, (4TH GENERATION) SMART LOCK

was $229 now at $168.

About this item

• UPGRADE YOUR EXISTING DEADBOLT: August smart locks fit on the inside of your door, making your regular deadbolt smarter, more secure, and way more convenient. Keep your keys just in case (but you won’t need them).
• GRANT ACCESS WITH THE AUGUST APP: Forget key copying. Quickly and easily share permanent, scheduled, or temporary access to your home with friends, family, and other people you trust, and never put a key under the doormat again.
• EASY TO INSTALL ON ANY DOOR: Even if you’re not so handy, installation only takes about 10 minutes. August locks fit perfectly over most single-cylinder deadbolts and aren’t much bigger than your original thumb turn.
• AUTO-LOCKS AND UNLOCKS: August Wi-Fi Smart Lock can Auto-Unlock as you get home for totally hands-free unlocking (optional). With Auto-Lock and DoorSense, your home automatically secures once your door is closed, or after a set amount of time.
• WORKS SEAMLESSLY WITH YOUR SMART HOME: Built-in Wi-Fi allows your lock to work with your favorite voice assistant, including Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple HomeKit, Samsung SmartThings, and more.
• AWARD-WINNING SMART LOCK YEAR AFTER YEAR: Voted CNET Editor’s Choice two years in a row (2020/2021), Best Smart Lock by Good Housekeeping (2021), Best Smart Lock by Tom’s Guide (2021).
• KEEP YOUR HOME’S CURB APPEAL: Get smart lock functionality without changing the look of the outside of your front door. August smart locks are installed only on the inside of the door, so your design for your front door doesn’t have to adapt.

Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2022

I still really like this lock. Easy installation. Excellent app. Doesn’t require re-keying (since it uses this existing deadbolt). Doesn’t require a hub. But one problem has come up, and it’s significant. As far as I can tell, there’s no way to check the battery level in the app. The first warning you get is an email message saying the battery is critically low. Unfortunately, in our case, that email message arrived three days after we closed up the house and left for another state to take care of an elderly parent for an indefinite period. The whole point of putting this smart lock on the door was so I could let people (e.g., the furnace repair guy) into the house while we were gone. Now I can’t do that, because the batteries are dead, which defeats the whole purpose of the lock. The lock should have a battery status indicator, like a phone, so you can decide whether you need to preemptively change the batteries if you’ll be away for awhile. The batteries this lock uses are expensive, so I don’t want to throw away good batteries, but I also don’t want them to die unexpectedly. Why doesn’t the app have a simple battery monitor? Taking off a star and hoping they fix this. [Update to the update: I’ve now been using the lock for 8 months, so I’m getting a good sense of battery life. The lock doesn’t have a battery meter, but it does send a message that the batteries are “critically low” when they need to be replaced. The first set of batteries lasted 3 months. The second set lasted 3 months. So, if you’re using this lock in a situation where you can change the batteries every 3 months, it’s a good choice. as noted before, the lock offers many advantages over other smart locks. But if you need a smart lock for a location where you can’t change the batteries every 3 months, a lock with better battery life would be a better choice. That might mean a smart lock that uses a hub rather than direct wifi, since a Bluetooth/Zwave/Zigbee connection probably uses less power than a wifi chip.]