Yale Access

I’m an original August lock owner and decided to upgrade the whole lock when my keypad died. August finally fixed the worst problem about the lock itself when they redesigned the cover, which now pops up when you press a corner and doesn’t fall off when you open or close the lock manually like the original did. This change alone might be worth the cost of replacing it. So far, the lock and the app have performed better than the original, and I’ve only had one Auto Unlock failure, which was a more persistent flaw in the original. There are still some Bluetooth connectivity issues, and admin through the app occasionally fails to connect, making it impossible to access the settings of the app when you are standing next to it. The keypad is also an upgrade, and has a touch screen instead of rubber buttons, adds sounds, and takes twice as many aaa batteries. The lock itself now uses more rare 123 batteries, so you’ll have to buy them specifically for the lock. Maybe they’ll last longer than the original, which used 4 aa batteries more frequently than I would have liked. In all, based on my research of the alternatives, I’d say that this smart lock is probably the worst one available, except for all the others. It basically does what you want it to, and the annoyances are worth the features it provides.

As per the other reviews, this is a great little lock. The fingerprint function makes it so easy and customized to open the door. The reader works well, even with my impossible to read fingerprints. It does take a few tries, though. The autolock feature is great. You can set it from 10 seconds to 30 minutes. You do have to turn it off when there are workers in the home and you don’t want the door locking them out every time they go outside, though. the only thing I didn’t like about the lock was that there is a door sensor piece that you have to attach to the trim around the door and it is quite large – sticks out about a half an inch from the trim and it is a white plastic -unattractive. I didn’t attach it because I didn’t want that on my door trim. The only functionality you lose with that is that the app doesn’t know when the door is open or closed and so will lock, even if it is open. It’s not a major inconvenience, but something to think about and have to deal with.

I would give this app a 4/5 star rating for its features and ability to control the lock. Where it suffers is getting it to integrate with HomeKit and other automation systems. So, in order to use Siri, everyone needs to have the highest level of authorization which is ok. It is not so painful to get my wife and two daughters to download the app, sign up for an account, receive an invitation and accept the invite into the Yale Access world. The next step is where it falls apart. You have to send a HomeKit invite for them to join the HomeKit home through the Yale Access app. What if they are already members of the home? I’ve played with this for weeks and still can’t get them the ability to use Siri. I’ve even taken the nuclear approach of deleting my entire set-up in the Home app (thankfully I only have a few HomeKit devices). So, now I’ve got Siri working for myself only. The other three are stuck with an “Updating” device in the Home app. We also use Google and while we were able to get the lock linked into our hub the connection is very slow/ spotty even though our signal strengths are strong. I doubt we’ll ever interact with the lock through the Google platform because of this performance. I’ve reached out to Support and I was referred to the Quick Start guide……thanks Yale, impressive.