Yale Access 4+

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.

I was really hesitant to buy into the smart lock world, after having nothing but trouble with a Kwikset push button lock. Researched locks, quality, durability, reviews, and costs. Was not initially pleased to spend over $200, but that was the worst of it. The lock works almost perfectly, except for when I accidentally kill the app, so it doesn’t unlock automatically upon my arrival at home, but that’s my fault for closing the app. Lock quality has been great, it unlocks quickly and with no issues. Door locks/unlocks within 2 seconds of initiation. Looking forward to eventually replacing the Schlage with the same lock set.