Aqara UWB Smart Lock U400, Matter Over Thread, Apple Home Key, Fingerprint Keyless Entry Deadbolt,Touchscreen Keypad, Rechargeable Battery, Supports HomeKit, Alexa, Google, Home Assistant, Black

Best smart lock I’ve ever used
Installation was easy, and unit works great. UWB unlocking is fantastic. Setting everything up was a little unintuitive from a software standpoint, but once figured out everything’s been straightforward and reliable.I love the design. The UWB auto-unlock and instant auto-relocking functions work fantastic. The motor is adequately strong for our needs. I really appreciate the rechargeable battery pack, which I’ve never seen in a smart deadbolt before.Fingerprint registering was a little finicky and troublesome but has worked great once setup.I’ve used closed to a dozen smart deadbolt locks over the past ten years and this is the first I’ve found that I think I’m completely satisfied with.

Improvement with some missing feature from previous generation
3.5/5: Overall an improved design but missing some features from the U100 Lock.The installation process is fairly straightforward. I think the only issue the instruction manual was unclear with is the wire on the interior side. I initially thought the wire would be pulled through and there would be some cavity on the lock for any excess to be tucked into. What you are supposed to do is to tuck the wire back into the deadbolt cavity once plugged in.The connectivity was rather seamless with both the M3 hub via Aqara app and the Home Assistant. I’m on android so I am still waiting for Google or Samsung to update their devices to support the new Aliro protocol to use UWB unlcok. Otherwise, fingerprint is as good as always. The locking mechanism sounds less of a high pitch wind. I liked the slimmer profile of the lock as well.The battery came delivered with a 20-30% charge which was kind of unusual for a new product. I plugged it into my phone charger directly and was surprised after nearly 2-3 hours of charging it only got to about 47% charge. So, definitely not on the fast charging side and you’d probably want to get a spare battery to avoid having a day or 2 where the battery of the lock is inactive due to charging (unless you hang a portable battery pack off the door handle as depicted).Lastly, its ability to detect the door status and close on door close is much better. I haven’t noticed any False Positives in which the U100 was plagued with.I took a few stars off as the Home Assistant integration was a bit odd. I don’t really know the specifics on the implementation but I’d wish that connecting it to the M3 Hub would result in it automatically appearing in the Home Assistant as an available device; however, that was not the case as I had to manually pair HA via matter separately.Another reason was the lack of feature parity with the U100. The main features I used that are missing is:1. There’s no swipe to lock as far as I can tell. This was a feature in U100 where, upon closing the door, you could tap the keypad to trigger the lock instead of relying on its auto lock functionality.2. The push notification relies on a workaround via automation vs simply being a setting on the device to toggle. The push notification also does not contain any similar details like: who opened the door or how the door was unlocked (e.g. fingerprint, nfc tag, unlocked inside, key, etc.)Hopefully, these missing features come soon via a software update in the coming weeks and I can update the review but until then there’s definitely some early adopter churn.

It just works, this is by far the most expensive piece of smart home tech that i will hardly use, but paired with a flappy handle doorknob it has already been the most useful lolIf you happen to be like 99% of people and occasionally carry things into your living space , you have had to put some thing down at some point to get your keys, now keys are completely optional you just have to fight with your doorknob :)As someone who has never even tightened a screw on a doorknob, installation was stupidly simple and took about an hour and a half (i had the joy of discovering repair work that needed to be done left by the previous owner of my apartment before i could fully install the lock, probably would have taken me about half an hour otherwise)UWB unlocking, Bloody fantastic and i can only see it getting better once i upgrade my phone.I have a iPhone 12 so an older chip. The videos of people walking up to the door and it being fully ready to open by the time they get there don’t happen fully for me. By the time i get to the door i still have about a half second before i can open. I can pretty much guarantee this is a issue with my phone.My one complaint is how long the battery took to charge. I originally had it plugged in for about 2 hours straight into the wall via a 20W usb charger, when i put it into the lock i started charging via the usb port on the bottom of the lock. in 4 hours it went up 5%. I then took the battery out of the lock and finished its charging on the floor connected to the wall. I am not sure exactly how much longer it took but it was north of 4 more hours.

For starters, the lock looks fine and my only problem with it is how much plastic there is. Being the price it is, it doesn’t seem ‘premium’ compared to the several years old all metal Schlage z-wave lock this is replacing which is why I knocked a star off. I understand the deluxe edition sold elsewhere is all metal. Not a huge deal but just an observation. The rechargeable battery is a plus and it’s convenient enough to just plug in a power bank to charge it from time to time.Installation into my door was no problem aside from having to enlarge the size of the mortise on the door and door jamb with a chisel.Now the bigger issue I had was getting the thing set up. To be clear, this was not a problem with the lock but with having multiple wireless networks and vlans to segregate untrusted and IoT traffic from networks where my computers and servers live. Also, I did not have ipv6 enabled and had to spend some time making that all work. It’s unlikely most other home users will run into this but if you are one of those who manage your network to an unusual degree, you might have some challenges. I ended up having to ensure my Apple TVs and Home Assistant box were on the same vlan for things to work.Anyway, after many hours and more than a few resets of the lock, I was able to get it into Apple Home and from there into Home Assistant, where at this point, everything is working as expected. HA automations work, UWB works with my phone, and user management is a breeze.It is very responsive and unlocks/locks very quickly and feels high tech once it’s all working. The rest of my household is now waiting for Android hands free UWB support and are using pins and fingerprints in the meantime.

Tried other cheaper digital locks and was very disappointed with performance in cold weather, saved up to buy this model thinking it would be worth it – nope! The one day it got slightly warmer (-4 degrees) it worked ok – the day after it was installed, but as soon as a cold snap hit the next day, it started to malfunction and two days later it was basically useless and I had to remove it and put back a normal lock and return this one. Very disappointing!!!