Ever wonder if you’ve remembered to lock the front door? Ever lost a housekey and then worried that someone could find it and let themselves in whenever they want? Or do you just want to up your smarthome game with a new front door setup?
In all cases, the slick Nest x Yale Deadbolt Lock is a solid option. I put it to the test by installing one on my own front door. Here’s how it works…
I’ve had a number of smart deadbolts on my front door, so when Best Buy reached out and asked me if I was interested in trying out the new Next x Yale Lock, featuring Nest Home integration, I was most interested. Then they upped the ante by offering to have Geek Squad come out and do the installation. Sold! And so, after a quick phone call for scheduling, my Geek Squad installer showed up and started disassembling the front door.
Turns out that the installation went very quickly and was quite easy – particularly since I already have a Nest Home setup that includes a Nest Dropcam camera and Nest Protect smoke sensor in the house. In fact, adding the deadbolt was a breeze and even adding in a special door code for our house cleaner that wouldn’t work late at night or on weekends turned out to be just a few taps away.
Did you like the video? Tried to boil the entire story down into a quick spot, so please do watch it if you were tempted to just skip past the above video. If nothing else, you get to see just how red my front door really is!
Either way, let’s start with the unit itself. Yale’s been making deadbolts and secure locks for a ridiculously long time. In fact, the company was founded in Stamford, Connecticut, in 1868 by Linus Yale, Jr., the inventor of the pin tumbler lock, and Henry R. Towne. 1868. That’s a lot of time to figure out how to make a secure lock! Heck, Andrew Johnson was President back then and the Civil War had only ended three years earlier!
Anyway, back to the lock. There are two parts to a deadbolt, whether a modern smart lock or a classic deadbolt: the exterior and the interior. You can dual-key ’em but most have a knob on the inside for locking / unlocking, and a keyhole or other mechanism on the exterior to ensure that people you don’t want in your home can’t get in. Deadbolts work with a “what you have” security model too; if you have the key, you’re in. But smart deadbolts are, well, smarter and work with a combination of “what you have” (in this case, the app, logged in to the correct account) and “what you know” (the deadbolt code).
On the right you can see the exterior of the lock with the keypad illuminated (a tap on the “Yale” logo lights up the pad, ready for data entry). Tap in the correct numerical sequence – like “1 5 0 5 7 7” – and you can hear the deadbolt whirr and unlock. Enter the wrong code and you’ll just get a beep. The gear icon? It just tells you to use the app to configure the lock. Really easy and straightforward.
Meanwhile, the interior unit is a bit bigger and more complex, as you can see on the left. Pop the top off and you can replace the AA batteries that power the device, and you can see that the familiar knob is present on the lower portion: vertical means the door’s unlocked, horizontal means it’s locked. Pretty standard stuff, really.
Worth noting is the little white button in the middle. Push on that and you’ve engaged Privacy Mode where the code is not enough to unlock the door. The only way someone outside the house can unlock the deadbolt in Privacy Mode is with the app itself. A nice additional security feature if you’re worried that questionable people have somehow acquired your secret code.
But then again, you shouldn’t be using one code for everyone anyway. Since it’s so easy to set up these access sequences, I encourage you to set up a different code for friends, family, the cleaning service, home maintenance, a temporary houseguest, whatever. Each can have access hour specified, and each can also be deleted at the tap of the app whenever you’re ready to do so.
Here’s an example of how that looks in the Nest Home app with my cleaning service all set up:
As you can see, they have a six-digit code assigned, and it’s only good from 8am-4pm during the week. Not only that, but it’s also only good for a week: Apr 13-Apr 20, then it stops working. So much better than leaving the front door unlocked or a key “hidden” under the doormat!
There’s lots more I really like and appreciate about the new Nest x Yale Deadbolt on the front door, but between notifications of lock and unlock events — with code name included — on my phone and the ability to easily check status and lock it from anywhere in the world (including bed just before I turn off the lights to go to sleep), it’s a definite winner. They aren’t super hard to install on most doors, but having Geek Squad show up and do all the work for me? That was pretty darn nice too.
Disclosure: This is a sponsored post done in collaboration with Best Buy, Geek Squad and Yale Locks. The door, however, is my own! #ad #sponsored
Love Nest and like the lock; been looking for a long time. Like the Kevo, but they keep it closely held that the app only works on Samsungs and iPhones (predominantly).
What I want is geofencing capability. I tried out an August lock and liked it a lot, but it didn’t match anything even remotely in my home’s decor.
What makes this product better than Ring video pro
Um, the Ring Video Pro is a doorbell. This is a deadbolt. 🙂