August Home, Matte Black Wi-Fi Connected Smart Keyless Entry Door Lock (4th Generation), Electronic Door Lock Fits Your Existing Deadbolt in Minutes, ‎AUG-SL05-M01-G01

I purchased a second generation version of this lock in 2017 and it lasted a little over seven years until the mechanics wore out. Not a bad run. Being overall happy with the product, I purchased this latest generation.As the lock has gotten smaller, it is an entirely new installation. However, it is very simple. The exterior of your lock stays exactly the same and will still work with the existing key. Therefore this is a great choice for renters (where the landlord might need access in an emergency) or anyone else who wants to leave their current keys functional.The package comes with a piece of painters tape, which you tape over the outside of your existing lock so that it doesn't fall out during installation. On the inside, you simple unscrew the existing inside back plate of your lock and store it for move-out, the future, etc.You then place a provided plastic pin on the existing lock pin. Several adapters are provided for the different lock types. My lock has a '/' shaped pin. Then you attach the plate and then "ball" part of the unit which turns the lock and has the batteries. These are attached with two clamps, so that you can remove the "ball" easily at any point.This generation uses two lithium batteries instead of AAs like older models. Having only two batteries makes installation and replacement of them easy. I am now in month three of use with no sign of replacement needed yet. the batteries are CR123A, which look like mini AAs. They are not as ubiquitous as other types but are still available cheaply in bulk such as on this site.This model has two additional features vs. the Gen 2 I had: First, it can connect directly through wi-fi. You don't need a bridge like Apple Home. This apparently uses a little more battery, but I have it on just in case. I separately still connected it through Apple Home, which is the smart home app I use the most. Setup was very simple.Second, this model comes with a door proximity sensor. This is just a little magnet (or stuck-on) peanut-sized sensor which is placed an inch from the lock and will monitor the door's ajar status instead of just the position of the lock. You can set an alert in the app where you will be notified if the door has been open from one minute to 30 minutes (your choice via slider).This lock also locks and unlocks slightly quicker and more forcefully than my old Gen 2. Perhaps the lithium batteries give it more juice.Otherwise, the app comes with features like auto-lock, auto-unlock, and a log of all recent opens, closes, unlocks and locks.The only feature in the app which I would like tweaked is the auto-unlock feature, which presently requires you to be a certain amount of distance from your home before functioning upon your return. This is so it doesn't constantly unlock when you are home. However, the prescribed distance is a little small for me living in a big city. I wish this feature would work even when I'm only a block away not four or five. The suburban equivalent would be it working when you're at your neighbor's house down the block instead of driving to the grocery store.Lastly, I think at some point August should make a version of this lock with a rechargeable lithium battery via USB-C. Removable probably so you don't have to run a long cord.Overall, I think this is a great product though particularly because it's easy to install and keeps your existing exterior key lock.

Doesnt try to keep locking when the door is not fully lined up properly. Which hopefully means it will not break internally like another brand I had previously. Compatible with google, Alexa and smartthings. Easy to make automations with it, feature rich, customizable, notifications can be very helpful. Shows offline on Google for a couple seconds until Bluetooth and wifi connection establishes. Emails automatically delivered when the battery is about to die. Batteries not the best. AAs would have been better but maybe instead of the 2 months on average that high quality batteries can last in this thing, AAs would require more frequent replacing. Easy to replace, batteries are just not as common or cheap. Overall the value is great with the many ways of being able to lock and unlock it and much more. A separate plug in hub for the wifi connection might be worthwhile to minimize the battery drain speed.

I am not someone who often leaves reviews, but I decided I had to protect other people from experiencing the same frustration I have had with this lock. I purchased the latest Smart Lock, Door Sense and the wireless Keypad. None of them work as advertised. I now have to use a manual key to open the door, which defeats the purpose of buying this overly priced piece of bad technology.My recommendation is this: if you are super techie and want to waste a lot of time working on a technical problem until you are blue in the face, this product may work for you. If you just need a lock the works - opens and closes the door, this is not the product. Run fast. Find another one that works better.The installation was ok. The company is trying to go with an Apple-like minimalist approach to delivering the product with very little written instructions. Too few in fact. So I found that I constantly needed to search online for pieces of information to complete the installation, calibrate the lock, install the Doorsense and Keypad. Or they sort of force you to use the August app to do some of the installation, which worked somewhat ok. The app kept hanging during lock calibration, so I never knew if it was set up or not. I am fairly tech savvy and it took about 1 hour total to get it all installed, and some semblance of what appeared to be "working". That was until I actually tried to use the lock.The issue is that when installed, the products simply do not work. The software app looks slick, but it doesn't work. To unlock and lock the door, the software/app on the phone only works about 10% of the time. It takes way to long to show whether the door has been locked or unlocked, and often times is incorrect (maybe issue with their door sense product, or bluetooth chip in the lock????). Sometimes the app shows the door is unlocked when it is really locked, or vice versa. The only way I have found to correct this is to exit the app, and sometimes turn off/on the wifi on my phone. The app does not refresh fast enough so it can literally take about 5 minutes before I can lock and unlock the door. The app is constantly saying the lock has been disconnected from WiFi, which is not correct. At that point the lock is Grayed-out in the app so you can't do anything with the lock. Once again, close the app, relaunch it and hope it connects to the lock. When I called and emailed August support, they provided very basic troubleshooting and clearly are not interested in really helping resolve the issue. They send pre-canned email responses blaming my WiFi, or bad installation. Not much help and really just pushing the problem away instead of trying to figure it out. I've had at least 5 lengthy email exchanges with August support and as you can see I am still running into issues. I've tested the WiFi may times when it says this and it has an excellent signal and Internet speed. The WiFi router is less than 20 feet away. At this point I've given up and just use an standard key now as the app doesn't work and neither does the wireless keypad.Even worse is the wireless keypad. When it's connected it works about 30% of the time. So for example, I arrive at the house, I enter my 4 digit code into the keypad, hit the enter button, and.....wait for it to do something. Sometimes it opens the lock. Sometimes nothing happens. Then I try again, and again, until eventually, maybe the door unlocks. When I leave and try to use the keypad to lock the door it works seldomly. Maybe after 6 or 7 tries will it actually engage the lock on the door. The BIGGEST issue with the keypad, and the reason it should not be used, is that the batteries run out after about 5 days to 2 weeks, without even being used more than a few times. I cannot rely on this if I need to replace the batteries so often. It is virtually unusable. On my 4th call to August support someone finally mentioned that it may be a bad bluetooth chip. But they did not offer a replacement, only more troubleshooting steps sent via email. When I received the steps they were the exact same ones sent to me by a previous person. Once again, they are aware of their issues, they just can't fix them because the product and the software is just bad.I have now spent dozens of hours trying to get this to work, to troubleshoot issues and noone has been able to help or fix anything. My recommendation is this: if you are super techie and want to waste a lot of time working on a technical problem until you are blue in the face, this product may work for you. If you just need a lock the works - opens and closes the door, this is not the product. Run fast. Find another one that works better.