The best smart locks are a great way to secure your home, but adding a connected lock to your door also means you can monitor who goes in and out, and even generate temporary electronic keys for guests like dog sitters or care givers.
Some go a little further, like the Eufy Video Smart Lock E330. To me, this is the best smart lock you can get right now because it combines a lock, five unlock methods (voice, access codes, fingerprints, through the app or with your keys) and a video doorbell into a single device, pretty much without any compromise.
If you want to add smart controls to your existing deadbolt, my favorite option is the Yale Approach. It's a retrofit smart lock which unlocks when it detects your phone nearby, and it's low price means it's also the best budget smart lock you can get right now for reliable home security.
The best smart locks you can buy right now
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Best smart lock overall
Once you start adding smart home security devices to your house, the two most popular options are smart locks and the best video doorbells. The Eufy Video Smart Lock E330 combines both into a single device that excels at everything, and the only compromise is a slightly reduced field of view compared to a standalone doorbell cam.
The E330 replaces your deadlock, but we found the installation quick and easy, only taking about 15 minutes until it was on the door and connected to Wi-Fi. You'll need the Eufy app (on Android and iPhone) to manage the lock, camera and get alerts when the camera is activated or the lock is used.
There are a lot of ways for you to get into your house with the E330; your fingerprint, the Eufy app, with your voice via Alexa or Google Assistant, a code on the keypad or with your physical keys. There's a lot of choice, and it's really only outdone by the Lockly Visage, which supports all of those and adds facial recognition.
We were impressed with the fingerprint reader, as it never failed to recognize our prints, even with fingers wet from rain or covered in pizza grease. You can register up to 50 prints, but if you want to give someone access without biometrics, you can create permanent or temporary access codes in the app for someone to use on the keypad.
Although you shouldn't expect the footage to match what you'd get on a dedicated doorbell, the 2K resolution and color reproduction makes it easy enough to see what's going on with clarity and enough detail. Though because of the angle of the camera, you do miss out on the ground level action, making it hard to tell if a package is left.
As a device to make your life easier and more secure, there's not a smart lock that comes close at the moment. But my only (minor) complaint is the experience for visitors. It's not immediately clear where you're meant to press to ring, and at night, the unit only lights up after you've pressed it. So it may be a learning curve for guests.
- Read our full Eufy Video Smart Lock E330 review
Best budget smart lock
If you don't want to break the bank, the Yale Approach is the best budget smart lock that I'd recommend. It's a few years old, which means the price has dropped, and you can now find it for around half its original cost, and easily below $100. There are cheaper models, but this offers the best value for a reliable and easy to use lock.
One of the reasons I recommend this particular smart lock is that you can retrofit it alongside your existing deadbolt and keep your current keys, which cuts some of the hassle of other locks. So it's a neat way to add smart lock features to your home without huge cost, but it does mean it's not quite as feature-packed as the Eufy E330.
By default, the Approach works via Bluetooth rather than Wi-Fi. You set up an authorized phone in the app, and when that's within a specific distance from the smart lock, it'll open up so you can access your house. However, if you want to add remote unlocking, you'll need to buy (and plug in) the companion Wi-Fi bridge.
You can set the door to auto-lock after a certain amount of time as well. During testing, we set the duration to five minutes; if you're using the base edition without the Wi-Fi bridge, you don't want to accidentally lock yourself out if the timer is too short and you do something like take out the trash without your phone.
There is a compatible keypad you can buy for the Approach, allowing you to generate codes for people to unlock the door too. This is especially helpful if you have children or guests that don't have a smartphone handy and can't use the geo-location-based unlocking. And you can remove the codes whenever you want in the app.
All combined, the Yale Approach makes a fantastic budget smart lock, but also a good option if you're just dipping your toes into smart home security devices. Once you start to add on the smart features, like the Wi-Fi bridge and keypad, you might find the Eufy Video Smart Lock E330 or Lockly Visage cheaper in the long run.
- Read our full Yale Approach Smart Lock review
Best smart lock for front doors
Most smart locks can be used on your front door, but if I had to recommend the best smart lock for your front door, it'd be the Lockly Visage. It is one of the most comprehensive options, with a keypad, fingerprint reader, iPhone or Apple Watch unlock, and app-based controls for locking and unlocking your door.
So there are a lot of ways to unlock your door, but the most interesting is the facial recognition. Once you've set up a face in the Lockly app (you can store 100), it can spot you within a second and unlock the door. It's a incredibly useful feature if you're carrying bags, children or anything else. And it works with glasses or sunglasses too.
For when you have guests, you can share keys via Apple Home so you just tap your phone or Apple Watch to unlock the door, generate one-time use codes, and create up to 49 revokable access codes, which is why I also think it's one of the best smart locks for Airbnb rentals, as you can give one to a guest and delete it when they check out.
If you're looking to add the Visage into your smart home routines, it works with Apple Home, Google Home and Alexa. We tried it with Amazon's Alexa routines, and found that it could lock or release the Visage within 3.5 seconds of the voice command, which is pretty snappy and worked reliably.
It's a shame it doesn't have a camera feed, like the Eufy Video Smart Lock E330, but even the best video doorbells don't have to blow a hole in your bank balance, so it's not too much of an issue. But for the price, it'd be good to have the option, especially since the Lockly Vision has a video feed, but not facial recognition.
The Lockly Visage is one of the most expensive smart locks, but the saving grace is that you don't need a subscription for any of it to work. Once you've purchased the lock itself, the rest is free to use. So the initial outlay is higher, but for the amount of features you get without a paywall, it's a pretty reasonable price.
- Read our full Lockly Visage review
Also tested
How we test the best smart locks
There's only one way to test a smart lock; install it on your door. So that's what we do. Once we have a new model into test, we get the mechanism in place, set it up with the companion app, and connect it to our Wi-Fi network.
Then we go about our day, using it just as you would at home. We go in and out multiple times during the day, experiment with any auto-lock features, and try granting guests access with codes, digital keys or fingerprints.
It's relatively easy to see how it functions for authorized users, since you just go about your day, but we also pay close attention to how the smart lock works with temporary guest or visitor access and how reliable and easy that is.
If you have people regularly come to your home, like a dog walker or care giver, you want to know how the guest access works and if it's easy to revoke once it's not needed. Plus, in emergencies, you want to be sure that one-off access mechanisms work every time but are restricted enough that you still feel secure at home.
And, of course, since smart locks are generally designed to work with other smart home platforms or devices, we test those interactions too. The most common connections are with Alexa or Google Home/Assistant, so we create routines with the lock and check how voice commands translate into actions on the lock.
How to choose the best smart locks
Before you buy one of the best smart locks, it's worth taking a step back and defining the problem you're trying to solve with a connected home security device. If you have a traditional manual lock and key, what is it you need from a smart lock that would be better than what you currently have?
I know it sounds a bit basic, but making sure you're clear on why you need a smart lock helps to narrow down your options. For some people, the reason they look into these devices is because they need a secure way to let people into their home temporarily.
It could be that you have someone staying with you and they wouldn't need a key, but do need to get in an out, so a revokable access code entered into a keypad would do everything you need. Or maybe someone at home has a medical condition and needs care workers to come visit occasionally, so a one-time access code would work.
Perhaps the reason you want a smart lock is to make getting in and out of your house more convenient. If you have your hands full, either with groceries or children, a hands-free way to unlock your door would help a lot, so geo-location unlocking or facial recognition would do the trick.
Of course, a lock is also one of the most essential home security protections you can have to prevent people getting in without permission. Smart locks with fingerprint readers can help here, as you can set up a specific set of authorized users, and the door only unlocks when they explicitly walk up and put their finger on the reader.
As an internet-connected device, there's also an opportunity to hook your new smart lock up to your wider smart home. So you want to make sure it's compatible with your other devices, and can be controlled with your preferred smart home hub or virtual assistant, like Alexa, Siri or Google Assistant/Gemini.
