Are Smart Locks Worth It? | An Honest Answer Before You Spend £200 on Your Door

Right, let me save you two hundred quid. Most of the smart locks I get asked to fit would be a downgrade on the cylinder that's already in your door. Not because the tech is rubbish, but because people buy the gadget and forget the lock underneath it is the bit a burglar actually goes for.

I fit smart locks. I've got one on my own back door. I also pull them out and put a proper cylinder back when someone's been sold the wrong one. So this isn't me shaking a fist at the internet, it's just what I see on doorsteps round Basingstoke most weeks.

What you're actually buying

A smart lock is two things bolted together. There's the convenient bit, a way to open the door without a metal key: an app, a keypad, a fob. And there's the lock itself, the cylinder and the mechanism doing the actual securing. The clever part is the convenience. The security still comes down to the same boring question it always did, how hard is that cylinder to snap or bypass?

Here's where it goes wrong. A lot of the budget smart locks, the £120 jobs from a marketplace brand you've never heard of, pair a slick app with a weak euro cylinder. You've spent more, and your front door is now easier to defeat than before you started. On an early-2000s uPVC door in Buckskin or Brighton Hill, the cylinder is the whole game. Bolt an app onto a snappable cylinder and you've polished the wrong part.

Where they genuinely earn their keep

I'm not anti-smart-lock. They're brilliant when your problem is keys, not security.

• Holiday lets and Airbnbs: a keypad code you change between guests beats posting keys or leaving one under a plant pot. We fit a fair few of these on short lets near the town centre.
• A house full of teenagers who lose keys like socks: one code, no more spares cut at six quid a go.
• Landlords who want proof a contractor actually turned up and left: some units keep a log. That one's genuinely useful, not a gimmick.

If managing keys is the faff in your life, a smart lock solves a real problem. If your worry is "I want my door harder to break into", it usually doesn't, a good cylinder does that for a fraction of the price.

The bit the box won't tell you

Two catches people only find out later.

First, insurance. A lot of home policies want a BS3621 British Standard lock on your final exit door. Some smart locks meet it, plenty don't. The popular Yale Conexis L1, for instance, isn't BS3621 on its own. Fit the wrong one and you could hand your insurer a reason to wriggle out of a claim. Thirty seconds checking your policy wording is worth it before you buy.

Second, the failure modes, because this is the half of my job nobody pictures. Flat batteries. A wifi router that drops out so the app won't talk to the lock. An account that locks you out after a password reset. I get called to lockouts caused by smart locks that have nothing to do with burglars and everything to do with a dead battery on a cold morning in Chineham. The good locks warn you for weeks and give you a physical key or an emergency power backup. The cheap ones just stop.

What I'd actually do

Buy the lock for the cylinder first and the app second. Put your money into a Sold Secure Diamond or TS007 3-star cylinder, something like an Ultion or an Avocet ABS, then add keyless on top if you fancy it. Don't pick a brand because the app looks tidy in the product photos.

And if you only want a secure front door and you couldn't care less about your phone opening it, keep your money. A £60 anti-snap cylinder, fitted properly, will out-secure most £200 smart locks and it never needs charging.

That's really the whole thing. Smart locks fix a key-management problem, not a security one. Buy one for the right reason and you'll love it. Buy one to feel safer and you've probably made your door worse and added a battery to worry about.

Not sure which camp you're in? Ring us before you spend anything. We cover Basingstoke and the RG postcodes, we're usually on the doorstep in under 30 minutes where we can be, and we'll give you a straight answer on whether a smart lock's worth it for your door or whether a good cylinder does the job for less. No upsell. 01256 630314.