Home repair and upgrade jobs don’t usually go well for me, so I tend to pay someone who knows what they’re actually doing for anything that’s not incredibly straight forward. Yes I’ll change lightbulbs and put together furniture, but changing a leaking cistern? Last time I tried that, the knob broke clean off the tap that fed water to the toilet right as I turned it off, leaving us without running water to the only toilet we have (I’ve since moved to a house with more than 1 toilet, redundancy helps you sleep at night).
Several instances like this, which I claim are not due to any mechanical errors I am at fault on, leave me reluctant to take on these sort of tasks I can sense that will go wrong. This brings us to the Eufy Smart Lock – more specifically the Eufy Security Wi-Fi Smart Lock E110 T8502T11 which I picked up from JB Hi-Fi for $249AU. I did my research and settled on this brand and model, partly due to already being in the Eufy ecosystem with a doorbell and some wireless cameras (and not ignoring the elephant in the room around Ankler, they’ve had some questionable business practises around security), reviews being overall good (although hard to differentiate between the several models Eufy has in some), and at a price point I was OK with.
Promises of ‘Easy installation, set up the Smart Lock on your door in 15 minutes with a screwdriver’ and watching a YouTube video of someone showing a very easy install – although later finding out it was a different model to mine as ‘Eufy Security Smart Lock Touch & Wi-Fi’ is different to ‘Eufy Security Wi-Fi Smart Lock’. I also worked out there were several measurements to check on whether the device would fit my existing deadbolt: everything seemed to match perfectly with the given measurements which gave me a bit of confidence.
After buying the smart lock, I left it in the box for a few days, having future visions of taking the existing deadlock off, that falling apart, not being able to secure the smart lock, and being left without any working lock at all. A locksmith friend assured me it would be easy, so I waited for the weekend to try.
As you can see from the picture above, I managed to take the old lock off and install the new smart lock. It went quite well and I would say the 15 minutes was about how long it took, most of it working out what to actually do, with about 5 minutes of actual work.
Once installed, I had to use the Eufy Security app to sync and finish setup. This must be done with the door closed, so the device can align itself – which appears to just be working out how far to push the latch out. Next was a firmware update:
Once the firmware was upgraded, the device was ready to go. I had to add a 4-8 digit pin and that was it, it was ready to use.
I’ll cover some of the reasons why I picked this lock, and considerations that will hopefully help you choose what device you want.
Battery
This uses 4xAA batteries, claimed to last for a year. Hopefully this is accurate, but it’s very easy to swap them over from the internal side of the door, and a bit less hassle than having to charge the device and put it back like I do with my Eufy doorbell every few months. If the batteries happened to go 100% flat while nobody was home, you can put power into the device from the front using a cable and battery (sidenote – now the iPhone 15 series has USB-C and can push a charge out, I expect that’d be a nice way to cover this scenario).
PIN
You can set multiple profiles with 4-8 digit PINs, and configure them for anytime, or set times. Good if you want to keep a track of who went through a door for some reason, but I don’t see myself caring about this. The best benefit is making sure each person only knows their own PIN, so if something changes you can remove that person’s access along with the PIN, rather than having a single PIN that you don’t know who has, and then need to change/remember a new one.
Fingerprint
There is no fingerprint reader on this device, and retrospectively, yes it probably would have been nicer to scan a print rather than type an 8 digit code. It’s still pretty quick to get in via PIN though.
Key
This came with a keyhole and 2 pretty standard looking keys. I’ve seen reviews on other models that had rather unique key styles that a locksmith probably doesn’t have, but also does this make it easier to lockpick? Probably, but now that I’ve seen what the inside of a lock looks like, I can’t imagine it’d be that hard to smash the entire device off the door and get it unlocked. So that’s a positive on having a key that’s easy to replicate.
Camera
No camera on this either, but I already have a camera based doorbell, and a wireless camera pointed at the whole front door area. Also the smart lock is behind a flyscreen door, so it won’t see much unless the door is opened. Other use cases may want a camera, or even a camera/doorbell built in – but nobody would even know the doorbell was there unless they opened the flyscreen first.
App
For me, not having yet another application to worry about was a big plus. The Eufy Security app is actually well rated in both stores:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.oceanwing.battery.cam&hl=en_AU&gl=US
https://apps.apple.com/au/app/eufy-security/id1424956516
Quite easy to set up and use, plus the ability to remotely lock or unlock the door is nice as the device has Wi-Fi connectivity (some don’t).
Other points I’d already covered above – such as the device matching my door configuration and fitting perfectly, letting someone like me be able to install it myself, and the price point being one I was happy with.
Overall the device does what it says on the box, and leads me to not carrying keys around anymore! I do have ONE key for the flyscreen in case it gets locked, but that sits in my wallet. I will no longer have my phone lightly scratched from keys being pressed against it in my pocket, which in itself was worth the price of going doing the smart lock path.