Frequently asked questions

Yes, for the part that matters. On every lock we cover, the keypad, the physical key where there is one, and the interior thumbturn all operate on the lock's own power, with no network involved. Wifi or Bluetooth only carries remote unlocking, notifications and code management. So a broadband outage means you lose the app, not the door. Locks differ in how gracefully they degrade, which is the whole subject of do smart locks need wifi.

It depends entirely on the protocol. Wifi devices connect straight to your router and need nothing else. Zigbee and Z-Wave devices always need a hub or bridge. Thread devices need a Thread border router, which is usually something you already own. The practical rule: if a product page does not say plainly which of those it is, assume you will need something extra. Our no-hub door sensor roundup covers the options that genuinely work on their own.

On this site it means the core function of the device keeps working, permanently, with nobody being billed: recording to local storage, live view, notifications, and access to footage you already captured. It does not mean the manufacturer has no plan at all - most have one selling cloud backup, longer history or smarter detection. A device whose recordings become unreachable when a plan lapses is disqualified from the no-subscription section, whatever the box says.

Three measurements decide it, and almost nobody publishes them: door thickness, backset (the distance from the door edge to the center of the bore), and cross-bore diameter. Standard US residential doors are usually within range, but they are not always, and a lock that does not fit is a return rather than a workaround. Measure before you buy - our door fit guide walks through all three with a tape measure and no jargon.

Safer against different things. Local storage means your footage never leaves the device, so there is no vendor account to breach and no plan gating access to your own recordings. But local storage sits inside a camera, and a stolen camera takes its card with it. Cloud storage survives the theft and fails the privacy question. Most people are best served by local storage plus a camera mounted where it is hard to reach - the trade-off is laid out in local storage vs cloud.

Fewer than a kit will sell you. Start with every exterior door, including the one from the garage into the house, which is the entry point people most often forget. Then add ground-floor windows that actually open and are reachable without a ladder. Upper floors rarely justify a sensor. Most homes land somewhere between four and eight. Our door and window sensor roundup includes per-sensor running costs, which is what makes the count decision concrete.

If you buy a Thread device, yes - absolutely, and this is the single most common unpleasant surprise in this category. A Thread sensor cannot join anything on its own. The good news is that the border router is usually already in the house: a recent Apple TV 4K, a HomePod mini, a Google Nest Hub, or a SmartThings hub will all serve. If you own none of those, buy Zigbee or wifi hardware instead. Our Matter and Thread guide explains how the pieces fit.

The realistic risks are mechanical and procedural, not cinematic. A published BHMA or ANSI grade tells you how the lock body resists force, which is the attack that actually happens. Beyond that: use a code you have not used elsewhere, remove codes you have given out, and keep firmware current. Remote attacks on individual home locks are rare and loud compared with the alternatives available to anyone standing at your door. Are smart locks safe goes through it properly.

For a standard deadbolt swap, usually yes - a screwdriver and about half an hour, with no drilling if the door is already bored for a deadbolt. Retrofit locks that keep your existing deadbolt and only replace the interior thumbturn are easier still. The jobs that justify a locksmith are a door with no existing bore, a non-standard backset, or a door that has warped enough that the bolt already sticks. Our installation guide covers the sequence and the common mistakes.

Every lock we cover warns you well before it happens, through the app and usually with an audible or visual signal on the keypad. Most keyed models retain a physical cylinder as the fallback, and many key-free models expose external contacts you can touch a 9V battery to in order to power the lock long enough to open it. Check which fallback a given lock has before you buy - it is on every product entry in our smart lock roundup.

Yes, if you choose a retrofit. Retrofit locks mount over the inside of your existing deadbolt and drive the thumbturn, so the exterior hardware, the cylinder and the landlord's keys are all untouched and the whole thing comes off at move-out with a screwdriver. Full deadbolt replacements are the ones that cause problems. We keep a dedicated list at smart locks with no drilling for renters, and check your lease first.

It varies more than any other spec in this category. A camera recording to a card or a local recorder can keep recording through an outage; a camera that uploads every clip to a vendor cloud generally cannot, and some stop recording entirely. Live view from outside the house always needs a connection either way. If continuous local recording matters to you, that is a specific product decision - see local storage security cameras.

For most households the honest answer is package logistics rather than security: you find out what arrived and what did not, and you can talk to a delivery driver from wherever you are. As a security device it is one camera pointed at one approach, at a height that flatters faces less than people expect. Worth it, at the right price, without a subscription attached. The trade-offs are in is a video doorbell worth it.

Matter is a cross-vendor standard that lets a device pair with Apple Home, Google Home, SmartThings or Home Assistant without a vendor-specific bridge in the middle. It is genuinely useful and it is worth a modest premium if you are not already committed to one ecosystem, because it protects you from an app being discontinued. It is not a reason to replace working hardware. Matter for home security, explained covers what it does and does not cover.

Wired is better whenever a wire is realistic: no charging, no missed events while the battery recovers, and the option of continuous recording rather than clips. Battery and solar cameras exist because running cable to a detached garage or a rented wall is not always possible, and modern solar models genuinely do install once. Decide by mounting position first and features second - our outdoor camera roundup splits the picks that way.

A published, reproducible process: the product has to be currently sold with a live listing, the manufacturer has to publish a spec sheet or manual we can link to, and every spec has to come from a specified document type rather than from marketing copy. We then compute a five-year cost to run and score a fixed set of metrics. Our methodology page writes all of it out, including a worked example of the arithmetic, so you can rebuild any ranking here yourself.

No, and we would rather say it in plain words than bury it. Products we claim to have tested: zero. We have no lab, we do not own this hardware, and we do not accept free units. What we do instead is read the manuals most buyers never open, compile compatibility and standards data from primary sources, compute what each device costs to keep running, and cite all of it. The full reasoning is on the methodology page.

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Because it went stale and we removed it. Prices here come live from Amazon's API with the time they were checked; if that data is more than 48 hours old, the number disappears and the link falls back to a plain “check price on Amazon.” It can also mean the product is temporarily unavailable. A missing price is deliberate. A confidently wrong one - which is what a hardcoded number becomes within days - would be worse.

Prices are re-checked automatically every six hours. Our busiest pages are re-checked and re-dated monthly, subscription pricing is re-audited quarterly, and every product's specs are re-verified against the manufacturer's documents every six months, with a quarterly sweep for discontinued hardware. Corrections are made in place with a dated changelog line rather than edited away quietly. The full cadence is published on our editorial policy.