Gadgetory

hi I'm rich Brown for CNET today we're going to take a look at the August smart lock this is a highly-anticipated lock for a couple of reasons one it's designed by yves behar so he's sort of a well-known designer people are pretty excited by that it's also a pretty effective smart lock works with your iOS or Android device as long as it has bluetooth it's not that different from other smart locks we've seen but what we like about this one is that it's really easy to install you can actually attach it onto any existing deadbolt it also has some effective geofencing features which is a kind of simple way to tell the lock what to do automatically depending on your proximity you can talk to your phone and see if you're close enough it'll unlock automatically or as soon as you walk away you can set it to auto lock Auto unlock feature for example it has 100 yard range so when you go away from your house and come back within that within 100 yards it will Auto unlock that's a pretty broad range though it might be nicer if it was just say 10 yards or 15 yards auguste says they're going to work on that but they need the larger data set from real people using these locks to kind of see what people's preferences are and just general behavior the device so like I said the lock is designed to work with your existing deadbolt set up so as long as your hardware sets flush with your door you remove the standard thumb-turn add-on a plate that kind of depends on what lock you have installed there's a couple different options in the box for August you screw in the backplate into the existing key way in the front and then you attach the August lock to this plate and anyone with basic mechanical competence should be able to install this lock getting installed on your phone is also pretty easy you simply download the August app turn on Bluetooth and the tool will find each other as long as you install the batteries in the lock itself the basic function of the lock is that not only will it work as a standard lock but you can also use your phone to open and close it you can hit this sub button here and over Bluetooth it will unlock and lock the door now the Bluetooth connection is pretty responsive it's not instantaneous as soon as you fire up the app takes a minute to kind of find itself but it works pretty fast and a bad as fast as it would take to take your keys out you can also assign access to different people whether they have a smart phone and have down the August app the data tracking in the app so you can see who comes and goes and when and because it's only bluetooth it doesn't talk to the internet at large so you can't really control it remotely but it does work with a couple hubs that will eventually give you that capability so there's a logitech smart home hub and it works with smart things also it also will eventually have homekit support for apple iOS so the home kit functions aren't turned on yet we're pretty much expecting that that will mean Siri functionality and potentially interaction with other devices we'll see what happens as soon as Apple kind of flips a switch on home cave which we hope will happen later this quarter so of the smart locks we've seen so far oh it's probably one of our favorites it works really well it's easy to install and because you add it to an existing lock nobody on the outside can tell what you have on the inside so it's discreet it looks good and it's easy to use it will cost you 250 bucks though so you really kind of have to want to buy into the smart home in order to buy this thing so thanks for watching be sure to read the full review on CNET comm and for CNET appliances i'm rich brown