Nest x Yale Lock: First smart door lock finally unveiled at CES 2018
The Nest x Yale Lock is two years in the making, but are smart door locks the future?
This year’s annual CES tech conference was filled with smart home announcements – including a lamp with LED lights that double as a WiFi transmitter – but the most interesting of the bunch was what the folks at Nest and Yale have been up to these last couple of years.
READ NEXT: The biggest CES announcements
A smart door lock? I hear you cry. Yes, the awkward-to-pronounce Nest x Yale Lock replaces your front door key with a memorable passcode, and offers peace of mind when you’re off on your two-week stint in the Cayman Islands and can’t remember if you locked the door.
Nest x Yale Lock: Everything you need to know
Nest x Yale Lock: UK price and release date
Alas, the Nest x Yale Lock isn’t available in the UK quite yet, with the smart door lock expected to appear on Blighty’s shores sometime in March 2018. Pre-orders go live in February, although there’s no word yet on which UK retailers are stocking them.
Sadly, we don’t know how much we can expect to pay when the device arrives either, but I will update this article as soon as I hear more details.
Nest x Yale Lock: Design, features and security
As you might have guessed, the Nest x Yale Lock (which is available in three finishes: polished brass, satin nickel and oil rubbed bronze) completely does away with physical keys in favour of a digital numpad for your home’s security. It’s powered by four AA batteries, and sends you an alert whenever battery power is running low, to avoid it running out of juice and locking you out of your home.
If you were worried about security – and rightly so – both Nest and Yale say that the x Yale Lock is encrypted, and made of a tough exterior to provide any potential ne’er-do-wells from breaking it and accessing your home.
On the device, which can be operated remotely via the Nest app, you can store up to 250 memorable passcodes and even assign them to different family members or friends. Likewise, you can also assign codes to different tasks.
You’ll receive a notification alert whenever the device is used too and can check the status at any time through the Nest app. A handy feature if, say, you’re in the middle of a two-week holiday. And it has the ability to lock automatically behind you; no more digging your keys out of your pocket when you’re rushed in the morning.
Nest x Yale Lock: Early verdict
The Nest x Yale Lock offers a – admittedly tentative – first proper step into smart home security. Yes, we’ve had both indoor and outdoor security cameras for a good while, but this is the first time we’ve seen a proper preventative smart device, with the ability to actively stop any burglars from entering your home.
You may be wary of picking up this WiFI-enabled door lock when it releases – and I expect there will be plenty of Nest-bashing opinion pieces when it does launch – but the Nest x Yale Lock is the final piece of the inter-connected smart home puzzle.