Wyze Lock and Keypad review: Good value for the money but some quirks

There’s no lack of smart locks available on the market these days. Some will cost you $300 or more. So when Wyze introduced its Wyze Lock for a fraction of that price, I initially wrote it off. How good could a $107.98 smart lock be? After using one that Wyze loaned me, I found an answer to that question. It’s actually a reasonable option, provided you understand and accept some of its quirks.

Right off the bat, the Wyze Lock looks good, at least to me. It’s also easy to install. Unlike the Nest x Yale lock that I currently use, the Wyze Lock attaches to the back of an existing deadbolt lock. Because of this, Wyze’s product is really a smart lock motor of sorts, similar to the August line of locks.

Easy to install

This helps make the installation simple. And from the outside of the house, you can’t tell that a smart lock is installed. That’s because the keyed part of your existing traditional deadbolt doesn’t get replaced. Instead, the Wyze Lock replaces your bolt and the interior handle to lock and unlock the bolt. 

As a result, you just swap out the bolt and add the modern-looking Wyze Lock housing on the inside of your door.

Wyze includes a mounting plate for the housing, screws to attach it, and the back cover with a deadbolt turner for manually locking and unlocking the door. 

All told, it took me around 10 minutes to physically install the Wyze Lock and add the four included batteries.

But there’s more to do because you have to pair the lock with a WiFi network. And to do that, you need the included Wyze Lock Gateway which has Bluetooth, Zigbee, and WiFi radios inside.

The Wyze Lock itself only has Bluetooth and Zigbee radios, which is why the small gateway module is required: It can’t access your home wireless network with those.

I’m not a fan of using yet another electrical outlet for specific purpose bridges and gateways. To be fair though: My Nest x Yale lock requires one too. This is one of the reasons I’m waiting to buy a new smart lock: I want to see more of them that use Thread mesh networking.

In any case, the Wyze Lock Gateway is a small device. I plugged it in and paired it with the Wyze app on my phone in about a minute. After that, I pressed a pairing button in the Wyze Lock to connect it to the gateway, which was even quicker. At that point, the Wyze Lock is connected and can be controlled through the Wyze app.

I liked how the Wyze app walked me through this entire process. It also guided me to “calibrate” the lock by instructing me to manually lock and unlock the door a few times. The calibration helps detect when your door is open or closed; something my current lock can’t do. Again, this was generally a simple process and shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes in total from beginning to end. All of the tools and screws are included in the box.

A very quiet lock with more features than I expected

Once installed, I tested remotely locking and unlocking the door from the Wyze app. I was immediately impressed by how much quieter the Wyze Lock is compared to my current smart lock. You can hear the Nest x Yale turning the bolt from three rooms away, for example. With the Wyze Lock? I can barely hear it when I’m in the same room! 

Except for voice controls (more on that shortly), everything about the Wyze Lock is handled in the Wyze app. And there are quite a few features here that I didn’t expect.

Sure, there’s the basic tap to lock and unlock. But you can also “share” access with other people in your house if you want to see who is coming and going. That’s not necessary but I know some parents who prefer this type of data. You can also configure an auto-lock time after a certain number of minutes. I had to manually set up an automation for that feature on my current lock. You also can have the Wyze Lock make sounds if the door is jammed or left open. So there’s quite a feature set here at this price.

Notifications are also available from the Wyze app to tell you when the door is locked, unlocked, opened, or closed. I found that to be a bit “chatty” but it’s easy to configure the push notifications however you want.

Some features don’t work reliably

Additionally, the Wyze Lock advertises both an “auto-lock” and an “auto-unlock” feature. The former is supposed to lock the door behind you when you come home. The latter uses your GPS location and Bluetooth proximity to unlock the door when you approach it from the outside. In my testing, neither worked reliably, which is a shame. I can easily live without the auto-lock aspect because I have the locking timer set for 5 minutes anyway. And that worked without fail. 

I was disappointed that that auto-unlock didn’t work though. I wanted it to because it doesn’t just rely on geofencing and the GPS radio in a phone. If it did, I wouldn’t use it: I don’t want my front door unlocked when I get within a few hundred feet of the house because my “front” door is actually on the side. I simply can’t see it as I continue walking towards my home, for example. 

So the dual approach of GPS to let the lock know I was near the house and then having the door unlock when I got within Bluetooth range of the door was appealing. It simply never worked for me. I’m not the only one to report this either; I saw several other reviews on the Wyze site mirror my experience.

Voice control and automations

In terms of voice control, it’s easy to add the Wyze Lock to my Google Home account in the Wyze app. And it supports voice unlocking if you set up a 4 to 8 digit PIN code, which I did.

I tested this feature and it worked as you’d expect although it can take about eight seconds or so from the first command to the PIN entry to the actual unlocking of the door.

You can also integrate the Wyze Lock with Alexa, which supports the same features.

Alexa worked the same as Google Home in my testing, which is a positive. HomeKit users are out of luck, however.

There aren’t any other smart home integrations outside of the Wyze product line, which is a little limiting.

However, I was able to create an automation rule that guarantees I’d never come home to an unlit house.

In the Wyze app, I set the door unlocking as a trigger event to turn on my Wyze bulbs, but only between 7 pm and 6 am.

As long as you have other Wyze products, you can automate some actions between them and the Wyze Lock.

Look ma, no phone or keys!

Since the existing deadbolt stays on the door with the Wyze Lock, you can still use your house keys for access.

I’m not the kind of person that likes to carry keys around and Wyze loaned me the Wyze Lock Keypad as well. This is a $24.98 add-on, although Wyze is currently including it at no charge with the lock.

It’s a basic keypad with the same modern look as the Wyze Lock. It includes two batteries and a mounting bracket to install outside your front door. Inside a Bluetooth radio while the outside has numeric, backlit buttons to enter an unlock code. I paired it to my lock through the Wyze app and installed it in just a few minutes, setting up a PIN code during the process. 

Without my keys or phone on hand, getting inside with my code worked flawlessly with the Wyze Lock Keypad. It’s not a necessary option, of course, but if you’re like me, you’ll appreciate this accessory. You can also lock the door from the outside when leaving home with the keypad; it’s a single press of the lock button.

Should you buy the Wyze Lock?

For anyone looking into their first smart lock or even a replacement of an old one, the Wyze Lock is a decent value for the money. 

It works with either Amazon or Google, so if you use either of those platforms, you’re covered. And if you already have other Wyze products, you can create some basic automations between them.

If you’re looking for broader smart home integrations or really want an auto-unlock feature that works reliably though, the Wyze Lock may not be the one for you. As much as I like the value for the cost here, I’m still going to wait for a Thread-based smart lock.