If you look through lists of the top smart home devices you will find that each one includes at least one smart lock. This is because smart locks are incredibly useful smart home devices. I recently installed an Aqara Smart Lock U300 in my home and had the chance to review its installation simplicity, connectivity, and other features. Before I dive into my review, however, here’s a little background on the category and Aqara, the company.
According to Vivint, the smart lock features that make your home safer and more secure are:
- Keyless entry with passcodes, fingerprint scans, NFC (Near Field Communications) cards, etc.
- Controlling access to your home while you are home or while you are away
- Unique access codes for family members, visitors, and trusted neighbors that can be revoked at any time
- Status notifications when people enter or leave your home
- Custom smart home automations such as triggering pathway lights to turn on when you enter your home at night
- Automatic locking of the lock after the door has been closed
The majority of smart locks on the market are deadbolt locks or add-ons that make the existing deadbolt lock in your home smart. But a smart deadbolt lock isn’t necessarily the best option in some situations. For example, when you install an auto-locking smart deadbolt lock on a door that is commonly used to exit your home, you always have to manually unlock the deadbolt before using the door handle to open the door. Doing this over and over, each time you leave your home during the day, can be a pain. Further, trying to unlock the deadbolt lock while carrying something heavy out of your home can be especially challenging. In this situation, a smart lever lock can be a better alternative.
Aqara is a smart home device manufacturer, founded in 2009, that sells products in more than 170 countries and has over 11 million active users of its products. Their new Smart Lock U300, smart lever lock, gives people a new choice in selecting the best type of smart lock for making their home both secure and convenient to live in.
The U300 smart lever lock includes a wide range of features:
- Designed for indoor or outdoor use (iPX4 water resistance rated)
- A wide range of ways to access your home including fingerprint recognition, passcode entry (one time, recurring, and periodic passcodes), using the Aqara mobile app, through voice assistant integration, and using an Aqara NFC card. The U300 also includes a mechanical key for emergencies.
- Apple Home Key unlocking support allows the lock to be unlocked by tapping it with either a compatible iPhone or Apple Watch. This works even if the Apple device is out of power.
- Automatic locking when the door is closed
- Passage mode allows auto locking to be disabled for simpler access during, for example, parties. Passage mode is enabled locally on the lock and doesn’t require use of the Aqara app. There is an optional timeout that turns off passage mode after a specific period of time.
- Operates in inclement weather and over a wide temperature range (-22 °F ~ 131 °F)
- Up to 10 months of battery life based on average unlocking/locking of 10 times per day
- Matter-over-Thread protocol support for seamless integration with a wide range of smart home platforms.
- Aqara Home support for integration with other Aqara devices
Hands on with the Aqara Smart Lock U300
The first thing you need to do when installing the Aqara Smart Lock U300 is to download the user manual by scanning the QR code printed on the box. With that done, installation of the Aqara Smart Lock U300 was straight forward. My installation was simplified because I was replacing an existing dumb lock with the U300. So, I didn’t have to go through the process of drilling and chiseling a new door to accept a lock. If you are working with a new door, Aqara has you covered with an included template so you can cut the necessary holes in the correct places.
The installation instructions are well written and the U300 is well designed. This simplifies the installation process.
Once the physical installation is complete, you will use the Aqara app (an Aqara Home Hub is not required) to configure the lock and create users. Each user can have multiple passcodes, fingerprints, and NFC cards for access.
A note about passcodes: Aqara requires that passcodes (Aqara refers to them as passwords even though they are strictly numeric) be between six and 10 digits. Most other locks I’ve worked with only require a passcode to be at least four digits long. Mixing the U300 with locks from other manufacturers in a home means that you are going to have to remember both a four-digit passcode and a six-digit passcode. In my opinion, Aqara should allow four-digit passcodes for better compatibility and, personally, there isn’t anything in my house that requires me to have the security of a six-to-10-digit passcode.
The lock is quite nice looking and easy to use. The touch screen on the lock lights up as soon as you touch it making it easy to enter a passcode at night. However, most people will opt to use the fingerprint scanner as their primary way of confirming their identity. I did find the fingerprint scanner a little more particular than I would have liked. Unless I had my finger well centered on the scanner, it wouldn’t accept it.
Matter Compatibility
The Aqara U300 Smart Lever Lock is fully compatible with the Matter smart home protocol. I had a little bit of trouble connecting the U300 to my Apple Home ecosystem using Matter because the lock wants to go to sleep to optimize battery life. I found that by selecting “Matter” in the settings for the U300 in the Aqara app, the lock would stay awake and I could scan the Matter QR code on the lock using the Apple Home app and complete the setup.
Once I had the lock connected through Matter, unlocking and locking the lock from the Apple Home app worked perfectly.
Combining the Aqara U300 with a Smart Deadbolt Lock
Combining both a smart deadbolt lock and a smart lever lock can provide additional security without sacrificing convenience. Using just the auto-lock feature on the smart lever lock assures that your door is always locked when the door is shut. The smart deadbolt lock then can be automatically locked when you travel beyond a geofence around your home or at night or any other time you desire to have the additional security of both locks being locked
Finally, two smart locks on a door doesn’t mean that the door will be less convenient to use. A smart home automation running on a smart home processor/hub can automatically unlock the deadbolt lock when the smart lever lock is unlocked with a fingerprint or by someone entering a correct passcode on the lock’s keypad.
Conclusions
The Aqara Smart Lock U300 is a well-designed and easy to install smart lock. It includes all the features you would want in a smart lock including Matter protocol support for easy connectivity to a wide range of smart home ecosystems.
My only complaints are first that the U300 doesn’t support four-digit passcodes so a homeowner with multiple locks from different manufacturers doesn’t have to remember different passcodes for different locks. Second, that I found that the fingerprint scanner wouldn’t accept a fingerprint unless the finger was perfectly centered on the scanner.
