One-minute review
How can you unlock a door? Let me count the ways. That’s the ethos of the current generation of best smart locks, including the new Lockly Visage Zeno Series smart deadbolt. It will happily let you gain access with an old-fashioned key, fingerprint, pin code, your face, your smartphone, and even your smartwatch.
This is the second Lockly smart lock I’ve brought into my home and, if I’m being honest, I didn’t have high hopes. My last Lockly worked well enough, but it also ate through AA batteries as if they were candy (eight at a time!), needed a dedicated and finicky Wi-Fi hub, and seemed incapable of remembering fingerprints for more than a week. It was also large, loud, and – as my wife often told me – ugly.
The Lockly Visage, though, is a welcome change of pace. Not only is it 35% smaller and more attractive-looking on both sides of the door, it finally uses a rechargeable battery pack, and it even ships with two batteries so that when one drains, you have another fully-charged one ready to go.
It’s got built-in Wi-Fi (and Bluetooth), which means you no longer need to have a separate hub and, perhaps best of all, it’s Apple Home Key-compatible, which means you can unlock your door with one of the best iPhones.
Unlike my last Lockly, the Visage does not include a video doorbell, but that’s fine, since that only worked half the time with my old lock. Instead, there’s a camera on the front that lets you use your face (once you’ve registered it) to unlock the door. While I got so tired of the various quirks of my previous Lockly that I didn’t bother to change out the batteries, so we were basically using it as a dumb deadbolt, the new Lockly Visage feels like its first truly smart lock.
In particular, the integration with Apple Home Key allows us to do proximity unlocking. When we pull into our driveway, the home network sees that we’re there and asks if we want to run the unlock routine before we even set foot on the front porch. I could get used to this.
Lockly Visage Zeno Series review: price and availability
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- List price: $349
- Available at Home Dept starting September 5
- Not currently for sale on Amazon
- US only
At $349, the Lockly Visage Zeno Series smart deadbolt ranks as one of the more expensive smart locks. The August Smart Lock Pro, which lacks features like facial recognition, and fingerprint unlocking (like the Lockly, it does support Apple HomeKit, Alexa, and Google) might run you a hundred less. Such is the price of versatility.
Along with the two control units (for the front and back of the door), the Lockly Visage ships with a pair of rechargeable batteries, the deadbolt, door-open sensors, and two keys.
The smart deadbolt is only available in the US for now. Lockly says: “The Zeno Series of locks will launch in the US first. The company will continue to bring new products to the global audience, including the Zeno Series, at a later date.”
Lockly Visage Zeno Series review: specifications
| Dimensions: | 175.5 x 77 x 55mm (interior), 160 x 64.5 x 28.3mm (exterior) |
| Smart lock lifespan: | ≥8months |
| Connectivity: | Wi-Fi 2.4GHz, Bluetooth 4.2 |
| Mobile compatibility: | iOS, Android |
| Smart home compatibility: | Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, IFTTT |
Lockly Visage Zeno Series review: design and installation
- Helpful video guide
- Drops the ball on wiring storage
- Solid construction
Even under the best circumstances, deadbolt installation can be difficult. While much of the hardware is standardized, I’ve found that you often must make small adjustments to compensate for differences in hardware. Sometimes, this involves chipping away a bit of wood to make space for slightly different-shaped deadbolt plates, while other times you might need to carve out space for a sensor.
I was lucky, though. My previous Lockly smart deadbolt installation meant that most of the pieces of the Lockly Visage just fit. I didn’t even have to cut a new space for the magnet side of the deadbolt sensor; I just left the old one in place in my door frame and lined up the new sensor with it on the door side.
This is not to say there were no installation issues. Smartlocks use DC electricity and a bundle of wiring to make their magic and I found that while most of Lockly’s installation instructions were clear, when I had to fit a cluster of cables behind the interior side lock and battery pack, they didn’t fit. It took me a bit of trial and error to realize that some of that wiring had to be shoved back inside the lock housing to properly seat the interior lock on my door.
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Lockly also shipped me an optional smart deadbolt insert that I could’ve used to get rid of the external door-closed sensors. Unfortunately, the installation would have entailed dismantling a sealed part of the Lockly Visage’s interior housing, and I didn‘t feel comfortable doing that (at least not yet).
Once I had everything seated properly, both sides of the lock fit snugly against my door. The exterior plate is smaller and less cluttered than my old Lockly. I like that it no longer has what I saw as an unnecessary metal cover over the keyhole.
The interior cover now slips off easily to access a battery compartment that takes one palm-sized battery pack. As soon as I put it in and pressed the program key for four seconds, the Lockly Visage began a self-check. I noticed that the battery was only 60% charged. I plugged the other one into a USB-C charger just to make sure it would be ready for when this one died. One of the benefits of using Apple HomeKit is that I can run the Lockly without Wi-Fi access and save a significant amount of battery life. I’ve left it on to see how quickly the battery drains and, after almost a week of use, its down to 58%, just 2% lower than where it started.
- Design and installation: 4.5/5
Lockly Visage Zeno Series review: control
- Decent app with a lot of options (sometimes hidden)
- The best use of Apple HomeKit
- Unlock the way you want
The app setup was easy, and integration with Apple HomeKit was a matter of scanning the code on the lock and then adding it to my Home.
Apple HomeKit and the Home app controller turned out to be a highlight of the Lockly Visage experience. The Home app asked me if I wanted to automate unlocking using my iPhone and I said yes. All four of my family members are registered as part of my Apple iCloud Family account, which means that now all of them can unlock the door with their phones.
To unlock, you need to hold your phone near the lock and using FaceID to confirm your identity.
My wife, ever the skeptic about all things smart-home, was impressed that the system just worked. And when she found that she could set up the system to unlock when she arrived home she admitted, “That might be useful.” And when it actually worked she called it “amazing.” That’s high praise indeed from someone who expressed outright hatred for our previous Lockly smart lock.
While I was happy to continue using my phone and watch to unlock the door, I did set up fingerprint recognition, which let me register multiple fingers in succession. I like that the fingerprint scanner is now on the front of the external lock instead of the side.
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For FaceID unlocking, I registered my face by looking at the lock from different angles as the app on the phone guided me through the process. Such operations require Bluetooth, which means I need to keep my phone close to the lock for face unlock to work.
I am a bit disappointed that Lockly went with Bluetooth 4.2 instead of the longer-range BLE 5.0. Similarly, it’s unfortunate that the Lockly Visage only supports 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi and not 5GHz Wi-Fi.
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To unlock with my face, I need to tap a small circle on the Lockly Visage outside unit’s screen. It worked pretty much instantly. Both Lockly and Apple’s Home App will notify me when the door is locked, unlocked, or jammed. I turned off the notifications from Apple’s Home app because it was becoming too much.
Another nice but not immediately obvious upgrade is that this smart deadbolt is a lot quieter than my last Lockly. I can still hear the motor locking and unlocking but, it’s noticeably quieter.
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Performance: 4.5/5
Should I buy the Lockly Visage Zeno Series ?
| Attributes | Notes | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Expensive, but full of control options | 4/5 |
| Design | A significant improvement over previous models. Integrated system with quieter operation. | 4.5/5 |
| Control | Quieter and much smarter | 4.5/5 |
| App | Decent and fairly deep app, though Apple Home app control is even simpler | 4.5/5 |
Buy it if…
Don’t buy it if…
Lockly Visage Zeno Series review: Also consider
| Ultion Nuki Plus | Ultion Nuki | August Smart Lock Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dimensions: | 110 x 60 x 60mm (h x w x d) | 110 x 60 x 60mm (h x w x d) | 86mm (diameter) x 56mm |
| Power supply | Battery pack | 4 x AA | 4 x AA |
| Smart lock lifespan | ≥4 months (8 locking processes per day) | ≥4 months (8 locking processes per day) | Unknown |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi, Bluetooth | Bluetooth 5.0 (≤10m range) | Bluetooth |
| Mobile compatibility | iOS, Android, Huawei AppGallery | iOS, Android, Huawei AppGallery | iOS, Android |
| Smart home compatibility | Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, IFTTT | Apple HomeKit (Can be paired with Nuki hub for more options) | Alexa, Google Home, and Apple HomeKit |
Lockly Visage Zeno Series not for you? Try out one of these alternatives…
How I tested the Lockly Visage Zeno Series smart deadbolt
- I installed it in my home’s front door
- We use it every day
I installed the Lockely Visage Zeno Series smart deadbolt in my home’s front door, which is our primary point of access.
We tested and continue to use all the features of the lock, especially the HomeKit-enabled automation features.
Read more about how we test
First reviewed September 2024
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lance.ulanoff@futurenet.com (Lance Ulanoff)
