Kwikset Halo Touch review: This comely lock jettisons the keypad and provides a fingerprint reader

Kwikset has at final gotten into the biometrics game with the launch of the Halo Touch comely lock. Mind you, it’s no longer only appropriate a version of the Halo with a fingerprint reader added, here is a lock of a considerably different fabricate—no longer no longer up to on the launch air of the dwelling.

You’ll peep the contrast on the launch air escutcheon straight. While the new Kwikset Halo became a garish monstrosity, the Halo Touch is decidedly demure. Half of that is ensuing from the Touch now no longer has a numeric keypad to preserve shut in change negate. As an alternative, there’s a tiny fingerprint scanner above a extinct keyhole, all placed into a rectangular chassis just appropriate 3.5 x 2.75 inches in size. (An change, extra classical fabricate is solely a little higher and is derived with curves and beveled edges; every designs are available in a series of two finishes.) A bar of LEDs appears to be like on the tip of the escutcheon; these illuminate in diverse colors counting on whether a fingerprint is accepted and when the lock is enticing.

This review is a part of TechHive’s coverage of the absolute best comely locks, the keep you’ll get opinions of competing merchandise, plus a buyer’s recordsdata to the aspects you are going to hang to silent preserve shut into consideration when shopping for this blueprint of product.

While the redesigned exterior is rather pleasing, sadly nothing has changed with the inner of the lock, and it stays a multi-part eyesore manufactured from brushed nickel and unlit plastic. Installation requires the customary, time-drinking steps of attaching a frame to the launch air escutcheon with two thick screws, bolting the electronics on prime of that, and then attaching a duvet over all of it. I discovered getting the entire lot aligned properly to be especially refined with this lock, essentially owing to the stiff and awkward cable that connects the two escutcheons’ electronics. Wedging the cable into the tiny chamber on the serve of the inner escutcheon with out it getting pinched by the door is refined, nonetheless with some trial and blunder I in the smash purchased the entire lot carefully locked into design.

Kwikset

Installing the lock with the Kwikset app became a streamlined streak (especially in comparability to earlier Kwikset locks), though unusually the lock did not get my native Wi-Fi community robotically, and I had to kind in the name of my community (and password) manually. (Point to that easiest 2.4GHz networks are supported.) From there, registering customers—and enrolling fingerprints—became easy and intuitive, with every fingerprint requiring easiest three a hit scans to be efficiently registered.

Kwisket’s app is rather general, nonetheless as has continuously been the case, it gets the job performed. Unique customers are easy to add and might perhaps well perhaps hang to silent even be restricted by date or diminutive to obvious days of the week and times of day. (The lock helps a maximum of 50 customers and 100 fingerprints total.) Manual lock/free up operations are rapidly with the app, and an intensive history of comings and goings is stored within the app as properly. The fingerprint scanner became additionally especially effective, immediate, and lawful in my testing.

Christopher Null / IDG

Extra settings are diminutive to enabling auto-lock (with a configurable countdown starting from 30 seconds to 10 minutes), disabling sounds, and disabling the tiny interior negate LED (nonetheless no longer the launch air LEDs). The app additionally connects with Google Assistant—nonetheless no longer Alexa—which enables you to free up the door via a spoken PIN. Also worth noting is that the lock helps Kwikset SmartKey, so that you are going to be ready to reset the lock to work with an existing Kwikset-branded key with out having to call a locksmith.

The most classic main hiss I had with the app is how ploddingly slack it is everytime you are attempting to abolish a alternate. At any time as soon as you tweak a environment, you are going to be ready to easiest abolish one alternate at a time, and then or no longer it is major to appear forward to the unique environment to be uploaded to the lock (presumably via the cloud and serve). Here’s a lengthy route of that can preserve shut shut to a minute to total, at some level of which time you are going to be ready to’t attain something else lest you receive a “Syncing need to total earlier than additional changes will also be made” error. It’s a worrying and nagging hiss with the app, and one which makes me quiz the sanity and capabilities of its programmers.

The lock additionally isn’t low-mark. At $249 it’s $20 bigger than the Kwikset Halo became at launch. (The keypad Halo became selling for no longer up to $150 on Amazon as of this writing.) It’s additionally extra pricey than most other biometric locks you’ll get on the market, nonetheless no longer obscenely so (the Securam Touch and the Eufy Security Natty Lock Touch were every selling for about $200 as of this writing.

The Lockly Gain Plus and Lockly Gain Pro were going for $279 and $300 respectively, nonetheless the Plus contains an entry tackle.) Our absolute favorite lock with a fingerprint reader, on the opposite hand—the Level Touch—expenses $329 and just will not be completely unpleasant-platform (favoring iOS over Android devices).

Given its frequent high quality, improved exterior fabricate, and real operation, the Kwikset Halo Touch is unquestionably a contender if you happen to fetch fingerprint-essentially based completely gain admission to to a extra extinct keypad—and unless it is most likely you’ll perhaps perhaps perhaps like a lock for a rental property or but another arena the keep that it is most likely you’ll hang got change transient guests, why wouldn’t you?

• Out with the keypad, in with the fingerprint scanner—and about a other welcome changes to abolish this lock a winner.

  Pros

  • Efficient operation with a first-rate-notch fingerprint scanner
  • Grand extra intellectual exterior escutcheon
  • Streamlined setup route of

  Cons

  • App mired in lengthy delays on every occasion a environment is modified
  • Interior escutcheon is silent industrial-class gruesome
  • Costly

Christopher Null is a used expertise and industry journalist. He contributes on a unprecedented foundation to TechHive, PCWorld, and Wired, and operates the websites Drinkhacker and Film Racket.