Surprise! Facial recognition smart locks are actually good

Hands-free unlocking is the future of smart locks. The best smart home tech removes friction, and having your door unlock for you as you walk up is as frictionless as it gets — no passcodes to remember, no need to have a free hand to wave, press, or poke at the lock. One way to achieve this nirvana is through facial recognition. You already unlock your phone with your face; why not your home? Surprise! Facial recognition smart locks are actually good I tested four locks that unlock with a look, and while hands-free with UWB is better, if you want a sci-fi experience for your front door, facial recognition is worth considering. Surprise! Facial recognition smart locks are actually good I tested four locks that unlock with a look, and while hands-free with UWB is better, if you want a sci-fi experience for your front door, facial recognition is worth considering. Hands-free unlocking using geofencing has been around for a while, but it can be slow and unreliable, and requires an app running in the background on your phone. Newer innovations — facial recognition and unlocking using an ultrawideband (UWB) radio — are much better. In my testing, UWB is the best experience. All it needs is your phone or watch somewhere on you to identify you as you approach, and it’s fast and reliable. But today, locks with UWB antennas are expensive, and very few are available. It was while reviewing one of them, the Schlage Sense Pro, that I discovered a genuine use case for facial recognition unlocking, a tech I had largely dismissed as an overengineered solution to a mostly solved problem. My husband often leaves his phone in the house when he’s working outside or in the garage, which means no hands-free unlocking for him. If you’re like him and don’t want an unlocking experience tied to a device, but want the speed and convenience of hands-free unlocking, facial unlocking may be for you. Facial recognition on smart locks uses infrared sensors to create a three-dimensional map of your face. Different companies use different methods — such as structured light, stereo infrared cameras, or time-of-flight sensing — but they’re all designed to do the same thing. The 3D part is key as it captures depth, so holding up a photo generally won’t fool them. I tested the four locks you can buy today with facial recognition unlocking — the $300 Eufy FamiLock E40, the $350 Lockly Visage Zeno, Lockin’s $199 Veno Solar Face, and Switchbot’s $230 Lock Vision Pro. There’s also one on Kickstarter that will launch next month, and Switchbot has a couple of variations. The facial recognition smart lock I would buy The Good - Fastest face unlock - Nice design for a high-tech smart lock - Supports Matter-over-Wi-Fi - Doubles as a 2K video doorbell with no subscription - Backup battery keeps the keypad working The Bad - Expensive - Fastest battery drain - Big and bulky The best of the bunch is the Eufy FamiLock E40 from Anker. If I’m going this high tech on my door, I’m going all the way, a…