Back in 2018 I added a pair of Kwikset 916 Z-Wave smart deadbolts to my home automation setup and they’ve been workhorses, devices we use every single day. They even survived my migration from ADT Pulse to HomeSeer. That being said, they were getting a little more frustrating to use, particularly because of the sluggish touchscreen and slow, noisy locking mechanism. Nothing major, but I’ve been on the lookout for more modern replacements.
I was hoping the new Kwikset Halo Select Plus WiFi/Matter-enabled smart locks would go on sale during Prime Days last month, but they didn’t so I went ahead, bit the bullet, and got two of them anyway.
Swapping out the older Z-Wave locks and installing the new ones was simple. I didn’t even bother to change out the deadbolt themselves and the other in-door hardware like the strikeplates. I just removed the interior and exterior portions of the locks and then installed their new counterparts. Quick and easy. I did have to do a little touch-up painting though since the size and shape of the newer locks wasn’t the same as the old ones and we’d painted the doors since 2018.
After installation, the rest of the inital setup was fairly straightforward. After installing the 4 AA batteries into the removable tray, I used the Kwikset app (ugh, yes, yet another vendor app, but not for long!) on my iPhone to connect to the locks via Bluetooth, update the firmware (which felt like it took longer than the physical installation!), perform a calibration (lock/unlock test), and then connect them to the wireless network. I also completed the configuration by setting the passcodes through the app. The new touchscreen is very responsive compared to the old 916s and the locking mechanism is faster too (and much quieter!). I don’t think we realized how frustrating the older locks were getting until they were replaced with the latest and greatest. I also love that you can just slide off the battery compartment cover instead of needing an allen wrench to remove screws.
The reason I went with the Halo Select Plus over the less expensive Halo models was for the Apple HomeKey feature over Matter. I’ll be posting separately about my experience with Matter (and Thread) separately, but for now think of it as a vendor-agnostic mesh protocol for home automation. This is how I was going to connect the new locks into my existing home automation ecosystem. Back in the Kwikset app, I had to “convert” the locks to Matter which, unfortunately, meant losing some features (more on that later).
Once the “conversion” was complete, I was able to add the locks to Homekit through the Apple Home app by scanning the Matter QR code inside the battery compartment, which also automatically added a HomeKey to the wallet on my iPhone! I was a little surprised that you only need one HomeKey … I was expecting to have a separate one for each lock, but it’s more elegant this way. Although one drawback is that two people can’t have the same passcode on their individual HomeKeys. After I set up my HomeKey and added the passcode (the one I set up on the locks before was lost during the Matter conversion) I tried to do the same on my wife’s iPhone and found I couldn’t use the same passcode. Now, you don’t necessarily need to set a passcode because the other benefit of HomeKey is tap-to-unlock, which works amazingly well! Just hold your phone (or Apple Watch) next to the lock and it unlocks! So smooth and fast compared to punching in numbers on the touchscreen. I turned off Express Mode on my phone so I have to first unlock the phone (with Face ID or passcode) when unlocking a door (much like using Apple Pay), but I left it enabled on my watch so I can just tap and it quickly unlocks (and if someone took the watch off my wrist they’d still need to unlock it before Express Mode would work, so that’s hopefully still relatively secure). And back to the separate passcodes for HomeKeys, obviously if my wife knows “my” passcode (which she does), she can still manually punch that in if she didn’t have her phone or watch with her. In the Apple Home app you can also manage access by adding guests (with scheduled access) or additional passcodes.
Like I alluded to above, my only disappointment so far is the lack of feature parity between WiFi and Matter/Thread. I can add/remove door codes, get battery status, and lock/unlock from Homekit, but the additional settings like turning off the status LEDs or sounds are not available. The big one here for me is “SecureScreen” which lights up two random digits before you can type in your code so fingerprints get spread out over the touchscreen. On the 916 Z-Wave locks, these kinds of things were configured by physical dip switches in the unit but on these Halos it’s all in software and not available via Matter. I knew this going in, but it’s still disappointing. I wrote to Kwikset support but just got an e-mail response of “we have documented your comments and forwarded them to our engineering and marketing departments for their review for possible future updates” so I’m not holding my breath. At least I don’t need the Kwikset app on my phone anymore though. I’m also curious to see what the battery life is like with Matter, but will probably have to wait a few months to find out.
One last reason I got the Kwikset (other than general brand loyalty) was for their SmartKey feature. It was super easy to re-key the new locks to my existing keys. Not that we really use physical keys anymore (especially now with tap-to-unlock!) but this way the new smart locks use the same keys as the other deadbolts in the house.
Check out my next post for more Matter/Thread details and how I also added these new Kwikset locks to my HomeSeer and Alexa systems!