GoKawiilis a senior reviewer with over twenty years of experience. She covers smart home, IoT, and connected tech, and has written previously for Wirecutter, Wired, Dwell, BBC, and US News.
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?
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 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, and the FamiLock E40 is a complete package. Along with excellent facial unlocking features, it also has a fingerprint reader, keypad, and a physical key, plus it doubles as a video doorbell. Stick this on your front door, and you are good to go.
Of all four locks, the E40 was the fastest at unlocking using my face – it did it in under a second; I barely had to hesitate before opening. It is also the only one that worked consistently when I was wearing sunglasses. The rest did fine with hats, but struggled with sunglasses. The E40 also includes a backup battery that keeps the keypad active even if the main battery dies and biometrics don’t work — a nice touch.
The lock portion supports the smart home standard Matter, so it can work in your ecosystem of choice, and viewing recorded footage from the built-in 2K video doorbell is subscription-free. I also appreciate that Eufy has added a touch of style to this lock; it looks more like a traditional lock than any of its competitors do.
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