is a senior reviewer focused on smart home and connected tech, with over twenty years of experience. She has written previously for Wirecutter, Wired, Dwell, BBC, and US News.
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It’s a beast of a door lock, and it screams high tech sitting on your front door. My favorite feature is the integrated video screen, which shows a live feed of who is on the other side of the door without you having to pull out your phone.
If you have a peephole or a window in your door, this might not be much use to you — and you can opt to get the lock without the screen for $50 less. But it’s handy as a quick way to confirm who is at the door before opening it, especially if your kids are home alone or with a babysitter or grandparents who don’t have your video doorbell app downloaded.
As the name implies, this lock was designed with multigenerational households in mind. Instead of a fingerprint reader, it uses palm vein technology to unlock, which is supposedly more reliable, especially for individuals with more finicky fingerprints. That’s a common issue for children, older adults, and my husband, who is a firefighter and has apparently burned off all his fingerprints.
Unlike fingerprint tech, which relies on surface features that can be degraded, palm vein recognition uses infrared light to view vascular patterns underneath the skin.
Palm unlock worked quickly and reliably once we got the hang of it.
At $400, the FamiLock is expensive, but you are getting two devices in one.
In my testing, palm unlocking wasn’t any faster or easier than using your fingerprint, and I found it a bit harder to get used to. You have a more obvious target with a fingerprint than with a palm, and I found myself waving awkwardly at the lock a few times before getting the hang of it. I also have a prominent door jamb that sticks out to the right of the lock, limiting my waving motion.
But once I got the hang of it, it worked reliably. Both my kids also picked it up quickly, and my husband really liked it. You can’t wave to lock the door, however, which would be kind of cool; instead, there’s a small button on the keypad that locks it. You can also enable auto-lock in the app.
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