Review on Eufy Fingerprint Electronic Touchscreen Weatherproofing by Larry Morris

Smart locks are not new to me. I had a Yale Assure smart lock on the front door of my previous home for 7 years. It worked great and the only thing I had to do was swap out 4 AA batteries every 12-15 months. When I moved to a new house in July 2021, I decided to use this Eufy smart lock on my front door because I liked the fingerprint recognition feature, but I also installed two Yale Assure smart locks on my back door and garage door. The actual installation process for Eufy was very easy as Eufy labels each part as "Step 1", "Step 2" and so on. Very nice touch. The build quality of the physical lock is also amazing. Its feel is very firm and very high quality. I had high hopes. Unfortunately, this smart lock from Eufy uses a proprietary lithium-ion battery rather than the AA batteries used in most smart locks and about 3 weeks after installation I received a low battery warning. And that's despite following the instructions to fully charge the battery before use. Thinking maybe it was an accident, I recharged the battery and reinstalled it. Within two weeks - a week earlier than before - I received another low battery alert, so I called Eufy support to report a battery issue and request a battery replacement under warranty. Eufy support told me they didn't have spare batteries to ship (red flag!) so instead they sent me a brand new smart lock box that appeared to contain a battery. After receiving a replacement Eufy smart lock, I installed it in August. 02/27/2021 Battery fully charged and plugged into the lock. September 6th --- just over a week after installation --- I received a low battery warning. I called Eufy support to report the even worse battery life on the new lock and was told that "high activity is draining the battery faster than the advertised life". I literally shuddered at that answer. I checked my event history in the Eufy app and averaged 7 locks/unlocks per day over that one week period, so "high activity" wasn't an excuse for a week of battery drain. Also, my back door and garage door get twice as much interior use as my front door, and the installed Yale Assure locks achieved 99% and 96% battery life, respectively. At that point the Eufy representative told me that the only thing they could do at the moment was refund my money, which I decided to do. I have since installed another Yale Assure lock on my front door and have had no problems. The real shame is that I really liked the Eufy lock when it worked. Fingerprinting was fast and reliable, control of the lock via the Eufy app was well done, and again, the lock's build quality and looks are top-notch. However, this lock obviously drains the battery and without power is no better than a regular deadbolt on your door. For this reason, I do not recommend anyone to buy a Eufy Smart Lock. In fact, I would urge people to stay away from him. Note: I set up a "professional" network at home so I can see who is talking the most on my network (i.e. devices with the most traffic). . When I checked, the Eufy Smart Lock was regularly the most popular as it was constantly sending/receiving data. In fact, during the time I had the Eufy smart lock installed in my home (roughly 90 days), it sent and received over 6GB of data; around 71MB of incoming and outgoing traffic per day, which is an unusual amount for any IoT device, let alone a simple smart lock. When I asked Eufy why their smart lock keeps sending/receiving data, they couldn't give me a definitive answer. They speculated that it was due to firmware updates, which is incorrect as firmware updates don't happen on a daily basis. My guess is that they are constantly sending data to the Eufy cloud and it is this constant data transfer that drains the battery so quickly.