8 smart home gadgets that instantly upgraded my house (and why they work)

The Lockly Visage Zeno Series is the best smart lock I’ve tested. It features facial recognition, so it unlocks your door as soon as you come into view, making it much more secure than entering a passcode. Lockly ensures your facial recognition data is encrypted and stored in the smart lock, so it doesn’t get sent to cloud servers.

And if you still want to use a keycode for entry, this smart lock features Lockly’s PIN Genie technology, which scrambles the numbers on the keypad so onlookers can’t guess your passcode.

This smart lock earned ZDNET’s Editor’s Choice award for outstanding performance, and also supports Apple Home Key, fingerprint, physical key, and remote unlocking without a hub or subscription. 

Also: I switched to a Wi-Fi enabled smart lock with facial recognition

The only problem with this smart lock is that you have to be willing to splurge. It’s priced steeply at $350, and it’s so good that it rarely goes on sale, though you can save $30 for a limited time on the Lockly website.

However, the $350 price tag gets you the best smart lock I’ve tested and two rechargeable batteries, so you can swap them out when one is drained.