Review - Level Lock Plus Home Key Smart Lock + Installation!

**Activity History**

This is a really nice feature that it gives you details on who unlocked or locked your door and the time that it occurred. You can see the activity history tab as well, and you can tap on here to access it. This feature shows you a detailed list of all the times someone has interacted with your lock, including when they unlocked or locked it, and even who did it. It's not extremely detailed, but it's nice to have this information available.

For example, let's say I used my mini card to unlock my door, and that assigned to Mom. You can see in the activity history that it says "unlock by Mom". Later on, I used my full-size key card to lock the door again, and you can see that gets updated as well. This feature is really useful for keeping track of who has accessed your home and when.

**HomeKit Setup**

If you want to take advantage of everything this lock has to offer, you'll need to set up HomeKit. With HomeKit, you can control your lock from the Home app on your iPhone or iPad, as well as use Siri to lock and unlock your door. To set it up, go into the Home app and click on the "+" icon to add a new device. Select "HomeKit Accessory" and follow the prompts to pair your lock with your iPhone.

Once you've paired your lock with your iPhone, you can control it by going into the Home app and clicking on the lock's name. You'll be able to see the current status of the lock, as well as lock and unlock it directly from the app. This is a really convenient feature, especially if you have multiple locks at home.

**HomeKit Automation**

One of the coolest features of this lock is its integration with HomeKit automation. With automation, you can create custom scenes that trigger when certain conditions are met. For example, you can set up an automation that says "close the door" whenever you leave your house. To do this, go into the Automation tab in the Home app and click on "Create New Automation".

Select the lock as the action, and choose the condition that you want to trigger it (in this case, leaving the house). Then, select a scene or routine that will be triggered when the condition is met. In this case, I chose the "Close Door" scene, which closes the door and locks it.

You can also use Siri to control your lock through automation. For example, you can say "Hey Siri, is the back door locked?" and she'll respond with whether or not it's currently locked. This is a really convenient feature, especially if you have multiple doors at home.

**Apple Home Key Support**

One of the most interesting features of this lock is its support for Apple Home Key. Home Key allows you to use the NFC radio in your iPhone or Apple Watch to unlock or lock your door. This can be done simply by tapping your phone or watch on the lock, and it's a really convenient feature.

To enable Home Key, go into the Home app and click on the "+" icon. Select "HomeKey" as the accessory, and follow the prompts to pair it with your iPhone or Apple Watch. Once you've paired your lock with Home Key, you can use it to unlock or lock your door without having to authenticate with Face ID or a passcode.

Express Mode is a feature of Home Key that allows you to unlock or lock your door without requiring authentication. When Express Mode is enabled, you simply tap the lock and it will open or close automatically. This is really convenient for busy people who don't want to stop and think about unlocking their door every time they come home.

**Home Key Compatibility**

One of the things that's really cool about Home Key is its compatibility with multiple levels of locks. That means you can use it with a single lock, as well as multiple locks at home. This is because Home Key uses the NFC radio in your iPhone or Apple Watch to communicate with the lock, rather than relying on authentication.

I demonstrated this by using my garage lock and my back door lock both with the same Home Key. It's really easy to see how much more convenient it is to have a single lock that can be accessed with Home Key, rather than having multiple locks that require different credentials for each one.

**The Downsides of the Lock**

While this lock has many great features, there are also some downsides to consider. One thing that might be annoying for some people is that it doesn't come with a keypad built-in. While Level does sell its own keypad accessory, which can be placed pretty much anywhere around the lock, it's an $80 addition.

This might be a deal-breaker for some people who prefer to have a keypad as part of their lock. However, if you're looking for a minimalistic smart lock that integrates well with HomeKit and has features like Apple Home Key support, this might be the best option for you.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enin this video I discussed my full experience with this right here the level lock plus now I've been using this Smart Lock for the last roughly 6 months or so and I have to say I really do enjoy using the level lock plus now this is not a perfect product but it is a really good option if you're looking to add a Smart Lock to your home so we'll go ahead and unbox everything here so inside the accessory package you have the bolt extender you have a CR2 battery Durell battery you have a couple of strike plates along with a couple of Hardware Keys as well now you also have the motor which basically is the brains of the operation and you have your paddle housing this pulls off like that and it connects magnetic so this piece here bolts into the key housing and then your magnetic paddle goes on top like this super simple now here is the key housing that we talked about this is NFC enabled for Apple home key support that's important and the key housing of course has the tail piece and you have the little smart connectors with the pins on there and finally you have the dead bolt itself which is capable of extending where necessary and this little guy connects directly to the motor and it also houses the CR2 battery overall this is just a brilliantly designed setup and it makes installation super simple and super easy so of course you want to remove your old deadbolt hardware and you can remove your old strike plate from the door jam the first thing you want to do is install the deadbolt and you just use the two included screws and be sure to install it with the arrow facing up just slide it in like that snap it into place and screw it in using the two included screws super simple installation like I said this is just it couldn't be easier honestly the level lock is the gold standard when it comes to ease of installation so here's the motor and the nice thing about this it uses sort of a jigsaw puzzle connection to make sure it connects right in the place like that and then all you need to do is screw in this screw here to make sure it is securely fastened to the dead bolt all right so the next thing you want to do is go ahead and install the strike plate on the door jam using the included screws so we'll just do that real quickly and there we go so the next step is to install the remaining Hardware so we have our paddle housing we have our key housing first thing we want to do is grab our key housing you should see the tail piece right here you just want to thread that through the motor and the other two little stems should automatically line up make sure the contacts are pointing downward and just slide it on through like that and there's our key housing installed so now we just need to grab our paddle housing and bolt it all together so here's our paddle housing we're going to just take off the thumb turn and you'll have your two bolts as well you just want to align this little piece here so it matches the tail piece slide it in like this and then bolt it all together using the two included bolts again couldn't be any simpler screw it in with the Philips screwdriver in fact the Philips screwdriver is really the only tool you need to install the level lock plus so here is the thumb turn just snap it on like that and it connects magnetically now when this product was released the lockpicking lawyer on YouTube showed how easy it was to basically pick this lock and I mean that is a concern it is a legitimate concern I mean for $329 one would think that level would have opted for a more robust cylinder but they didn't the good news though you can actually get this thing rekeyed with a more robust cylinder and level actually notes this in their frequently asked questions section on their website now to complete the installation you want to insert the CR2 battery directly in the bolt you just want to unscrew the cap put the battery in like that and there we go now I have to say I actually like this design because number one it is super easy to access this battery you don't need a screwdriver you don't need to take the the the lock apart like you do with some smart locks and it's just one single battery to replace Granite it's a more obscure CR2 but still it's just one battery okay so now let's walk through the setup of the level lock plus now I already have a level lock set up in my garage but now I'm going to show you how to add a second level lock or if this is your first to add the first so just tap level lock for the hardware give your lock a name so I'll just call it back door and it's going to want the location of your lock and that two is going to be at Ducky's house just like the original lock so it's searching now it finds the level lock and then all you do is simply tap right here it finds the level lock and it's added to my house just like that so that's really the first step in getting this thing going now these are some optional things you can add homekit support you will need a homekit hub like an Apple TV or homepod but that provides obviously series support remote connectivity Etc now I'm going to add my lock to that particular home only have one just tap continue and now it's going to ask for the homekit setup code and that code's actually on the documentation on the opposite side you'll see it right here there's the homekit setup code beneath my thumb and it will connect just like that and it's connecting and there we go so now we have homekit support add it to our level lock that's a big deal because that adds a whole bunch of new features so now we're going to start the calibration and that basically just involves closing the door following the instructions now unlocking the door and then locking the door again and this calibration helps to optimize performance and optimize battery life as well and once it's finished calibrating you'll see a message that looks something like this so all you do now is tap done to exit the calibration you can go back and do that at any time all right so now that we're all set up we can start using the level up using the level home app so you can see my garage and there you swipe over to the next lock just like that now you can unlock or lock your door with the level home app just tap and hold like that you'll feel some haptic feedback and then you can release and then it will do its thing uh it has to be in range for Bluetooth unlock as you see there so if you're out of range you're not going to be able to unlock with Bluetooth but the good news is we're using homekit as well so even if you aren't connected to Bluetooth let me show you right here I'm going to actually disconnect I'm actually going to disconnect from Wi-Fi as well but here's the benefit of homekit because yeah Bluetooth is not enabled but it doesn't matter it can fall back over or fill over to using homekit instead and this allows you to lock or unlock your door from anywhere using the level home app and that's really cool so you can see back door and it takes a little bit sometimes but there we go so you can see unlock down below by Jeff B now you see lock by homekit so now let's talk about some of the settings in the level home app so if you tap the settings button you'll see a whole lot of different settings when you tap show more now let's go down to the bottom here and let me show you something if I disable Bluetooth you're going to notice all the settings are basically inaccessible except for a few so if I tap remove lock you'll see you'll need to manually Factory or reset the lock when you remove the lock without Bluetooth connection now watch what happens when I reenable the Bluetooth connection when I remove the lock I no longer have to do a factory reset so it needs that Bluetooth connectivity if you want the convenience of not having to factory reset the lock now when you go into the about section you'll see battery and this is one of my biggest complaints about this lock the battery status is not granular at all you have no idea what the real battery percentage is and to be honest it's a bit frustrating now of course you can go back and perform another calibration if you wish to do that there's also the works withth section so that allows you to switch between homekit Amazon sidewalk or just Bluetooth only there's also a boost range option which basically increases the strength of the Bluetooth signal but that comes at the expense of battery life if you find the Bluetooth connectivity to be less than ideal you may want to try that out now sound is another pain point because this lock makes all sorts of nice little chirps as you can hear when unlocking or locking but the lowest setting still isn't quite low enough for my taste okay so now we have autolock and what this will do as the name States will automatically lock your door after a certain period of time and this works okay but the level lock has no idea if your door is closed or not and along with autolock there's also auto unlock now here's the thing auto unlock only works when you leave your home boundary so roughly 200 M from your residence and then when you return then auto unlock is ready to use and it will use that Bluetooth connectivity to auto unlock your door uh it will use location services so it does require access to your locks location so they can set a home boundary so it knows when you've left that home boundary and you have returned to your home in Bluetooth range and then auto unlock will initiate now I don't normally opt for auto unlock but when I tested it it worked fairly well uh there's also touch to lock and this is definitely something I recommend having in enabled you can set it for 1 to 3 minutes and it does exactly what you would expect you touch the lock and it locks your door all right so finally there is touch to unlock and you set the amount of time that touch to lock is available as you approach your door so for instance you have a long driveway and it takes you a while to walk to your back door whatever the case may be uh you want to set that to probably 2 to 3 minutes it does use your location services as well to set that home boundary and also you can only use one Auto entry feature at a time so if if you enable touch to unlock it will disable auto unlock so just something to keep in mind uh you can't use both as you can see right here so we'll go ahead and test out touch to unlock just touch like that and you can see the lock unlocks now if you have multiple level locks you can simply swipe like that to switch between each settings panel for each respective lock you'll find a dedicated share access tab in the level home app and that includes shared access for people passes and cards so going to start off with people you can just type in an email address to invite an individual to access your home so that's what I'm going to do now and then you can select which locks at your home you want to give access to so in this case I'm just going to do back door and then customize you can set up as a guest or an admin admin has unrestricted access and can invite others to access your lock so definitely someone you should trust uh I'm going to set up a guest here though you can set it up for always access to temporary access like this so setting a specific day and time or you can set a recurring access so you can set certain days between certain times so Monday Wednesday and Friday between 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. whoever I invite can access the home all right so just tap send invite and that person should receive an email you just tap accept invitation they'll need the level app installed but then once they do have that just tap get started and you can keep keep it set up as a temporary account if you wish but if the user logs out or uninstalls the app they'll lose access completely so depending on the circumstances may be best to set up that account so now I've accepted the invitation now I have access to Ducky's house between these time periods so I can just unlock like this and then we'll look at the activity history here on our other phone once the unlock is complete and you should see hopefully uh there you go unlocked by Melvin just like that so now I want to show you what passes are now these are basically for specific events for instance a pizza party so you can again choose your house in which locks you want to uh give access to so I'll go ahead and continue and then you can go ahead and set up the time period And since this is an event it's basically just one set block of time you send that over so all they need is the link and then tab get started to accept the pass invitation and you can create account or continue as a guest swipe to accept and there you go so you can see access available only for a limited time but you do have access so you can unlock and lock the door and we'll look at the activity history and see what we have here so so you see the updated activity history unlocked by guest just like that and then finally on the sharing tab you have cards so I have have two NFC cards here there's also a mini card here that you can purchase separately you get two NFC style cards fulls sizee cards in the box so we'll go ahead and tap the plus button and then you simply just place the card behind your phone like that it'll find your level card via NFC and then you can just give it a name so I'll say what is this card for well it's for granny so we're going to go through the same steps give access to a particular lock and there you go so that card has been add it now you can always go back in any of these categories to update the permissions if you wish to do that so you just tap granny you can change the permissions there or revoke access outright you can also check a card to see what it's assigned to so you can see this is Granny's card there let's go ahead and add another so here is the mini card we'll just do the same thing and we'll assign this card to Mom how about that all right so we're going to go ahead and set up access save the card and there we go so now two cards ready to go and a little bit later I'll show you how to unlock your door with those NFC cards but now let's briefly touch on activity history I already showed you this a little bit in some of the earlier moments but this is a really nice feature it gives you details on who unlocked or locked your door and the time that it occurred and you can see you tap on here that takes you directly to the activity history tab as well and you can see some pretty verbos I mean it's not extremely detailed but uh it's nice I wish homekit had this built in as well for locks but it does not so I just locked my door with this mini card and that is assign as you saw earlier to Mom and you can see in the activity history it says unlock by Mom and we'll do so with the fulls sizee key card to lock the door and you can see that's going to be updated as well okay so let's talk about homekit setup because if you really want to take take advantage of everything this lock has to offer you obviously want to set up homekit so with hit you can go into the home app of course and lock or unlock your door right there from the home Tils just like that pretty simple straightforward to the point but you can also use automation so if I go into the automation tab I can select create new Automation and I'll use my door sensor and use that as the basis for my automation so basically when the door closes go ahead lock the door so I'll close the door like that there's the sensor and you can see it locks the lock just like that and of course homekit means access to series you can just say something like is the back door locked and it says the lock is locked should I unlock it yes go ahead why not and it'll do its thing and unlock using Siri and of course you can control your lock via your Apple watch via the home app and use the Apple watch with Siri to unlock un lock or lock your door so let's go ahead and ask Siri is the back door unlocked the lock is unlocked so I'll just ask her to lock the back door and com in right up so I mean that's really handy to have of course controlling your lock right there from your wrist but here's where it gets really interesting Apple home key support and this feature allows you to use the NFC radio in the iPhone and in the Apple watch to unlock or lock your doors and this can all be done simply by tapping your phone or your watch to your lock so now that home key is available just go ahead and tap on continue and you want to go ahead and enable Express mode this allows you to unlock or lock your door without requiring you to authenticate with face ID or passcode because basically it prior authenticates you when you turn this mode on so if you want to see your home key you can find it in the wallet app in iOS so there is the home key now you don't actually need to open up the wallet app to interface with home key let me show you how this works you just tap your door like that and this is with Express mode disabled so you see I have to authenticate using face ID or passcode to unlock my door but with Express mode on notice no authentication necessary you simply tap the door and it unlocks like that and here is my Apple watch with the home key as well and the same principle simply tap the door with the face of the watch like this and it unlocks just like that now what's really cool is that you only need one home key so that will work with multiple level locks as you can see here so this is my garage lock using the same home key now here's the back door and using home key and you can see it's just slightly awkward to position that iPhone right against the NFC sensor and a little bit more Awkward with the Apple watch watch primarily because of the way my door is oriented if you're looking for the most unassuming Smart Lock out there then look no further because this is the most minimalistic Smart Lock and it has a lot going for it especially the home key support which is still a very rare feature in today's smart locks now the downside of having such a minimalistic lock is that you don't get a keypad built in which some of the other competitors have and it's a really nice feature my wife hates to fish her iPhone out of her purse she would rather have just a keypad now level does sell its own keypad which can be placed pretty much anywhere around the lock uh so you get more flexibility but it is an $80 addition if you want the keypad so as I've outlined in my Hands-On diary this is not a perfect product but depending on your needs and aesthetic preferences this might be the best smart lock for your needs what do you guys think let me know Down Below in the comments section and be sure to check out these other videos for more this is Jeff with 95 Macin this video I discussed my full experience with this right here the level lock plus now I've been using this Smart Lock for the last roughly 6 months or so and I have to say I really do enjoy using the level lock plus now this is not a perfect product but it is a really good option if you're looking to add a Smart Lock to your home so we'll go ahead and unbox everything here so inside the accessory package you have the bolt extender you have a CR2 battery Durell battery you have a couple of strike plates along with a couple of Hardware Keys as well now you also have the motor which basically is the brains of the operation and you have your paddle housing this pulls off like that and it connects magnetic so this piece here bolts into the key housing and then your magnetic paddle goes on top like this super simple now here is the key housing that we talked about this is NFC enabled for Apple home key support that's important and the key housing of course has the tail piece and you have the little smart connectors with the pins on there and finally you have the dead bolt itself which is capable of extending where necessary and this little guy connects directly to the motor and it also houses the CR2 battery overall this is just a brilliantly designed setup and it makes installation super simple and super easy so of course you want to remove your old deadbolt hardware and you can remove your old strike plate from the door jam the first thing you want to do is install the deadbolt and you just use the two included screws and be sure to install it with the arrow facing up just slide it in like that snap it into place and screw it in using the two included screws super simple installation like I said this is just it couldn't be easier honestly the level lock is the gold standard when it comes to ease of installation so here's the motor and the nice thing about this it uses sort of a jigsaw puzzle connection to make sure it connects right in the place like that and then all you need to do is screw in this screw here to make sure it is securely fastened to the dead bolt all right so the next thing you want to do is go ahead and install the strike plate on the door jam using the included screws so we'll just do that real quickly and there we go so the next step is to install the remaining Hardware so we have our paddle housing we have our key housing first thing we want to do is grab our key housing you should see the tail piece right here you just want to thread that through the motor and the other two little stems should automatically line up make sure the contacts are pointing downward and just slide it on through like that and there's our key housing installed so now we just need to grab our paddle housing and bolt it all together so here's our paddle housing we're going to just take off the thumb turn and you'll have your two bolts as well you just want to align this little piece here so it matches the tail piece slide it in like this and then bolt it all together using the two included bolts again couldn't be any simpler screw it in with the Philips screwdriver in fact the Philips screwdriver is really the only tool you need to install the level lock plus so here is the thumb turn just snap it on like that and it connects magnetically now when this product was released the lockpicking lawyer on YouTube showed how easy it was to basically pick this lock and I mean that is a concern it is a legitimate concern I mean for $329 one would think that level would have opted for a more robust cylinder but they didn't the good news though you can actually get this thing rekeyed with a more robust cylinder and level actually notes this in their frequently asked questions section on their website now to complete the installation you want to insert the CR2 battery directly in the bolt you just want to unscrew the cap put the battery in like that and there we go now I have to say I actually like this design because number one it is super easy to access this battery you don't need a screwdriver you don't need to take the the the lock apart like you do with some smart locks and it's just one single battery to replace Granite it's a more obscure CR2 but still it's just one battery okay so now let's walk through the setup of the level lock plus now I already have a level lock set up in my garage but now I'm going to show you how to add a second level lock or if this is your first to add the first so just tap level lock for the hardware give your lock a name so I'll just call it back door and it's going to want the location of your lock and that two is going to be at Ducky's house just like the original lock so it's searching now it finds the level lock and then all you do is simply tap right here it finds the level lock and it's added to my house just like that so that's really the first step in getting this thing going now these are some optional things you can add homekit support you will need a homekit hub like an Apple TV or homepod but that provides obviously series support remote connectivity Etc now I'm going to add my lock to that particular home only have one just tap continue and now it's going to ask for the homekit setup code and that code's actually on the documentation on the opposite side you'll see it right here there's the homekit setup code beneath my thumb and it will connect just like that and it's connecting and there we go so now we have homekit support add it to our level lock that's a big deal because that adds a whole bunch of new features so now we're going to start the calibration and that basically just involves closing the door following the instructions now unlocking the door and then locking the door again and this calibration helps to optimize performance and optimize battery life as well and once it's finished calibrating you'll see a message that looks something like this so all you do now is tap done to exit the calibration you can go back and do that at any time all right so now that we're all set up we can start using the level up using the level home app so you can see my garage and there you swipe over to the next lock just like that now you can unlock or lock your door with the level home app just tap and hold like that you'll feel some haptic feedback and then you can release and then it will do its thing uh it has to be in range for Bluetooth unlock as you see there so if you're out of range you're not going to be able to unlock with Bluetooth but the good news is we're using homekit as well so even if you aren't connected to Bluetooth let me show you right here I'm going to actually disconnect I'm actually going to disconnect from Wi-Fi as well but here's the benefit of homekit because yeah Bluetooth is not enabled but it doesn't matter it can fall back over or fill over to using homekit instead and this allows you to lock or unlock your door from anywhere using the level home app and that's really cool so you can see back door and it takes a little bit sometimes but there we go so you can see unlock down below by Jeff B now you see lock by homekit so now let's talk about some of the settings in the level home app so if you tap the settings button you'll see a whole lot of different settings when you tap show more now let's go down to the bottom here and let me show you something if I disable Bluetooth you're going to notice all the settings are basically inaccessible except for a few so if I tap remove lock you'll see you'll need to manually Factory or reset the lock when you remove the lock without Bluetooth connection now watch what happens when I reenable the Bluetooth connection when I remove the lock I no longer have to do a factory reset so it needs that Bluetooth connectivity if you want the convenience of not having to factory reset the lock now when you go into the about section you'll see battery and this is one of my biggest complaints about this lock the battery status is not granular at all you have no idea what the real battery percentage is and to be honest it's a bit frustrating now of course you can go back and perform another calibration if you wish to do that there's also the works withth section so that allows you to switch between homekit Amazon sidewalk or just Bluetooth only there's also a boost range option which basically increases the strength of the Bluetooth signal but that comes at the expense of battery life if you find the Bluetooth connectivity to be less than ideal you may want to try that out now sound is another pain point because this lock makes all sorts of nice little chirps as you can hear when unlocking or locking but the lowest setting still isn't quite low enough for my taste okay so now we have autolock and what this will do as the name States will automatically lock your door after a certain period of time and this works okay but the level lock has no idea if your door is closed or not and along with autolock there's also auto unlock now here's the thing auto unlock only works when you leave your home boundary so roughly 200 M from your residence and then when you return then auto unlock is ready to use and it will use that Bluetooth connectivity to auto unlock your door uh it will use location services so it does require access to your locks location so they can set a home boundary so it knows when you've left that home boundary and you have returned to your home in Bluetooth range and then auto unlock will initiate now I don't normally opt for auto unlock but when I tested it it worked fairly well uh there's also touch to lock and this is definitely something I recommend having in enabled you can set it for 1 to 3 minutes and it does exactly what you would expect you touch the lock and it locks your door all right so finally there is touch to unlock and you set the amount of time that touch to lock is available as you approach your door so for instance you have a long driveway and it takes you a while to walk to your back door whatever the case may be uh you want to set that to probably 2 to 3 minutes it does use your location services as well to set that home boundary and also you can only use one Auto entry feature at a time so if if you enable touch to unlock it will disable auto unlock so just something to keep in mind uh you can't use both as you can see right here so we'll go ahead and test out touch to unlock just touch like that and you can see the lock unlocks now if you have multiple level locks you can simply swipe like that to switch between each settings panel for each respective lock you'll find a dedicated share access tab in the level home app and that includes shared access for people passes and cards so going to start off with people you can just type in an email address to invite an individual to access your home so that's what I'm going to do now and then you can select which locks at your home you want to give access to so in this case I'm just going to do back door and then customize you can set up as a guest or an admin admin has unrestricted access and can invite others to access your lock so definitely someone you should trust uh I'm going to set up a guest here though you can set it up for always access to temporary access like this so setting a specific day and time or you can set a recurring access so you can set certain days between certain times so Monday Wednesday and Friday between 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. whoever I invite can access the home all right so just tap send invite and that person should receive an email you just tap accept invitation they'll need the level app installed but then once they do have that just tap get started and you can keep keep it set up as a temporary account if you wish but if the user logs out or uninstalls the app they'll lose access completely so depending on the circumstances may be best to set up that account so now I've accepted the invitation now I have access to Ducky's house between these time periods so I can just unlock like this and then we'll look at the activity history here on our other phone once the unlock is complete and you should see hopefully uh there you go unlocked by Melvin just like that so now I want to show you what passes are now these are basically for specific events for instance a pizza party so you can again choose your house in which locks you want to uh give access to so I'll go ahead and continue and then you can go ahead and set up the time period And since this is an event it's basically just one set block of time you send that over so all they need is the link and then tab get started to accept the pass invitation and you can create account or continue as a guest swipe to accept and there you go so you can see access available only for a limited time but you do have access so you can unlock and lock the door and we'll look at the activity history and see what we have here so so you see the updated activity history unlocked by guest just like that and then finally on the sharing tab you have cards so I have have two NFC cards here there's also a mini card here that you can purchase separately you get two NFC style cards fulls sizee cards in the box so we'll go ahead and tap the plus button and then you simply just place the card behind your phone like that it'll find your level card via NFC and then you can just give it a name so I'll say what is this card for well it's for granny so we're going to go through the same steps give access to a particular lock and there you go so that card has been add it now you can always go back in any of these categories to update the permissions if you wish to do that so you just tap granny you can change the permissions there or revoke access outright you can also check a card to see what it's assigned to so you can see this is Granny's card there let's go ahead and add another so here is the mini card we'll just do the same thing and we'll assign this card to Mom how about that all right so we're going to go ahead and set up access save the card and there we go so now two cards ready to go and a little bit later I'll show you how to unlock your door with those NFC cards but now let's briefly touch on activity history I already showed you this a little bit in some of the earlier moments but this is a really nice feature it gives you details on who unlocked or locked your door and the time that it occurred and you can see you tap on here that takes you directly to the activity history tab as well and you can see some pretty verbos I mean it's not extremely detailed but uh it's nice I wish homekit had this built in as well for locks but it does not so I just locked my door with this mini card and that is assign as you saw earlier to Mom and you can see in the activity history it says unlock by Mom and we'll do so with the fulls sizee key card to lock the door and you can see that's going to be updated as well okay so let's talk about homekit setup because if you really want to take take advantage of everything this lock has to offer you obviously want to set up homekit so with hit you can go into the home app of course and lock or unlock your door right there from the home Tils just like that pretty simple straightforward to the point but you can also use automation so if I go into the automation tab I can select create new Automation and I'll use my door sensor and use that as the basis for my automation so basically when the door closes go ahead lock the door so I'll close the door like that there's the sensor and you can see it locks the lock just like that and of course homekit means access to series you can just say something like is the back door locked and it says the lock is locked should I unlock it yes go ahead why not and it'll do its thing and unlock using Siri and of course you can control your lock via your Apple watch via the home app and use the Apple watch with Siri to unlock un lock or lock your door so let's go ahead and ask Siri is the back door unlocked the lock is unlocked so I'll just ask her to lock the back door and com in right up so I mean that's really handy to have of course controlling your lock right there from your wrist but here's where it gets really interesting Apple home key support and this feature allows you to use the NFC radio in the iPhone and in the Apple watch to unlock or lock your doors and this can all be done simply by tapping your phone or your watch to your lock so now that home key is available just go ahead and tap on continue and you want to go ahead and enable Express mode this allows you to unlock or lock your door without requiring you to authenticate with face ID or passcode because basically it prior authenticates you when you turn this mode on so if you want to see your home key you can find it in the wallet app in iOS so there is the home key now you don't actually need to open up the wallet app to interface with home key let me show you how this works you just tap your door like that and this is with Express mode disabled so you see I have to authenticate using face ID or passcode to unlock my door but with Express mode on notice no authentication necessary you simply tap the door and it unlocks like that and here is my Apple watch with the home key as well and the same principle simply tap the door with the face of the watch like this and it unlocks just like that now what's really cool is that you only need one home key so that will work with multiple level locks as you can see here so this is my garage lock using the same home key now here's the back door and using home key and you can see it's just slightly awkward to position that iPhone right against the NFC sensor and a little bit more Awkward with the Apple watch watch primarily because of the way my door is oriented if you're looking for the most unassuming Smart Lock out there then look no further because this is the most minimalistic Smart Lock and it has a lot going for it especially the home key support which is still a very rare feature in today's smart locks now the downside of having such a minimalistic lock is that you don't get a keypad built in which some of the other competitors have and it's a really nice feature my wife hates to fish her iPhone out of her purse she would rather have just a keypad now level does sell its own keypad which can be placed pretty much anywhere around the lock uh so you get more flexibility but it is an $80 addition if you want the keypad so as I've outlined in my Hands-On diary this is not a perfect product but depending on your needs and aesthetic preferences this might be the best smart lock for your needs what do you guys think let me know Down Below in the comments section and be sure to check out these other videos for more this is Jeff with 95 Mac\n"