Smart locks versus traditional locks

What they are genuinely good at

Granting and withdrawing access without physical keys, which is the actual argument for a smart lock rather than anything about security. A code for a contractor that expires on Friday. A code for a house-sitter that you cancel from your phone the moment they leave. Entry for family members who lose things reliably.

Most also keep a log, so you know a door was opened at 14:20 rather than guessing — the domestic version of what electronic access control does for a building. For anyone letting a property, or managing regular access by other people, that alone can justify the cost.

There is also the ordinary convenience of not carrying keys, which is a legitimate reason to buy something even if it is not a security reason.

What they do not do

They do not make a door harder to force, which is why a good cylinder in a sound frame is a different purchase entirely. Physical resistance comes from the bolt, the frame, the strike plate and the fixings, and a smart lock changes none of those. Some are built on very ordinary mechanisms underneath the electronics.

If your door can be shouldered open, a smart lock is a convenience purchase. That is a perfectly reasonable thing to buy — it just should not be mistaken for a security improvement.

The battery question

Every smart lock is a battery-powered device living on the outside of your house. Batteries go flat, generally at the least convenient moment. Better models warn for weeks beforehand, and it is worth finding out exactly what that warning looks like before you rely on it.

The mechanical override matters more here than anywhere else. A lock whose only route in is electronic is a lockout waiting to happen. We fit smart locks with a physical key path wherever the hardware supports one, and would think carefully before fitting one that does not.

Power interruptions

Battery-powered locks carry on through an outage, which is the main argument for choosing one over anything mains-dependent.

Anything wired needs its behaviour during an outage understood before it goes on the door — specifically whether it fails locked or unlocked, and whether there is battery backup. That is a decision to make deliberately rather than discover. Full detail on fail modes and overrides is on the access control page.

The maintenance nobody mentions

Mechanical locks last decades with no attention. Smart locks have firmware, an app, and a manufacturer who may or may not still support the model in five years.

Choose hardware from a make likely to still exist, keep the mechanical path serviceable, and treat the electronics as the part most likely to need replacing first. Symptoms like these are covered in more depth on the lock repair page.

Getting it fitted properly

Most smart lock disappointments are installation problems rather than product problems. A motorised bolt fighting a door that has dropped will drain batteries quickly and eventually fail outright.

The door needs to be correct before the lock goes on. Any installer who does not check alignment first is setting up a callout in six months.

What load shedding does to this decision

This comparison reads differently in Johannesburg than it does in most places, and it is worth being direct about why rather than repeating advice written for somewhere with stable supply.

A smart lock runs on its own batteries, so the lock itself keeps working during an outage. What stops is everything that depends on wifi or a hub: remote unlocking, notifications, granting somebody a code while you are out. Those are frequently the exact functions people bought it for, and they are unavailable when the neighbourhood is dark.

That does not make them a bad choice. It makes them an addition to a mechanical route rather than a replacement for one. There should always be a cylinder — on that door or another — that opens with a key held by somebody reachable, which is why every smart lock we fit is a hybrid.

Domestic staff, contractors and the real use case

The strongest argument for electronic access in a Bryanston household has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with how many people legitimately come and go.

A cleaner on Tuesdays, a gardener on Thursdays, a pool service once a fortnight, a builder for three weeks in March. Every one of those has traditionally meant cutting a key, and every key cut is one nobody counts. A code issued and withdrawn is a genuinely better answer to that, and it is the problem most households here actually have.

It is the same problem a restricted key register solves for a business, arrived at from the other direction. If your difficulty is a weak door rather than a long list of key-holders, this is the wrong purchase and a better cylinder is the right one.

Doors that have moved, and why motors mind

There is a practical reason smart locks are described as unreliable more often than the hardware deserves, and it is almost always the door rather than the unit.

A person operating a key has enormous mechanical sympathy. If a door has dropped slightly, you lift the handle, lean in a fraction and the bolt goes home without ever consciously noticing. A motor has none of that: it drives the bolt at the keeper, meets resistance, and stalls.

On the older housing stock here, where timber doors move several millimetres across a Highveld year, that matters. The door must hang square and the bolt must throw freely before anything is fitted, which is frequently lock repair in Bryanston in its own right and is the step people skip.

Renting, complexes and permission

Before comparing anything, there is a question that decides the answer for a large number of people in this part of Johannesburg: are you allowed to change what is on the door?

In a rented property that is the landlord's decision, and in a complex or estate anything visible from common property is normally regulated — finish, style, sometimes brand. A smart lock is very visible. Fitting one and asking afterwards is how people end up removing it at their own cost.

Where it is not permitted, most of the actual benefit is still available. Re-pinning the existing cylinder means every previously cut key stops working, which is the security half of the argument, and a key safe fixed properly handles a good deal of the convenience half.

The honest comparison, side by side

Set against each other on the things that matter, the two are not really competing for the same job.

On resistance to force, a good mechanical cylinder in a reinforced frame wins, and a smart lock adds nothing. On managing who can get in, the smart lock wins outright, because a code is withdrawn in seconds and a key is not. On reliability over ten years, mechanical wins. On what happens during a long outage, mechanical wins. On knowing when a door was opened, only one of them can answer at all.

Which is why the recommendation is nearly always both rather than either. A sound cylinder and frame doing the physical work, with an electronic layer on the doors that see changing users. That is the hybrid arrangement described on the smart lock installation page, and it is what we fit.

What we would actually recommend

Pulling it together, the advice for a typical household in this part of Johannesburg is fairly consistent and it is not "one or the other".

Get the mechanical side right first: a door that hangs square, a reinforced strike plate with screws reaching structure, and a decent cylinder on the entrances that matter. That is what resists force, and no electronics change it. Then, if your household has a genuine key-management problem — domestic staff, contractors, teenagers, a cottage let short-term — add an electronic layer to the door that sees those people.

Keep a mechanical route in, held by somebody reachable. And if you are renting or in a complex, check what you are allowed to change before buying anything. All of it is a single book a locksmith in Bryanston rather than a project.

Cost over ten years, not on the day

Comparing these on purchase price alone gets the answer wrong, because the two have very different shapes over time.

A good mechanical cylinder is bought once and, with a clean and a dry lubricant once a year, will still be working in a decade. Its running cost is close to nothing. A smart lock has batteries to replace, firmware that occasionally needs attention, an app that may change or be discontinued, and a service life shorter than the door it is fitted to.

None of that is an argument against them, and a lock that saves you cutting four keys a year has earned a battery change. It is an argument for buying one because it solves a key-management problem you actually have, rather than as a general upgrade to hardware that was already doing its job. If the problem is resistance rather than access, the money goes further on a cylinder and a frame.