Skip to main content

Latch is making its first smart lock available only to apartment owners, not individual tenants

We’re used to buying smart home devices for our own personal use, but this new kind of smart lock won’t be available to individual consumers. Instead, Latch is making its first smart door lock available to real estate developers, so that apartments will come fully equipped with the high-tech entry system. Because Latch is a smart lock, there are no keys required; the lock is operated by passcode and smartphone integrations.

For most city-dwellers and apartment-renters, installing your own high-tech smart lock is out of the question, because your landlord needs to be able to access your apartment, too. That’s why Latch is targeting luxury apartment buildings in order to give tenants access to the lock through their standard rental agreement. Latch is even going so far as to discourage renters from passing out keys, unless a tenant insists. Latch can open with a traditional key, but its creators stress the passcode as the primary operation for locking and locking the door. Tenants will be able to issue temporary passcodes to visitors like dog-walkers and family members. And as with other smart locks, Latch features setting options that will unlock the door as soon as your smart phone is within range.

Some of the obvious concerns with Latch-equipped apartments have to do with privacy and security. Theoretically, building owners and managers would be able to access Latch’s detailed logs of door activity, including each time a specific Latch device is opened or closed. Owners of large apartment buildings have the benefit of a sort of attendance log in case incidents or emergencies take place, but renters, who have access to their own information as well, have little choice about the tracking of their presence within Latch apartments. Latch door locks also feature hidden cameras that snap pictures of guests at the door. “Latch deeply values consumer privacy and intentionally limits the data they collect to increase the security and safety of the building,” Luke Schoenfelder, co-founder and CEO of Latch, told Digital Trends in an email. 

So far, Latch has raised a total of $16 million in funding to bring its first smart lock to market. Much of that funding came from real estate partners who have invested in Latch in order to secure early or exclusive access rights to the system. Two buildings in Manhattan are already slated to implement Latch in the 435 units shared between them. In the future, Latch is considering marketing its product to individual consumers, although that’s not a part of their early business model.

Updated 2/12/2016: Updated to amend pricing data and add Luke Schoenfelder’s quote about privacy.) 

Editors' Recommendations

Chloe Olewitz
Chloe is a writer from New York with a passion for technology, travel, and playing devil's advocate. You can find out more…
Why aren’t smart locks and video doorbells the same device?
eufy by Anker Security Video Smart Lock installed on corner.

From security cameras and deadbolts to light bulbs and more, the past few years have seen an explosion of new smart home products. You’ve probably noticed Ring doorbells installed on your neighbors’ front porch when out for a walk -- and if you haven’t, you’re probably at least familiar with one of a dozen different viral videos captured by them.

Despite the boom in smart gadgets, there’s an absolute dearth of smart locks that double as doorbell cameras. The two products seem like a match made in heaven, letting you secure your home and monitor it at the same time, but few manufacturers have experimented with the format. However, there are a few good reasons as to why these smart lock + video doorbells are so scarce.
They do exist, actually

Read more
Vivint’s new updates make its smart home system even smarter
vivint doorbell outdoor camera pro updates  lifestyle 1

I've had a Vivint smart home for about 18 months, ever since reviewing the Vivint Doorbell Camera Pro and the Vivint Outdoor Camera Pro. For the most part, I find them to be incredibly smart and useful. Plus, the integration with Google and Philips Hue in particular up the "whole-home smart home" game when I can unlock my front door and have my lights turn on. This week, Vivint announced updates to the Doorbell Pro and Outdoor Camera Pro, and it's great to see that "smart" extends to the company itself. Let's dive in.
On-device recording
Vivint upgraded all of its camera products -- the Vivint Doorbell Camera Pro, Outdoor Camera Pro, and Indoor Camera Pro -- in a pretty significant way. Vivint added on-device recording for 24/7 monitoring for up to 10 days. All that footage is stored on the device, which is significant in one keyway. The previous generation of the cameras streamed footage in real-time from the cameras to a separately purchased smart hard drive. From there, if you wanted to review the footage, it would stream back over Wi-Fi to Vivint's servers, and back to your phone.

Put simply, this can cause a significant hit on your home Wi-Fi's bandwidth. With the new cameras, the footage is stored on a secure SD card locally and only transmitted when it's being streamed or viewed. Meanwhile, onboard AI will continue generating smart clips detailing what happens (people, packages, etc). Plus, aside from freeing up bandwidth on your home network, local recording storage also works even when your Wi-Fi is down. All told, it's enough to get me pretty geeked, so I'll be excited to test these things out. That's the biggest news that covers all the devices, so let's get into each device in particular.
Vivint Doorbell Camera Pro

Read more
Lockly Flex Touch ditches the bulk in favor of a slimmer fingerprint smart lock
Lockly Flex Touch

The key to a smart lock is ease of use. Everyone wants to be able to get into their homes more easily, especially while carrying an armload of groceries, but no one wants to sacrifice security for convenience. The new Lockly Flex Touch smart lock provides the best of both worlds with easy entry and installation while maintaining strong security due to its 3D biometric fingerprint reader.

The Flex Touch allows up to 99 different fingerprints to be stored on a single lock, so that all members of your household, your extended family, and probably all of your friends could have easy entry into the home if you wanted. That's a lot of fingerprint storage. If you wanted to transmit all of these entries to another lock, you can do so through Lockly's secure eDuplicate system.

Read more