Level Bolt Smart Deadbolt - Make Your Lock Smart & Keep Your Existing Hardware and Keys - Keyless Entry via Level App (iOS & Android) - Works with Apple Home

The Level Bolt was the perfect solution make my front door smart while maintaining the look my wife desired. Watching the deadbolt open and close by itself looks like magic. The device is well made and everything feels high quality. Installation went smoothly with only a minor adjustment to our original deadbolt casing to allow the Bolt to smoothly operate. We use it primarily with Apple HomeKit and all family members have access to it. I do wish they offered face plates and strike plates to match other hardware colors, but it's a small thing.Before the recent Matter update, it wasn't dependable enough to count on- the response took a few seconds when it did work, and would sometimes not respond or lose connection. I purchased the Level Connect wifi bridge hoping this would help, but it didn't make a difference for me.Enter the recent Matter update! Despite owning a Level Bolt for over a year and a half now, Level added a Matter support option to the Bolt and offered an OTA update to all previous owners. You have to submit a questionnaire to make sure your home is compatible with Matter over Thread, and after review, they send you an email with a new Pairing Code and the firmware update will appear in your phone's Level app. It walks you through the process, but essentially you remove the Bolt and add it back using Matter.The Bolt with Matter now responds instantly. No more three second delays! It's been about 10 days, and so far, not a single lost connection or "no response" message. The update option was a wonderful surprise and has made my Bolt just as quick and dependable as the rest of my HomeKit devices.

I've had the Bolt since 2021 and have little to add to the compliments (and quibbles) noted by so many others. The main selling point for me was its aesthetic – it's hidden within the door; and that, along with Apple Home compatibility, overrode any other issues.An inherent problem with smart door locks is the necessity that your bolt and strike plate align near-perfectly, since you will not be manually pushing, pulling, or forcing them into alignment, as you might be accustomed to doing almost unconsciously, especially in an older home where wear and settling have caused minor misalignment. I suspect this is the most common cause of dissatisfaction with smart lock function. I solved this in my 75 year-old-home by gluing a felt strip cushion to stop the door about 1/8" before closing against the door jamb (see photo).My only minor issue with the Bolt was that, as others have noted, it took a few seconds for it to lock with its reassuring beep after activated in the Home app or with Siri. But with a Home Pod Mini ten feet away and an Apple TV in the next room, the lock never actually failed to work properly when triggered either locally or remotely.The recent offer (via email) from Level to update the firmware on my lock to include Matter/Thread functionality has produced a remarkable improvement. While I expected this would make the Bolt more responsive, it has exceeded expectations! Not only does the lock now respond immediately to local and remote commands, surprisingly my entire smart home environment reacts quicker. I suspect that with the Apple devices mentioned above, as well as a few other thread enabled devices (two Eve Energy smart plugs and an eero router), the addition of the Bolt firmware has rendered the whole network more responsive.Kudos to Level for giving some free love to an over-4-year-old product. It now works flawlessly.

We’ve had our eyes on the Level Bolt Smart Lock for a year or so and were super excited to see it 30% off on Prime Day, so we decided to give it a shot.We loved the idea of being able to roll up to the house and have the front door dead bolt unlock and then also being able to unlock our front door with our phones is a great option to have if we got locked out or if we needed to let someone in when we’re not home.The install instructions and package look good and were easy enough for me to understand and do.The first issue I had was that the lock didn’t really fit in the door all that well and I had to take a bit of the wood out of the door hole to make the hole a little bigger on one side so the lock could fit. Initially I gave the Level a pass because there are tons is different door companies, so I could see how that might happen. Our door is only a couple of years old, so I expected it to fit better.So install was a little harder then I thought it should have been. The next issue was that the strike plate was smaller then the one we had in our door way. You only get one size of a strike plate, so you’ll have to stick with the one Level gives you or try to find some sort of aftermarket one. I couldn’t get our old strike plate to work, the Level needs a strike plate with a bigger then average hole.Initially syncing it up to my iPhone was pretty easy, and the app seemed to work well.I got it to lock and unlock, with about every 10th time the app having some sort of issue where it wouldn’t do the operation. I felt like I could live with it not always working when I engage it on the app and then having to hit it again, and then set up the Auto Unlock feature I was really excited about.We went out to do an errand, locking the front door with the app as we left. It was actually kind of cool that the app kept a log of all the locking and unlocking that happened and wether it was done manually or via the app.We rolled up to the house and my phone crossed into the hypothetical geofence that was around the Level Bolt lock. We went to open the door and it was locked. I tried to use the app to open the door and it kept on giving me an error. I opened up the lock with my key and bolt kept on wanting to engage the lock and was making a high pitched whine. Even if I unlocked it manually it would force the bolt to lock.Anyways, I wasn’t going to risk our front door being unlocked for a product I couldn’t trust. I loved the idea of this product. It seemed like it would really be something we’d use, but it doesn’t seem like Level is doing enough software support. I’ve had a similar issue with other “smart” products. If it’s not made by a big company like Apple, Amazon or Google there doesn’t seem to be any support after the initial purchase.