One reviewer’s old SwitchBot setup failed him in the plainest way possible. The retrofit Lock Ultra had fallen off the door and was lying on the floor, still trying to turn a lock it was no longer attached to. The door would not open.
That is the problem the SwitchBot Lock Vision Pro sets out to fix. It is a deadbolt replacement, screwed into the door, so it cannot drop off. Here’s what it means in practice: it will not work for most renters, who cannot swap out a lock, but a homeowner gets a fixture that stays put.
In the box and on the door
The lock comes in two halves. The exterior half holds the keypad. The interior half carries the thumbturn and the batteries, a 10,000mAh rechargeable main pack plus a small CR123A backup. A deadbolt and a catch are included, along with written instructions and a video guide.
Installation went smoothly, with one hiccup. The reviewer received two units, and one shipped with screws too large for its plate, which he fixed by screwing larger holes into the plate. He hoped it was a stray unit that slipped past quality control. Even so, he called it one of the easiest locks he has installed.
He likes how it looks inside and out, and finds it much slimmer than the Lockly Secure Plus it replaced. He has one complaint about the design: the thumbturn is plastic, and he feels he could break it by turning too hard. It is also all black, so guests leaving at night may struggle to spot it.
Half a dozen ways in
You can unlock it with a code, a fingerprint, a face scan or a palm scan, with physical keys as a backstop, or from a distance through an app. The reviewer’s household uses the numbers for the kids and guests. He and his spouse use fingerprints. The scanner sits on the front of the device, which makes the thumb the natural digit, and fingerprints register faster than the other biometrics. “I could do without two-thirds of the methods for unlocking this lock, including the ones that are its namesake,” he wrote.
Matter is the real draw
What he values most is that the lock is Matter native. Unlike most SwitchBot products, it needs no SwitchBot hub as a bridge. The Matter pairing code is on a sticker under the interior half, though the SwitchBot app is still needed for initial setup. In his Homey app the lock responded quickly, and its status shows without tapping into it.
The limits are clear. Matter handles only locking and unlocking. Temporary guest passcodes and extra fingerprints stay inside the SwitchBot app.
The lock also arrives a step behind. It is not an Aliro lock, the new Connectivity Standards Alliance standard, and it lacks ultra wideband Bluetooth. Anyone who wants to unlock the door just by walking up with a phone should look at the Schlage Sense Pro. The reviewer would buy this one as an attractive keypad lock with fingerprint scanning that happens to speak Matter. The face and palm features work well enough that having them beats not having them, though how reliably they work is hit or miss. The essentials, he said, are superb.
