Yale Conexis L1 Smart Door Lock Black
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Price: £197.99
Brand: Yale
Description: Yale Conexis L1 Smart Door Lock Black, Keyless digital door lock, BSI Kitemark approved, Compatible with multipoint locks, Remote door access, Share temporary door keys, Connects via Bluetooth, Multiple entry options, Battery powered with low battery warning, Tamper alarm, Works with Alexa via optional sync module, App for iOS & Android, 2 year warranty.
Category: Appliances and accessories
Merchant: Box.co.uk
Product ID: 2297093
Delivery time: 1
Delivery cost: 0.00
MPN: SD-L1000-BL
EAN: 5011802301238
Author: TechHead
Rating: 4
Review: The media could not be loaded. I have had this Digital Yale Smart Lock installed on my front door since 2017 - so a long time now! The lock itself is fairly substantial, much bigger and heavier than my previous door handle/lock. It feels very well made and give a good impression when removing from the box that this is a great security lock. The handle and unit are chrome with a plastic RFID reader. On the rear of the lock is a plastic screw cover which takes 4 x AA batteries and a plastic cover for the reset button and additional yale modules (more about them later). So why would you want a smart lock? It's technology... and i personally love anything tech related. It's also great not to have to carry keys around with you. The app boasts unlocking and locking via the conexis app, as well as little plastic RFID fobs and credit card type RFID passes. You get a selection of these in the box. Fitting - this was fairly straight forward and i had zero issues with this. The lock alignment needs to be perfect though. If you are unsure then ask a local locksmith to fit. However this product is certainly ok for DIY installation. I did it myself in about 20 mins and had no issues. As mentioned before it is a very big and chunky lock so take this into consideration when purchasing. Locking/Unlocking - to lock the door you must pull up the handle. Although the lock is fully motorised it will not lock the multi-point locking section of the door. It only electronically locks the deadbolt. To unlock you can either use the app, an RFID fob or if inside you must depress the knob and turn. This lock would be no good for an elderly person who has dexterity issues, due to the knobs push in and turn design. My grandmother can not open this lock despite trying her very best. Once the knob is pressed and turned you then can open the lock by pushing down on the handle. RFID FOBS : These work well - although you have to assign them first within the app. Programming is fairly simple although everytime i update the fobs it does take quite a while for them to actually register correctly in the app, i normally have to do this several times before the conxeis app recognises the fobs. You can assign names to the fobs but this is beyond rubbish as the app does not ever notify you correctly (if at all) on who's fob has been used. To use the fobs you just tap them on the black plastic at the front of the lock and if accepted you will hear the lock spring to life and open the dead bolt. I find most of my fobs dissapear from the app after adding, but they all seem to still work okay and unlock the door without issue. Phone unlocking - just does not work via the conexis app! I have reported this to yale several times and have now given up. I have a very early unit so they may have updated the firmware within the latest locks, but my original lock is still rubbish when it comes to the conexis app. (If you have a Yale Smart Hub then use the Yale Alarm app as unlocking works flawlessly within this addional app) I have locked myself out several times during the initial months after i first installed the lock. This was beyond frustrating. I ended up resorting to ensuring all my family had back door keys in case we couldnt open the front door. Contacting the Yale customer helpline is so frustrating - trying to find/speak to someone who knows anything about the lock became a joke. However i have to say that once i managed to track down a single yale employee who was knowledgeable - he was absoloutely fantastic and kept in regular touch with me to iron out most of the issues in the very early days of me installing the lock. I can't thank this chap from Yale enough! Eventually though, after many communications via phone and email he also gave up and arranged for me to be sent a Yale smart hub to connect the lock too. I have a Yale alarm system so the smart hub just linked into this. I had to purchase the Yale access module though to get the lock to talk to the Yale Alarm app. This was another £50 at the time. Once i had linked the lock to the Yale Alarm system it just worked brilliantly. I have never had a problem with the lock since - this does however use a different app to the conexis one. Batteries in the lock last a good few months, however again don't reply on the conexis app to alert you when the batteries are dying. It just never works at all! You will get to notice the sound the lock makes when it is struggling to draw power. I just replace the batteries when the motor sounds different. If you do link it to the Yale Alarm smart hub then this does notify you correctly when the batteries in the lock are starting to fade, but again this is via the Yale Alarm app not the dedicated conexis app. Conexis App - RUBBISH beyond belief. Now i have had this lock for 5 years and it still does not work with the dedicated app! I have now just given up using it. The problems i had with it are that it continually logged you out - having to log back into the app every time you want to open your front door was beyond frustrating. Even then on tons of occasions the app said my details were incorrect even though they were not. The twist to unlock feature via your smartphone again hardly ever worked. Touching your smartphone to the lock again just failed miserably most of the time. Notifications never ever work! History of the lock being used never works. It really is the worst app i have ever installed on my phone. I genuinely can't understand how a company such a Yale would release such a poor app, more importantly why they have failed to sort it out and correct the issues over the last 5 years! Another really frustrating thing about the conexis app is that it uses digital keys. You only get a small amount of these digital keys (5 if i remember correctly) and these get wasted very quickly when the app messes up - which is frequently and at no fault of the user. You have to then purchase additional keys as an in app purchase at £2.99 per key!! This is daylight robbery! If you change your phone you again need a new key. Adding a time limited key again just expires one of your keys never to be used again. The amount of keys i wasted due to the poor app design was ridiculous. My contact at Yale again was super nice and provided me with 10 extra keys at no cost. I now never ever use the conexis app. So should you buy this lock - You may be surprised to hear me say YES... i do recommend this lock. My only caveat to that recommendation is that you also buy a Yale Smart hub and the access module. I did try the zwave module with smarthings but this again didn't work great so i went for the access module. I have spent over £300 in addtional tech trying to get the lock to work correctly in the early days. The lock does however integrate great with the Yale Alarm app fantasticly. With the smart hub you can also remotely lock/unlock the door which is an excellent feature. You could not do remote locking/unlocking with the standalone lock and the conxeis app without the modules. This lock combined with the smart yale alarm system is excellent. If you don't have the yale ecosystem then i would say avoid this lock like the plague especially if you only want to use the digital keys within the conexis app. The lock also has a battery back up feature that we have used twice - if the batteries in the lock fail placing a 9v battery on the contact at the bottom of the lock on the outside will just give it enough power for you to unlock it. This is a very handy backup feature that yale have included. Hopefully yale may have released updated firmware for the newer conexis locks - if they have then maybe some of the problems i am still experiencing 5 years later may have been fixed. I really do wish they would update my lock as i would love it to work how it is suppost to work, but that is not likely to happen. Overall i like this lock a lot, it's just frustrating the lock doesn't work without the additional items which cost a lot of money - next time i am not so sure i would be one of the early adopters of such new technology. I have certainly had my fingers burnt! Hopefully Yale will have addressed a lot of these issues in thier latest locks. I hope that you found my review helpful
Author: El Geraldo
Rating: 3
Review: Update after 2 years of use - following a day’s torrential rain (possibly a coincidence), the Conexis L1 has bricked itself. App suddenly showed me critically low batteries - but we never got the jolly warning tune in the preceding days. Changed the batteries for a fresh set, and now it’s electrically DEAD. Back to mechanical lock tomorrow… 3 months review: The hardware quality of the Yale is not in question – seems solid enough; although it’s a bit narrow TBH. Not a wide enough footprint on the back of the door to prevent it waggling slightly sideways under the leverage of the door handle. Operation with keytags always works perfectly. The app is a bit flaky. Not rubbish, but could be better. The dodginess that I’ve experienced is: • On first install, it got its knickers in a twist and it wouldn’t accept any keytags at all. Had to do a factory reset and follow the instructions again, slowly and TO THE LETTER. Worked fine the 2nd time. • On several occasions (maybe after each iOS 12 update?) the app seemed to lose the ability to do the Bluetooth connection to the lock, which meant I got locked out of the house and had to revert to using somebody else's keytag. (I tend to use my phone to get into the house; not the keytags). • I was messing about with iOS 13 beta a few months back, and that completely killed the Yale app. Had to downgrade to iOS 12 again until they fixed it. Works OK again now with latest iOS 13 release. • As people have mentioned – the lock only records time/date stamps when it’s unlocked with a phone – kinda useless. • You can’t just walk up to the door and have the phone unlock it – there’s a multi-step procedure: Find the app, open it and wait until it makes a network connection and checks credentials. Then touch the big yellow button in the app. Then touch the capacitive touch button on the lock. Then wait for the LED to light up blue and then – about 3-5s later, the lock unlocks. Dodgy network connection? Nothing happens. Dodgy Bluetooth between the phone and the lock? Nothing happens. • There’s a bit of tomfoolery when managing keytags in the app. If the Bluetooth handshake doesn’t happen properly between the app and the lock while you’re adding or deleting keytags – the app ends up with a different inventory of keytags than the lock has. You have to re-do the last operation again, making VERY. DELIBERATE. SLOW. ACTIONS. – and then it seems to work properly. In summation, I like it – to me, it’s a lot less faff than the existing operation of a standard Euro Cylinder lock: Amazon guy rings doorbell… El Geraldo runs to door… he stops off at key cupboard to retrieve front door key… he faffs about getting key in lock… Amazon guy has got bored and is writing out his “we missed you” ticket… El Geraldo finally opens door to disgruntled delivery man. In contrast, with the electronic lock, to unlock it from the inside - you just push the knob and turn it anti-clockwise (accompanied by various musical beeps!) To lock, you just lift the handle and wait for motor whirring noise and more musical beeping. The other faff with Euro locks is when you want to leave the house – you have to first unlock the thing from the inside with a key and then re-lock it from the outside with the same key. Then you get in the car, start the engine and one of the kids has left something in the house. Turn off the car, give the child the car keys… wait for them to come back… If everybody has a key in their phone, they can now unlock the door themselves. (What teenager doesn’t have their phone on them at all times?) One recurrent (user) problem I’ve noticed, that you cannot get with a fully mechanical lock – the Euro lock mechanism cannot be locked unless the handle is pulled all the way to the top. If you were using a physical key, you’d notice a problem with that and sort it on the spot, in order to lock the door. With the electronic lock, my kids are so lazy that they do a half-@r$ed job at lifting the handle and then walk away. The little motor tries to lock the lock mechanism and stalls – because the handle isn’t fully raised. It does beep at you to say it failed to lock the door, but by that time, the child has legged it up the stairs and has already booted up his Xbox. Another user error is anybody who doesn't live at our house, trying to let themselves out the front door - they just can't do it. I have to yell instructions at them from the other end of the hallway, or do an awkward shuffle past them and let them out. It's perfectly simple guys - the knob just takes the place of the key slot. Push it in, turn it anti-clockwise until it stops!