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

I bought 2 Level Bolt locks in 2023 and intended to use them with my double cylinder deadbolts of my front and back doors. As far as I know, this is the only smart lock option for those locks with a key hole on both sides. However, I stumbled upon a bunch of problems. First, my existing deadbolts used a 1.5 inch bore hole, which means the Level Bolt didn't fit (it needs a 2 1/8 inch hole). They sit on my desk for almost 2 years but I finally decided to enlarge the holes myself. It was no easy task. I then realized that my old Weiser deadbolts were not compatible with any of the included adapters. I don't think they ever made an adapter compatible with those, so I decided to change the deadbolts to more modern ones. After all that, they were quite easy to install. Moral of this story: make sure you have a 2 1/8 inch hole and verify your deadlock compatibility before purchasing.Now that they are finally installed, they are great! I tried them a few days with Bluetooth and the response was a little slow, but I upgraded the firmware to Matter (contact support to get the upgrade) and connected them to Apple Home (make sure you have a compatible hub). They are now fast and always responsive. I love not having bulky smart locks and the fact that nobody knows that they are smart locks.

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.

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.