Schlage Encode Smart Deadbolt Review New Westminster

Mr. Locksmith New Westminster: (604) 259-2522

Schlage Encode Deadbolt New Westminster:

The Schlage Encode Deadbolt uses the Schlage Home app on your smartphone to lock/unlock your door from anywhere, no additional accessory or hub required. You specify who has access and when by setting up to 100 permanent, recurring or temporary lock codes that you can change as you see fit or by sending virtual keys to trusted guests via text or email. 

Built-in WiFi allows you to lock/unlock from anywhere, plus set up guest access codes for recurring, temporary or permanent access when paired with the Schlage Home app or Key by Amazon app, no additional accessories required. 

For additional convenience voice commands via Alexa or Google Assistant and others. 

• Create and manage up to 100 access codes for trusted friends and family to use with the fingerprint-resistant, capacitive touchscreen with easy one-touch locking
• Create and manage up to 100 access codes for trusted friends and family to use with the fingerprint-resistant, capacitive touchscreen with easy one-touch locking
• Built-in alarm technology senses potential security breaches at the lock
• Low battery indicator offers weeks of advanced warning for battery replacement
• Easy to install with just a screwdriver. Unique Snap n Stay technology snaps the deadbolt onto the door so both hands are free during installation
• Guaranteed to fit standard doors (1-3/8 in. to 1-3/4 in. door thickness and 2-3/8 in. or 2-3/4 in. backset)
• Comes with limited lifetime mechanical and finish warranty and 3-year electronics warranty
• Certified Commercial Grade 1
• Schlage Encode Deadbolt Coquitlam
• Graded Best in Residential Security, Durability, and Finish

Schlage Encode Deadbolt Codes: Pre-set, unique 6-digit programming code, two pre-set unique 4-digit access codes, 100 code capacity

Schlage Encode Smart Deadbolt New Westminster

Schlage Encode Review

In this video I am going to review the Schlage Encode Deadbolt

I am going to install and review the Schlage Encode. The Schlage Encode is one of my favorite electronic deadbolts for customers who want to integrate into their home automation. The earlier version is the Schlage Sense, which they still sell, but the Sense and some of the other options just have Bluetooth or Z-wave, etc. The Schlage Encode is really interesting because they have integrated both Bluetooth and  Wi-Fi into the Electronic Deadbolt. The Schlage Sense could be upgraded it purchasing a Wi-Fi little plug it in.

I like the Sense but if you want total home integration, with home automation, WiFi, etc. the Encode has built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The Schlage is using encrypted Bluetooth.

When you hear about problems people have with their video doorbells being hacked or their baby monitors hacked, that is because they are just using plain-Jane unencrypted Bluetooth.

Schlage Encode Smart WiFi Deadbolt

It not encrypted. So you gotta be really, really careful with a lot of your products for home because it can be easily hacked. So this one is encrypted Bluetooth. It goes into your Wi-Fi system, so it works great, and it does 100 codes. The new feature, I haven’t tried it yet, but you have a code that will only work at certain times of the day. So if you have a caregiver or nanny or housekeeper coming over, they can use their code only on certain dates and times. I don’t know yet. We’ll find out if they have a one-time use code. So you use the code.

Schlage Encode Smart Review

It’s good for an hour, or it’s good for one use only, which is good for Airbnbs. But I’m finding we’re selling a lot of these, and we’re installing a lot of these. Now when you buy it, I went down and got this at one of the big box hardware stores, make sure they’re sealed. They’re a pain in the butt, if somebody has been playing with these before you. They either work out of the box, or they’re not.

The same thing with the Wi-Fi, it either works right away, or you’re spending hours getting it working. So most of the time I find, because the app is so good on this, it’s a free app as well. It’s so fantastic. Once you’ve got the talking to the Bluetooth, it’s great. But again, with all of this stuff, it’s like an iPhone. Either it works, or it doesn’t work. So here we go, Schlage Encode.

Now everything nowadays packed so nice. So we have our instructions. We have the outside. Now it’s not a true touchscreen. It’s actually better. The touchscreens are good, except if you live in a really cold climate and your fingers are cold, it’s hard to get the touchscreens to work. So this is actually a pretty efficient system. It’s got the, ooh, here we go, the key override, which I really like.

We’ve had so many problems with customers, and you see one of my earlier videos, where you have the external battery. So if the battery goes dead, you have the external battery connections. I’m finding them not working like crazy. So I thought it was me with bad batteries. And you look at my other videos. We even tried to make a little a booster to get them, and they just don’t seem to work. But we’ll play with more later. What they’ve done on this, which is interesting.

Here’s the inside.

And it comes with batteries. It’s such a pain, when you pay good money for something, and there are no batteries. What does it take to throw in some free batteries? It’s got one key. This always bugs me. Why can’t you put two keys? We’ll cut lots of extra keys for our customers, but it comes with one key. I don’t like that. And know the difference between the machine screws and wood screws. That’s important on all this stuff.

The Schlage Encode Deadbolt is well made and reliable. It comes with different plates, so it’ll work, and a drive-in, so it works almost any door. Now I go through this a lot, every time, but it’s one of the biggest calls we get from customers at night. This is the bolt. It says TOP, so that makes it even easier.

If you have some other different ones, they may not have TOP on it but what they have on it, I call it Mickey Mouse ears. It’s not so big on this one, but the holes are slightly higher than the middle slot, so the slot where your tailpiece goes in, from your lock. They’re adjustable. From the edge of the door to the center hole, there are three sizes, and two are very popular.

There’s 2 3/8 and 2 3/4, and there’s a 5 inch. As far as I know, this does not come with a 5-inch backset. So I have 2 3/8, and it’s just a simple twist, and that’s 2 3/4. So it’s just slightly longer. Got a lot of calls from people saying, oh, it’s not installing correctly. So all you gotta do to adjust this is, this one is just a little twist or read the instructions. So pretty, pretty basic here. And you can see if I put this one in 2 3/8, it’s just too short. So we’ll go a little twist. And again, which way is up?

Now the other feature I like about these guys is they’ll put in, we call it, a hardened strike with three-inch wood screws. Now, this is really good, ’cause it goes in the frame, the edge of your door, so the frame, and your deadbolt will go into this. So it makes it that little bit, way, way stronger. So it’s good out of the box. If you look into my other videos, I actually prefer a longer, an 18-inch strike with 3-inch screws, where four go down it, just to make it tougher all the way down, but this is good out of the box. It is way better than what a lot of the other companies give you.

So this is fantastic, and I’m glad they’re still putting it in. Other deadbolts, they’ve stopped giving this. This is a great option. Let’s do it, let’s install this on the door quickly. We’re just going over here. Now you just got to do these snug. You don’t have to go crazy, don’t. Sometimes, people just crank these down, and it puts too much pressure on the bolt, and the bolt won’t come up. Now let’s show you real quick something, a programming code and an A user and a B user.

It’s on your instructions. It’s also on the lock. Now it used to be on the outside, which people, to look at the programming code, you had to disassemble everything. I don’t really like this. The programming code and the user code is now on the inside.

So in theory, somebody could just take it off, and they now know your programming code, your A user and B user. Now you can also, through programming, you can wipe out this and put it in your own programming code and your A user and B user. It’s a little bit of whatever. I don’t like this. I prefer the information that used to be on there. And they just started doing this lately. And your battery pack goes in there. And it’s really interesting. You’re really good because now, you don’t have to hook up the little cable. The more little hookups you have to do, the more chance you have of error.

Schlage encode battery replacement

Schlage Encode Deadbolt uses four double-A batteries. I always like alkaline, and it comes with alkaline batteries. I prefer the Duracells or the… Ah, it’s just the ones I prefer. Your best bet, buy it at like your Costco or your Walmart because you want fresh batteries. When you’re replacing these, you want fresh batteries. You don’t want something that’s been sitting in your local convenience store for a year. And that’s another problem we have with customers.

We go out there, and they’ve got problems. They buy the bad batteries, put them in, and it’s a battery issue. A lot of problems with these locks are with the battery. Again, get alkalines. I’m gonna try rechargeables. I haven’t done that yet. And they recommend don’t use rechargeables. I don’t see why not. So I’m gonna do an experiment on my door. So you want alkalines. Lithium’s lasts a long time, except for one problem. When the alkalines go down in power, they slowly drop, drop, drop.

When they reach a certain point, they’ll start beeping, just like your smoke detector at home. It just beeps. It bugs you. And I gotta replace the battery, plus it gives you all sorts of warning bells and everything. If you put in lithium batteries, really cool, they last a long time. You’ve got lots, really, really, really strong, and then boom, they just drop. So you get like a half a beep out of your lock. Beep, and that’s it. It’s dead. So all of a sudden, you’re stuck outside. But that’s why we have the key override, just in case.

Schlage Encode Installation

Let’s install this. Now a nice little feature, always make sure you put, the cable goes under, and the tailpiece is horizontal. If I’m playing with deadbolts, I always say have the bolt out. However, on the electronic locks, they have to time themselves for a left-hand or right-hand door, or however your door operates. You have to have the bolt in. And when you first start it up and punch in your first code, it’ll go through a cycle, and it decides if it’s a right-hand or a left-hand, which is really good, ’cause some of the old locks, you had to play with diodes and whatnot, little jumper switches, so this is a pretty idiot-proof.

If you do run across a problem, and it doesn’t seem to be working, follow the instructions and reset everything, just set everything back to factory, and follow through on the installation again. We don’t find that happens too much, but it does happen. So the battery cable goes underneath. The tailpiece goes in. Ta-da! So this is really good. Before it’d be sort of hanging around. If everything is perfect, it will clip in and stay there.

If your hole is perfect, everything’s perfect, it should be a 2 1/8 inch hole and a 1 inch bore. You can get away with 7/8, but 1 inch. So that clips in really nice. So it just holds it, saves us a little bit of time. I’ve always loved about these guys their products. We have right there. We have: Top. And on this side, we have: This side against the door. So it’s, basically, it’s almost idiot-proof, so follow the instructions. Top, there. They’ve really thought it out quite well. So that goes underneath.

This just goes on there. Let’s try this again. There we go. We have our cable there. Clips in. A little tiny spot to sort of put the cabling. Sometimes, you got to time this here, a little bit. This thumb turn will go on to the tailpiece. Should be free. Now that’s what I like about this lock, too. The other ones, you’re pushing a motor. So I always think that’s not too good. So again, put your machine screws in here. Don’t use the wood screws. There we go. Pretty simple.

Let’s put the batteries in. Now this is good, no cable, no nothing, just kinda pull it out. Four AAs. It goes on there. We have power. Now it has to sort of go through a cycle. So right on here, five, seven, four, three. So I’m gonna go, I want to see what I got here, so that I can see. Five, seven, four, three. So that’s the user code. It’s now, in theory, it’s setting itself. And we got the blue tick, so we’re good. So let’s see if we can lock it. Now this one’s interesting. You don’t hit the logo. You learn after bit, just hit the lower corner to lock it, boom. I want to unlock it.

I gotta hit the code in. So when I go, so we’ve timed it. Lock it. Five, seven, four, three. Five, seven, four, three. So it’s really good. It’s very simple, easy to use. We can change our features. One of my favorite features is I like it to lock automatically. So I like it locking automatically. Some people go, oh, I don’t like that feature. I love it.

If you’ve got kids, whatever, or you’re just, did I locked the door, the door locks itself. So I have mine set on four minutes. It only goes, I wish it was longer, though, but it goes from 30 seconds to four minutes.

Schlage Encode Home Automation

The Schlage is compatible with Alexa, Google, and Apple. So it’s compatible with the major systems. And if you’ve see the announcement, now, the big manufacturers say they’re gonna go more open architecture, so you don’t have to stick with all Google products to go with Google, or Alexa products to go with Alexa. So you can mix and match now. And it’s going more open concept. I liked that idea.

We’re okay with the Schlage, but you got to be careful with some of the other products. You can say, yell at the door, or open door, or open front door, and, well, you say, Alexa, open front door, and then some of these locks will open. By default, you can’t do that. And some of these, you can’t do it at all, but you can say lock door. It’s built-in Wi-Fi. Now it will use the batteries up more. There’s no doubt about that.

They say six months of normal use, because Wi-Fi really sucks batteries. The Bluetooth can go for a year easily, or the Z-waves and whatnot. The built-in Wi-Fi, you’re gonna go through batteries. It’s just a fact of life. You should get six months out of it. Some people get more. Some people will get less. Now this one’s very simple. The key override is easy. If it’s locked, just take your key. It’s really normal. It just unlocked the door. You can even lock it and leave.

If you looked at earlier version BE-365, oh, it’s a pain in the butt. I made a video of just how to lock it and unlock it. You don’t need that with this. You just, very simple, it’s easy to turn. You’re not turning the whole mechanism.

If you wanna rekey it, or you’ve you’ve just got a new house or something, you don’t know where the keys are, or somebody got your keys, or you’ve have lost it, very simple to rekey. Just disconnect the power, first, and again, I love this, no extra little wires and whatnot.

Just take off the two machine screws. So you disconnect, let’s get these screws, oops, so we don’t lose ’em. Remove the two screws. And carefully feed the data cable, you don’t want to tear that off, even though it is pretty well-made. From the outside, we just pull it off. And there’s no reason to pull, the old versions, you had to pull everything apart.

Schlage Encode Rekey

Rekey Locks: All you have to do is just take out that one screw. The cylinder will come out. The screw, it’s a very simple screw, and our cylinder, it just removes it. Now it’s a five-pin plug. So you can’t put a six-pin keyway on it. It’s a Schlage SC1 or the C Keyway. Very, very simple, all you gotta do, really, you have to depress the retainer pin and unscrew it. I got lots of videos on how to rekey it, very simple, easy, not tough. And so you can see right there, all we have to do is put it in, and tighten up the screw again.

Again. And there we go, nice and tight. It’s in there. I upgrade it with a drill-resistant, pick-resistant lock. I like the Primus High Security Cylinder. It goes in here nicely, but it’s a modification. It’s not really meant to have that happen, but a slight modification, and I can upgrade the cylinder. It’s a good cylinder. It’s well-made. It’s not impossible to pick, but we can’t go into pick-resistance, but I have videos on how to pick ’em, rekey them, pick them, and the upgrade that I do to mine.

Now you don’t have to do this. I just like to do it. Some people, if you want to match it to other locks in your house, or you want to go high security, I change the cylinder. So to reinstall, this is exactly the way we took it off. And a nice feature just clips in. Make sure our data cable, you always gotta make sure you don’t crimp these. Hook up the data cable. Try to do this for the camera. See, there’s a little bit of a recess in there, so we can put our cabling in there. This just goes in nicely, and you give it a little check before we throw the machine screws in here. Reinstall the battery pack, no extra wires to hook up. Boom, check it, always check your key.

It’s all happy it’s got batteries. And the key works perfect. Always make sure you can put the key in, lock it, and remove the key, and make sure we can unlock it and remove the key. Then you know it’s all timed perfectly. Let’s lock it, we’re going away. Everything’s happy. The Schlage Encode is a fantastic system, and they’ve made it even better. All you have to do is remove the inside cover, and the battery pack just pulls out.

There are no wires to disconnect or anything. It just slips in. It’s got contacts at the bottom. So just pull it out. Your batteries just pull out extremely easy. It takes four double-A batteries. And again, just follow the instructions, put ’em in. We are finding that the Encode, because it has Wi-Fi, it is using batteries more. They seem to last about six months. That’s ’cause the Wi-Fi uses a lot of battery power. That’s all it is, just pull it out, put it back in, put the cover on, and you’re in business.

It says everything’s fine. It’s all happy. Put in alkaline, you put in four double-A batteries, alkaline. Do not use lithium, because the alkalines will give you a warning beep. The lithium will just give you one beep, and that’s it. The batteries are dead. So the differences between, the alkaline will slowly reduce power, and then they’ll give you a lots of little warning beeps, before they go dead, where the lithiums just give one beep, usually, and then it’s dead. So they keep peak power, and then they just died. So put in alkalines.

I am gonna run some rechargeable batteries. They say don’t put in rechargeable batteries. I don’t know why not, so I am going to test rechargeable batteries and let’s see what happens.

Schlage Encode vs Schlage Encode

So what’s better, the Schlage Sense or the Schlage Encode? They’re both fantastic electronic deadbolts, and they’re both similar with slight differences. In this configuration, it has Bluetooth only. And the Encode has Bluetooth and Wi-Fi built-in. So that’s what it boils down to, right now, what applications you want. Now if you have existing Schlage Senses, just go pick up the adapter. It’s a Wi-Fi adapter, so this lock has the same capabilities, almost, as this one. This one’s limited. This one has 100 user codes.

I can’t remember exactly, 30 or 40 user codes. And this, the Encode, has a little bit more options on, I don’t know if it’s backward-compatible to this, right now, but we have a few more functions on this for, yeah, I can have a code that’s only valid Mondays, between eight and nine, or something like that, which is great. If you got housekeepers, or you got caregivers looking after your parents, these locks are excellent. This one’s just, right now, it comes with all the bells and whistles. They’re both highly recommended, and you can have this one, just with the Bluetooth, with the app.

You don’t even need the app for either ones of these, but it’s basically, you’re paying money. Use the app, the app is simple, works on your Android phone, works on your Apple phone, iPhone. The Bluetooth on this is very powerful, audit trail, change your users, add your users, not as a powerful, at the moment, as the Encode has a lot more bells and whistles, but they’re both fantastic. So you’re good with both. Just depends what application you wanna have.

And remember, they’re both compatible with the major systems, for the Alexa, Google, and Apple, and some of the new stuff coming out, and other systems. So you’re good getting either/or. These are my favorite electronic deadbolts, at the moment. In conclusion, I love this deadbolt. The Encode is great, built-in Wi-Fi, built-in Bluetooth, free app, powerful app, 100 user codes, self-locking, I love that, or you can turn it off and don’t it self-lock, and an audit trail, and now I can schedule, if I got a housekeeper or, a lot of caregivers now, people are buying these for their parents, easy to use, and the caregivers, you can put them on a schedule, when they can come and go, and you also have an audit trail.

You can also have, every time it’s opened or only on certain times, you can have your app will tell you when the door is opened, locked, who’s coming and who’s left. It’s good for kids, knowing what time they came home. You don’t know what time they left, but you know what time they came home. So I love it. It’s a great lock. I highly recommend it. I hope you enjoyed watching this video. Subscribe to my channel. Also visit my website and you can see what online locksmith training I have for beginners, intermediate, and advanced, as well as my covert methods of entry and my non-destructive methods of entry.

In conclusion, the Schlage Encode is a great lock.

For further information on Electronic Deadbolts go to Keyless Locks

For further information go to Mr. Locksmith New Westminster

 

Mr. Locksmith New Westminster: (604) 259-2522

Schlage Encode Smart Keypad Deadbolt New Westminster

Terry Whin-Yates is a 3rd Generation Locksmith with 35+ years of locksmith experience and a BA (Honors) in Criminology from Simon Fraser University.