Smart lock with decent battery life?

[Trent Reeve]

I bought my first property in late October and have been going through remodel. I put on a Kwikset Halo which had been working great until about a week ago. I now constantly see "jammed" on the app when it is locked fine. research says that can happen as battery drains (its at 55%).  I didnt get the lithium batteries, so that may help. And I may just have to have the cleaners change the batteries monthly.

what are people's experience with other WIFI smart locks like Schlage Encode? how long do batteries last? 

also, any recommendations for a key-lock box as backup if the smartlock fails? this is a townhome, so hiding spaces are a little limited.

[Carolyn Fuller]

Any smart lock that is using wifi (versus bluetooth or Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter) will eat up a battery. Both the Wifi and the jamming cause the battery to drain. The drained battery is not causing the jammed notifications. Even if the door seems to be locked, it the bolt did not go back smoothly, it will be reported as jammed.

We got our first smart lock fairly early-on and it jammed constantly, causing us to have to change the batteries much too often. We switched bolts to a tapered bolt and the jamming ended. Our batteries typically last 12 months. It is easy to monitor them remotely, which brings up the 2nd issue. A smart lock on wifi with no intervening Zigbee/Z-Wave or Matter hub will eat up battery power. We are using a SmartThings hub with 2 of our Zigbee enabled smart locks with tapered bolts that rarely jam. We changed the batteries 5 months ago and the battery level is currently at 93%.