According to the FBI’s “2022 Uniform Crime Report”, approximately 1.1 million burglaries occur in the United States annually, and 34% of them enter homes through door lock loopholes. Smart locks reduce the risk of home invasion by more than 33% with technologies such as biometric verification, dynamic passwords and remote surveillance. Take August Smart Lock Pro as an illustration. The 256-bit AES encryption technology on board is capable of creating dynamic keys that merge 10^38 times a second. In contrast with the 5-7 pins configuration of conventional mechanical locks, the cracking time is prolonged from an average of 2.5 minutes to over 27 years (based on the security test data of LockLab).
Operationally, the smart locks reduce the users’ average unlocking time to 0.8 seconds (a 2023 report published by Yale University’s Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory), 1,500% more efficient compared to the operation process of traditional keys at 12-15 seconds. This enhancement is directly translated in emergency evacuation scenarios – when a home needs to evacuate as quickly as possible, the smart lock’s self-sensing door opening can reduce the escape time by 40% (refer to the NFPA Fire Escape statistics). Market research company Statista also pointed out that houses with smart locks within them experience an average annual reduction in insurance price by 18%. Some insurance companies, such as State Farm, offer up to 25% premium discount for users of smart locks.
Technically speaking, the majority of smart lock devices such as Schlage Encode Plus have an IP54 level of waterproofing, can operate efficiently in a temperature range of -40°C to 70°C, and can endure up to 3 years on a battery (with the average number of unlocking episodes being 8 times per day). Its internal 3D face recognition module only has an error rate of 0.001%, 100 times more efficient than fingerprint recognition with an error rate of 0.1%. In case of five consecutive incorrect attempts, the system will automatically trigger the 30-minute lockout function and alert the user’s mobile phone within 0.5 seconds via the Z-Wave protocol. According to consumer report tests, the real-time early warning system has increased the level of burglary termination by 62%.
Economic studies show that the initial cost of smart locks (which average at 250) can achieve ROI in a span of 18 months from the preservation of maintenance costs and insurance savings. The average annual maintenance cost of traditional locks is about 120, while the smart lock’s self-diagnostics can control the failure rate to under 2% (ASSA ABLOY Group 2023 White Paper). Smart locks, when connected to the security system, improve the overall security response time by more than 90 seconds – the real-world example of the Ring Alarm system shows how this collaborative mechanism reduces the average police response time on-site from 9 minutes to 7 minutes and 30 seconds.
User behavior data show that 78% of smart lock users check their door lock status 4 to 6 times a day (as statistcally counted by the backend of the Kwikset smart lock APP), which is ten times more than the 0.5 times checking of normal users. This frequency interaction made the unlocked door reminder function easily bypass 43% of potential security threats (according to ADT Security’s 2024 users survey). When combined with smart homes, smart locks with the Matter protocol can improve the accuracy of triggering security systems to 99.7% and decrease the percentage of false alarms from 15% in typical systems to 0.3% (statistics from CSA Connectivity Standards Alliance certification).
The growth trend validates its merit: The market size for global smart locks is expected to increase from 3.1 billion US dollars in 2023 to 7.9 billion US dollars in 2028 (CAGR 20.6%). In countries such as South Korea where the rate of penetration is more than 70% (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport of South Korea statistics), the amount of burglars’ cases decreased by 58% compared to a decade ago. This technology spread is changing the security landscape – as more than 60% of US households install smart locks by 2025 (predicted by Parks Associates), property losses for the entire society will decrease by 4.7 billion US dollars annually.