I saw the first smart lock with UWB at CES 2025 – and it feels like a keyfob for your front door – ZDNet
‘ZDNET Recommends’: What exactly does it mean?ZDNET’s recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing.When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.ZDNET’s editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form.The Ultraloq Bolt Mission is this year’s most groundbreaking smart lock at CES. It is the first to market that supports ultra-wideband and unlocks hands-free. This means that whenever an approved device, like your phone in your pocket, approaches within 10 feet of the smart lock, it will unlock.We named it the official Best of CES winner in the Privacy & Security category. See all 12 of the official Best of CES winners named by the CNET Group (ZDNET, CNET, PCMag, Mashable, and Lifehacker) in partnership with the organization that runs CES. Also: CES 2025: The 17 most impressive products you don’t want to missThe Ultraloq Bolt Mission lock is smart enough to know when a user is on the indoor or exterior side of the door. In addition to UWB, the Ultraloq Bolt Mission also supports NFC-enabled devices to unlock it. This allows you to unlock your door with a single tap of your compatible phone or smartwatch. It is initially compatible with Android phones, but U-Tec, the company behind Ultraloq, plans to support Apple Home Key.Since the lock connects to Wi-Fi, it doesn’t require a separate hub but supports Matter over Thread. The lock can connect and conserve battery over a low-power connection if you already have a Matter gateway with Thread support at home. The Matter over Thread connection can extend the battery life to a year. With Wi-Fi only, the eight AA batteries inside the lock can offer about six months of use.In addition to the UWB and NFC unlocking methods, the Ultraloq Bolt Mission has a keypad for entering a keycode and a slot for a physical key. Also: I tested a smart lock with facial recognitionThis lock’s UWB support makes it highly accurate, thanks to the technology’s precision tracking. This protocol’s real-time location precision makes it more accurate than Bluetooth and other forms of geofencing, and it’s secure — thanks to its wide bandwidth.The Ultraloq Bolt Mission UWB + NFC smart lock is available beginning this quarter for $400.
