The August Lock Wi-Fi is a substantial improvement over the August Lock Pro.
But its battery life isn't just bad - it's unworkable.
Fortunately, the issue can be fixed.
Our August Lock Wi-Fi was going through batteries at an absolutely remarkable rate.
It requires expensive CR123 batteries, which allow the smaller form factor.
But we found ourselves replacing those batteries every 2 weeks at BEST.
This felt extremely wasteful.
So we looked into finding rechargeable CR123s.
Those worked... for a couple of days.
Swapping out rechargeable batteries every 48 hours simply wasn't working.
So we reached out to August.
They told us that we were experiencing atypically low battery life, but that even with disposable batteries, 4 weeks was standard. To us that wasn't acceptable.
The issue... the August Wifi Lock can't really keep its wifi connection going indefinitely on battery. Bluetooth, which is what prior generations used, can be extremely low power.
So, we tried the August Connect Wifi Bridge, hoping that IT could handle the wifi, while connected to mains power.
In theory, we'd turn off the wifi on the lock. The lock would connect to the Connect bridge via Bluetooth. The bridge would handle the wifi connection.
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| August Connect Wifi Bridge |
Reader... it worked.
It really, REALLY worked.
It's not cheap, usually around $80. But it turns your August Wifi Smart Lock from a disaster into a fantastic smart home addition.
We are now getting 3 or 4 months from the RECHARGEABLE CR123 batteries.
This is an absolutely remarkable turnaround.
Now... I'm not gonna let August completely off the hook here. The Wifi Smart Lock, out of the box, has a broken HomeKit integration AND a wifi connection that requires constant battery replacement.
BUT - if you get Homebridge up and running, and you acquire a Connect Bridge, the lock functions as it should.
And, as we've said several times before - the physical tooling of the Wifi Smart Lock is SO MUCH BETTER than anything that came before it from August, and frankly, better than anything else we've seen on the market.
It's just a shame that so much tinkering and accessory products are required. But for us - it's working pretty great right now.
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