TCL D2 Plus Fingerprint Smart Lock review: It’s better than basic

Price When Reviewed

$119.99

Best Prices Today: TCL D2 Plus Fingerprint Smart Lock

TCL jumped into the good lock market late in late 2024 with some formidable—and dear—locks that had been hit or miss, maybe rushed to market with out sufficient testing. The producer has since taken a step again and is fleshing out its lineup a bit extra thoughtfully, together with the launch of this budget-priced providing, the TCL D2 Plus Fingerprint Smart Lock Plus.

Specifications

The TCL D2 Plus appears rather a lot like its large brother, the TCL D2 Pro, however with a significant change underneath the hood: The Pro is a palm vein scanning lock, the place the Plus depends on a extra pedestrian fingerprint scanner as its main authentication system. The largest benefit is that the change helps get the value means down: An MSRP of $110 in comparison with $170 for the Pro mannequin. That $60 distinction makes it a stable worth.

The exterior of the aluminum-clad lock, which is rated IP55 for weatherproofing however with no ANSI/BHMA certification, provides only some surprises, together with the aforementioned fingerprint scanner, a touch-sensitive numeric keypad, and assist for NFC playing cards (the SKU reviewed right here doesn’t include any playing cards, however you should purchase the lock bundled with several fobs at Amazon for just some {dollars} extra). An uncovered bodily keyhole—together with two keys—offers one other technique of entry.

Christopher Null/Foundry

An understated doorbell button is embedded within the lock’s keypad. When a customer presses the button, you’ll hear a chime and obtain a push notification in your smartphone. This product is not a video doorbell, nonetheless, and it has no video options in any respect; nor does TCL provide a secondary chime that may be put in inside the home. A USB-C port on the underside of the outside escutcheon can be utilized for emergency entry if the lock’s batteries die whilst you’re out.

Speaking of batteries, you’ll must carry your individual: Eight AA cells, which TCL says will present about 6 months of working time. The lock connects on to your 2.4GHz Wi-Fi community, eliminating the necessity for a bridge or good house hub. Amazon Alexa and Google Home are each supported if you wish to lengthen your ecosystem past the fundamentals of the TCL Home app.

Installation and setup

Christopher Null/Foundry

The course of of putting in the TCL D2 Plus is similar as it’s for entry-level locks, with two bolts connecting the outside escutcheon to a mounting body on the within of the door. The inside escutcheon mounts to that body with simply two extra bolts, and a single electrical cable connects the 2 parts, making this a fast set up in comparison with the remainder of the business. Popping the eight batteries into place feels just like the extra onerous a part of the method.

More excellent news: TCL has moved from the terrible Tuya app that it initially relied upon for the TCL D1 sequence, and now has its personal cell app, TCL Home. This is a superb enchancment, and establishing the lock with this app was easy. The app robotically found the lock as soon as it was powered up, and urgent a button underneath the battery cowl accomplished the onboarding course of. Answering a number of easy questions added the lock to my Wi-Fi community, and after three(!) firmware updates it was prepared to be used.

Using the TCL D2 Plus Finger Print Smart Lock

The TCL D2 Plus is basically intuitive and simple to make use of, though you’ll must spend a little bit of time within the settings menu to optimize it totally. One possibility I like to recommend altering instantly is to show off “Device Security,” which requires you to enter a PIN within the app each time you utilize the app, which shortly turns into very tiresome.

Christopher Null/Foundry

Other settings cowl the fundamentals: Auto locking could be set to between 10 and 120 seconds (although the lock has no door sensor and can lock whether or not it’s open or closed), and wrong-try safety permits you to specify 5 to 10 incorrect permission makes an attempt earlier than it disables the lock for two to 5 minutes. Notifications could be individually set for unlocking, locking, doorbell presses, and alarm circumstances (such because the activation of wrong-try lockout).

Each of those actions is logged within the Events tab on the house display and is summarized by day and week within the Home Assistant tab. One extra characteristic on this tab is named Homecoming Reminder, which is a sort of alarm/reminder that can push a notification to the administrator if a configured person has not returned house and unlocked the door inside a window of time that you just set. It’s clearly designed for folks to maintain tabs on kids, and it labored nicely in my testing.

Christopher Null/Foundry

User administration is nicely designed, with credentials assigned person by person. Each person can have a number of fingerprints, PINs (4 to 8 digits), and NFC playing cards assigned. The lock helps as much as 100 of every kind of credential in whole. Fingerprints and NFC playing cards all the time present 24/7 entry; PINs could be set to everlasting or time-limited, though there isn’t any facility for recurring passwords which might be legitimate, say, solely from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. Duress PINs can be utilized to ship an alert to the administrator if a person is unlocking the door underneath duress, so the admin can notify authorities. Lastly, one-time, immediate-use passwords could be generated on demand inside the app; these expire inside 10 minutes, and just one could be lively at a time.

I encountered no vital points working with the TCL Home app or the lock’s enter programs all through a number of days of testing. My solely actual criticism about utilizing the lock was with some elements of the {hardware} itself. The thumbturn requires numerous stress to get the bolt to increase all the way in which, and the motor can’t get the job finished both, although the bolt made it most of the way in which to full extension—simply a few millimeters shy.

Christopher Null/Foundry

I wasn’t thrilled with the way in which the deadbolt jiggles round when it’s prolonged, both, feeling a bit free and unsteady. Without formal testing it’s laborious to know the way safe the lock is bodily; however anecdotally, it simply doesn’t really feel all that safe. Remember, the lock just isn’t ANSI/BHMA licensed.

The doorbell on the entrance of the lock, in the meantime, seems like an afterthought. The tiny icon just isn’t illuminated except the keypad is lit up, and I might by no means realistically anticipate a customer to search out the button to faucet. It is, nonetheless, very straightforward to by accident press it whenever you’re making an attempt to unlock the door. My recommendation: Set it to mute and neglect it’s there.

Should you purchase the TCL D2 Plus Fingerprint Smart Lock?

I’ve seen the road worth of the TCL D2 Plus Fingerprint Smart Lock drop as little as $80, making for an excellent deal. It’s a bit much less of a discount at its $120 MSRP, but it surely nonetheless seems like an affordable worth for what you get.

At the very least, this lock is a dramatic improve over the still-available TCL D1 series, placing TCL in a significantly better place to advantage consideration within the good lock area.

This evaluate is a part of TechHive’s in-depth protection of the best smart locks.