The Schlage Sense Pro is a beautiful smart lock. Sleek, discreet, and simple to use, it’s Schlage’s smartest lock to date. Thanks to ultra-wideband (UWB), it unlocks as I walk up to my front door; I don’t need to enter a code or tap my phone or press my finger against it. I’ve tested several hands-free unlocking systems that rely on geofencing and other radio technologies, and UWB is faster and more reliable. It’s the first one I actually trust.

The $399 Sense Pro is Schlage’s first smart lock with ultra-wideband auto-unlock, its first to support Matter-over-Thread, and its first without a physical keyhole. It works with Apple Home Key for both hands-free and tap-to-unlock access with an iPhone or Apple Watch. There’s no visible hardware on the front, just a barely perceptible Schlage logo and a keypad that only appears when you tap the lock. It looks high-tech enough to be at home on the USS Enterprise without looking out of place on my front door.

These are all great upgrades if you’re comfortable with smart locks — and I am. No one in my family has carried a physical door key for nearly a decade; controlling my lock remotely and sending visitors digital keys is something I would never give up. 

But for some, this lock might be a touch too smart. With no keyway and a touchscreen keypad that disappears when not in use, it isn’t immediately obvious how to use it. Others — those with household members on Android — may need to wait for it to get a little smarter. While the Pro should work with Samsung and Google devices for hands-free and tap-to-unlock later this year, thanks to Aliro (see sidebar), it only works with iPhones and Apple Watches for now. 

Schlage Sense Pro

Score: 8

Pros	Cons
Hands-free unlocking with ultra wideband is fast and reliable Other unlock methods are also super speedy Nine plus months battery life on Thread Clean, compact design Works with Apple Home Key Supports Matter, Thread, and Wi-Fi	Expensive Hands-free requires an iPhone or Apple Watch and an Apple Home hub No Android support for hands-free at launch Thread caused some setup issues Not good for gardeners

Where to Buy:

• $399 at Amazon
• $399 at The Home Depot

The Sense Pro is one of only two residential deadbolts to support UWB hands-free unlocking using Apple Home Key (the other is Aqara’s U400, which I reviewed earlier this year). This is different from existing hands-free unlocking solutions, sometimes called auto-unlock. These rely on some combination of geofencing, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and an app running on your phone. I’ve tested them all, and found myself waiting at a locked door one too many times. But UWB hasn’t failed me yet. 

The tech can interpret the signals from the UWB antenna in the lock and the UWB radio in your phone or watch to determine not just where you are and how close you are, but also whether you’re actually approaching the door by tracking your distance, speed, and angle of approach. Schlage calls its implementation Schlage Converge.

Hands-free unlocking is the main reason to consider buying this very expensive lock, but bear in mind that you will also need an Apple Home hub to use it with Apple Home Key. (And those just got more expensive.)

In testing, it worked quickly and smoothly in most scenarios, unlocking at the right moment, so I could simply press the handle and walk in. It never unlocked before I got there or after I had walked through the door. I don’t have to deal with a key, keypad, or other method when my hands are full. It’s also so cool having my home react to me; it feels like the future.

It never unlocked when I didn’t want it to, ignoring me while I sat on the porch, walked past the house, or moved around in the front yard. It only ever unlocked when I walked up to the door to open it, and even worked while I was on a phone call. The only times it failed to unlock immediately were when I had my phone in my back pocket or in a backpack; I had to turn slightly for it to connect. 

It also unlocked if I returned quickly — whether I ran back from the car to grab something or walked back from the garage on the side of the house. But if I only walked a few steps, it wouldn’t unlock. Reassuringly, it never unlocked when I was inside the house.

Unlocking the Schlage with the other available methods — tap-to-unlock, app unlock, and keypad — was also fast and smooth in every instance. The deadbolt moved smoothly and cleanly, never getting jammed (which is unusual in my very old door). Response times were instant in all cases, and the auto-lock feature (which can be set in the Home app or the Schlage app) worked reliably. I could also lock the door manually by pressing on the LED light bar.

Having my door unlock automatically feels magical to me, but for some it sounds scary. The good news is that this new tech is designed to be secure. UWB unlocking uses a direct lock-to-phone handshake; it doesn’t use cellular data or Wi-Fi, and it works even during a power outage. A Scrambled Timestamp Sequence (STS) protects the lock from signal eavesdropping and tampering, and Schlage says the lock enforces a UWB distance check to foil attempted relay attacks, such as those seen on UWB-enabled car keys.

If the convenience of all this appeals but you’re concerned about the door unlocking too soon, Schlage offers two alternative modes to the standard unlock-on-approach: Touch, which won’t unlock until you touch the lock, and Delay, which adds a short pause before unlocking. 

Another worry is that someone who has your phone can unlock your door. Using UWB unlocking in Apple Wallet does require Express Mode to be turned on, which bypasses Face ID or Touch ID — that’s why it’s hands-free. So, yes, if someone has your phone, they could open your door, just as they could with your physical key. However, Express Mode only works if your phone has been unlocked by you within the last day. 

My main frustration with UWB unlocking is that you have to have your phone or watch on you. This bothered my husband the most. He does a lot of work in the garden and garage without his phone and doesn’t have an Apple Watch, so he mostly uses the keypad. 

If you’re like him, a lock with fingerprint or facial recognition unlocking is a faster option than entering a code, plus you’ve always got your finger or your face on you.

If you want the best of both worlds, the Aqara U400 may be a better fit. It has a keypad and UWB hands-free unlocking with Apple Home Key, like the Schlage. But it also includes a fingerprint reader and a physical keyway. At $270, the U400 is still expensive for a smart lock, but it’s cheaper than the Schlage and also has a door sense feature that tells you if your door is open or closed, which the Sense Pro lacks. 

However, the U400 is about double the size of the Sense Pro and far less elegant-looking; it uses a large rechargeable battery that requires a bulky rear housing, whereas the Pro uses four AAs. The Pro feels more premium overall, with an all-metal design; it also has a higher BHMA physical security rating. The Pro offers built-in Wi-Fi, which the Aqara lock doesn’t — you need a separate hub for out-of-home control.

I tested the Schlage and Aqara auto-unlock capabilities side by side, and their performance was largely identical (even down to the back-pocket fail), with the Pro being just a touch faster. The only time it wasn’t was when testing the claim that UWB can detect velocity and unlock faster if you approach faster. The Aqara unlocked as I got to the door, while the Schlage took a second longer. 

I did struggle to set up the Sense Pro. While the physical installation was simple and connecting to the Schlage app was easy, pairing to Apple Home failed repeatedly. You can use either app to control the lock or both simultaneously, but the Apple Home app is required for hands-free unlocking. 

The issue appears to have been Thread connectivity, which I eventually solved with the help of the Thread Tools app, several Thread border router reboots, and moving a Thread smart plug near the door. That feels like too much to ask just to set up a smart lock. However, once connected, it’s been rock solid and responds instantly to app control.

The Schlage Sense Pro nails UWB hands-free unlocking. It’s fast, reliable, and finally delivers what geofencing never could: a lock that knows the difference between me arriving home and me faffing about on the front porch. Its discreet design, Matter-over-Thread reliability, and Schlage’s build quality make this an excellent smart lock — if you’re an iPhone household with $400 to spend.

Everyone else should wait. Currently, the Sense Pro only works with Apple Home Key, so Android users miss out on its flagship feature. Schlage says support for Samsung and Google devices is coming later this year, through Aliro. The Aqara U400 supports tap-to-unlock on Samsung phones and is less expensive. 

But the Sense Pro is the first device I’ve tested that successfully builds futuristic technology into a lock that doesn’t look like a lock at all. If you’ve been waiting for that, the Schlage Sense Pro is for you.

Photos and screenshots by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Four years ago, overlooking a canal in Amsterdam, the smart home industry collectively launched Matter, the one interoperability standard to rule them all. Heralded as the solution to the industry’s struggles, Matter was built on open standards and existing technologies and is the result of years of collaboration between traditional rivals, including Apple, Google, Amazon, and Samsung.

Matter promised an end to walled gardens and ecosystem lock-in. It promised to make a smart home device, like a lock, lightbulb, or sensor, easy to buy and set up. It promised you could choose any brand, use any platform, no expertise required — it would just work.

It didn’t. Today, Matter is still not there. Adding devices to your smart home is still cumbersome and finicky; sharing them across ecosystems can be unreliable, and some features users expect aren’t part of Matter and still require the manufacturer’s app. But, based on what I saw at the Unify conference in Austin, Texas, last week, Matter is much closer to its promise of a simple, reliable, interoperable smart home. 

Following a rocky launch and years of broken promises, the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) designated 2025 as the year to fix Matter — and I have seen significant improvements. This year at Unify, the CSA’s first public-facing event since the Amsterdam launch of Matter, version 1.6 of the spec was announced.

The most significant new feature, Joint Fabric, will let you create a single smart home network that can be controlled by any Matter platform — which is the Matter we thought we were getting all along. The question is, will the platforms adopt it? And that’s a question that has been at the heart of Matter’s struggles to date. It turns out that corralling an industry is not easy.

The mood at the three-day conference was optimistic but realistic. There was widespread recognition that Matter hasn’t done what it set out to do, but that the work is being done to get it there. 

I asked Tobin Richardson, the CEO of the CSA, whether he believed Matter had achieved that initial promise that you could buy a device with a Matter logo and it would be easy to set up and use on any platform. “We’re on the path,” he hedged. “In some ways, yes. But in some places, universally and globally, we still have a few more milestones to get there.” 

The biggest concern among many of the attendees I spoke to — which included representatives from silicon vendors, manufacturers, and ecosystem companies such as Google, Amazon, and Samsung — is the widening gap between the spec and its implementation by ecosystems. This disconnect has led to more consumer confusion, rather than less.

Matter 1.6 launched this month, but Apple, Google, and Amazon are barely at 1.3, which came out two years ago. SmartThings has committed to adopting new specs within six months of release, but Samsung still hasn’t added Matter support to its appliances.

Without platform parity, Matter’s promise simply can’t be fulfilled. George Yianni, head of technology at smart lighting company Philips Hue, summed up the general feeling: “It would be great if, within a year of new features being published in the spec, it was broadly supported by the ecosystems.”

Matter may have mostly solved the initial challenge of getting everything to work together, but it’s still working on getting everyone to work together. “Matter long-term won’t be successful until everybody can use it at parity. That’s the goal. And all the companies know that,” said Richardson. While he concedes there’s a natural tension with competitors like Google, Apple, and Amazon working together, he says they know that the result is a bigger market. “These companies want to make money, but that’s a good thing for Matter,” said Richardson.

Technologist Kevin Ashton, who coined the term Internet of Things and developed WeMo at Belkin, put it best, saying on stage that companies need to “be brave enough to compete on features and benefits rather than trying to build a prison for your customer.”

Ultimately, it is the CSA’s role to make competitors work together. “We create a safe space for them to collaborate,” Jon Harros, head of testing and certification at the CSA, told me. “Collaboration is still painful, but it is collaboration, and it is the way to move the needle forward.” He points to the Interoperability Lab they established and that the platforms are now accepting Matter certification for their Works With badges as evidence.

Six years after Apple, Amazon, and Google issued the first-ever press release with all three company names in the headline, Richardson said the collaboration remains strong. “Yes, there are cracks all the time,” he conceded. “But not in the foundation. In some ways, it is less confrontational now, more congenial over how we’re going to solve this. Early on, there was a real wresting of control.”

Over three days at Unify, I heard from representatives of all the major platforms and manufacturers across the industry, as well as the heads of the groups that manage the major wireless protocols: Thread, Wi-Fi, Zigbee, and Bluetooth. The universal message was that, by building on open standards and collaborating to find solutions, the smart home industry is moving toward a stronger future. And despite the slower-than-expected adoption from Google, Apple, and Amazon, I was repeatedly assured that the sheer resources these companies continue to pour into Matter is evidence that they’re in it for the long term. 

One concrete example I was given: Earlier this year, Ikea, an early member of Matter, rolled out an entire line of new Matter-over-Thread smart home products. It was the first large-scale, real-world deployment of Matter-over-Thread to a broader consumer audience, and it quickly ran into serious problems. Customers either couldn’t connect to the devices or they were dropping offline, and while not all buyers were affected, it was a big enough problem that the industry took notice.

At the conference, engineers from several of the major ecosystems told me that they all gathered with Ikea for a weeklong troubleshooting session, working from 7AM to 10:30PM each day — even going to the local Best Buy to buy five of every Thread border router and tracking down ISP router manufacturers on LinkedIn to alert them to bugs they’d found that were impacting the devices’ ability to connect to users’ networks. They tell me the efforts unearthed numerous potential problems and led Ikea to roll out several fixes.

This type of collaboration feels unprecedented for any industry and is a strong indicator of the investment in the standard. It’s clear that the engineers and product teams at these companies are dedicated to Matter’s success. But I still have concerns about the continued investment of their management.

Apple’s slow-and-steady approach seems the most solid. Google has certainly shown renewed interest in the smart home, propelled by Gemini. But I see Amazon as the biggest concern for Matter. The company’s stance seems more on the side of “we support everything” than “we believe Matter is the best solution.” It has also begun moving further toward its own proprietary Sidewalk protocol since Ring founder Jamie Siminoff’s return to the company.

A lot hinges on Matter’s perceived success in the market. Several companies appear to be circling the standard, not fully committing until it becomes the default, ready to retreat if they’re not forced by market pressures to adopt it. But by the numbers, Matter is looking strong.

As a new standard, it has achieved a lot in a relatively short time. It now covers most smart home device types, including, finally, security cameras, and has certified over 1,200 unique certified products. The CSA has 940 member companies, with 300 actively working on the standard and more arriving. ADT just joined the board of directors, bringing another large, legacy company deeper into the fold.

Similarly, Thread, one of Matter’s two wireless connectivity protocols, has also seen a huge uptick in interest, including a 27 percent increase in membership over the last two years and over 1,000 certified devices, with 151 arriving just this year. There are now 71 Thread-certified components, meaning silicon providers are building solutions for manufacturers, creating a strong foundation for new companies looking to use Matter in their products.

My biggest takeaway from Unify is that despite the problems the standard has faced, it’s not in danger of failing. Despite some outliers and cautious approaches, the industry coalesced around Matter four years ago, and that coalition remains strong. 

That doesn’t mean Matter where it needs to be, however. Along with faster platform adoption and a need for more devices in the newly supported device types (cameras in particular), it still needs to deliver on its initial promise of simplicity. As I said at the panel I hosted at the conference, for me, success will be when I can feel confident that when I hand my 80-year-old father a Matter lightbulb, he can get it set up and working with no help from me. 

For manufacturers, the roadblocks to that simplicity are still too many. Yianni at Philips Hue told me that while he believes Matter has landed as the “definitive smart home interoperability mechanism,” it’s still confusing and complicated for his users. 

In particular, this comes back to the slow adoption of the spec by ecosystems. The initial experience Matter delivered for Hue users was worse than what they could offer without it. “Matter launched too early, but a lot of those teething problems have been solved, with a lot of hard work from many companies,” he said. 

The challenge now is bringing those solutions to people’s homes. Yianni said he’s most excited for the just-announced Joint Fabric. “Now we actually have the possibility to have a single Thread network and a Matter fabric for the home, like we have a Wi-Fi network. That’s how everyone assumed it would work.” However, as everyone has learned, just because it’s in the spec doesn’t mean it will be implemented.

Additionally, Yianni feels that communication to consumers about what Matter is has been disappointing. Too much has been placed on device manufacturers, and the ecosystems still push their users to look for the Works With badges. “The badges are a crutch,” he said, arguing that most regular customers aren’t looking for them. “Most consumers just assume things will work.”

He and others I spoke to believe it’s worth the investment by all the ecosystems and the CSA to make this much simpler for people looking to buy smart devices, and to reinforce that the Matter logo is all you need to look for if you want to know whether a device will work with your smart home. “Because today it’s just confusing,” he said. 

John Bartucci, of Fortune Brands, the owner of Yale and Moen, pointed out during a panel that retailers also rely on the badges. “Retailers want products that won’t get returned; correct badging is how consumers trust it’ll work at home.” Austin Stewart of Schlage Locks agrees that talking with customers and retailers is still “a Works With story.” For their customers, the Apple Home badge means this lock works with the Apple Home app, “and that’s the experience you get,” he said. As Matter grows and becomes more ubiquitous, that story may change. He compared it to Wi-Fi, a term so common that his grandmother knows it, but today, Matter is not there yet. “It’s the experience that we’re delivering, not necessarily the technology,” he said.

Ultimately, the Matter logo needs to become synonymous with smart home connectivity, in the same way Bluetooth is synonymous with wireless audio and Wi-Fi with wireless internet. “Today, if you go buy some new headphones, you don’t look for the Bluetooth logo; it should be the same for Matter with smart home,” said Yianni. It should be so ubiquitous that the idea of a smart home device without Matter is as absurd as a wireless router without Wi-Fi. 

That brings us back to the core concept of Matter: trust. The standard promised that I could just hand my father a smart lightbulb and trust that I would never get the call asking why he’s sitting in the dark. We’re not there yet. But, given the momentum at Unify and the evidence I saw of continued investment by many manufacturers and ecosystems, Matter feels closer to fulfilling its promise than it’s ever been.