Consumer electronics manufacturer Kwikset on Monday announced the latest addition to its Kevo product family that comes in the form of the Kevo Contemporary, a lineup of smart locks boasting a wide variety of features. The core design principle used as the basis for creating the series is that traditional keys will soon become a thing of the past and the act of unlocking your home should be performed with something you already carry around at all times – your smartphone. The product is hence somewhat similar to contactless unlocking solutions previously employed by the automotive industry, whereas you’ll only need to have an authenticator in the vicinity in order to unlock your door by simply touching the Kevo Contemporary smart lock. Besides Android and iOS mobile devices, the same feature also supports Android Wear-powered gadgets in an effort to be as flexible as possible.
The principle makes the need for duplicating physical keys a thing of the past, allowing you to simply grant access to your household to other people on a per-device basis. The lock also saves a log of all arrivals and departures and can notify you about them in real time. The Kevo Contemporary lineup can communicate with a variety of third-party Internet of Things products such as the Honeywell Total Comfort and Nest Learning smart thermostats, Skyebll and Ring-made doorbells, and the Apple Watch. Alexa integration is also part of the package via a third-party skill, as is support for IFTTT.
The Kevo Contemporary will be sold alongside Kwikset’s existing offerings from the same smart home series – Kevo Convert and Kevo Plus. The newly unveiled locks still don’t have a firm availability window attached to them and have only been announced as coming to the market at some point this year. Regardless, the tech company already decided on the price tag for its new gadgets, having confirmed the Kevo Contemporary devices will have an MSRP of $229. Kwikset will be selling its products directly to customers and they’ll also be carried by a number of the firm’s distribution partners in the United States. No information on the potential global availability of the lineup has yet been mentioned, while consumers in the U.S. will be able to purchase the locks in Iron Black, Satin Nickel, Polished Chrome, and Venetian Bronze variants. Starting tomorrow until Friday, Kwikset will be demonstrating the capabilities of its locks at Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada.
