Keys belong to a bygone era. For your front door in the year 2025, what you need is a device which recognises your fingerprints, takes instructions from your smartwatch, and lets your plumber enter by a one-time pass code sent from anywhere else. All this and more come true with the Godrej Advantis IoT9 – nine ways to unlock packed in one stylish Indian lock which does not cost any more than an expensive smartphone. But there are a few things you might want to know before you decide to purchase it.
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First, let’s get the party trick out of the way: fingerprint, PIN, RFID card, NFC, smartwatch, Bluetooth remote, Wi-Fi, one-time passcode, and mechanical key. Nine options and they all work. In theory, that looks like a war of specification sheets, but in real life, the versatility proves to be invaluable since each of your family members will tend to prefer one method over another anyway. Your teen will rely on NFC from their smartphone. Your parents will opt for a PIN. And you will most likely find yourself using the fingerprint reader more often than not.
A separate mention deserves the possibility of choosing dual authentication. That allows for combining two means for entry, which considerably increases the overall security of the system, especially for those who care about it.
The 360° scanner is fast and mostly accurate, and on good days it feels like living in the future. On bad days – wet fingers, odd angles, or just one of those mornings – it misreads, and multiple failed attempts trigger the alarm. That alarm then has to be silenced manually with a code, which is exactly the kind of friction you don’t want at your front door at 7am.
This isn’t a fatal flaw, but it is a real one. If you live with elderly family members or anyone who might panic at a sudden alarm, set them up on PIN or RFID card mode instead. The fingerprint scanner is best treated as the power user’s option rather than the household default.
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One of the innovations introduced by the IoT9 that makes sense is Privacy Mode. Essentially, this locks the lock digitally. What this means is that once the feature is enabled, neither your fingerprint nor the PIN or the RFID card will work to unlock the door on its own, and you need either the master key or the physical key to bypass it. This is great to have during those times when you just know that the door must stay locked come hell or high water, regardless of anyone’s credentials.
The Advantis app is the real interface between you and this lock, and it’s good. The layout is sensible, the controls are responsive, and it doesn’t bury important features in three levels of menus.
User management is the place where things get really exciting. First of all, you can configure both regular users with complete ongoing access or scheduled access which will function in specified time frames – handy for hiring domestic help that needs to operate within certain time intervals. Temporary access can be created by generating one-time codes to allow entry to a courier or maintenance specialist, and it is important to note that this type of entry does not require creation of another user account, since it automatically expires when the period comes to an end. This functionality is critical because most houses do not suffer from faulty locks but from outdated access permissions.
The application can manage sounds and alarms too, meaning that users can customize the locking mechanism’s sound response, set up its alarm sensitivity level, and be informed in real time about every attempt to open the door, whether successful or not. Another amazing thing about this system is called audit trail; all the information about all the attempts to unlock the door, whether successful or not, is recorded, along with the exact time and unlocking method used. Now you know whether your teenager really returned home at 3am.
It works with Google Assistant and Alexa, and supports video door phones, which means no need to replace an old intercom system.
Now this is definitely something that needs more emphasis upfront. The IoT9 comes with its own gateway unit. This is basically a little device that always has to be plugged in and hooked up to your Wi-Fi for everything to work. It acts as the medium that connects the smart lock to the internet and makes it actually possible for you to use all the features mentioned above.
Take away the gateway from the picture and forget about all of those benefits. If you are out of the house, there will be no way for you to open your door remotely. There will be no OTP sent out by the system, nor will you have access to the audit trail history. The lock would continue to work on its fingerprint, pin, and physical key modes, however. But that’s hardly the point, isn’t it? If you live in a country that is known to have frequent power cuts, you need to be prepared for that possibility when purchasing this product.
The initial configuration also deserves attention – the pairing of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi took a bit of time and effort, and there was even an issue here and there during the first week or two. The problem got solved when all was correctly set up and the system became highly reliable since then.
Due to the fact that this was a pre-installed unit, there were two aspects that couldn’t be assessed properly. First, the battery life. With its 4 AA batteries and an emergency power source via USB-C port, Godrej Access can operate much longer or less depending on how often you interact with the product through Bluetooth connection and push notifications. Unfortunately, the exact lifetime is not provided by the manufacturer.
The other unknown is the full visitor experience in practice. The scheduled access and OTP features look excellent in the app, but the real test is how seamless they feel when you’re actually coordinating with real people, a delivery that arrives early, a housekeeper who needs their window extended, a guest who can’t figure out how to use the passcode. These are things only extended real-world use would reveal.
The Godrej Advantis IoT9 is currently the most thoughtfully designed smart lock in the Indian market, and that comes through in its features. There are nine different ways to unlock the device, and each of them is unique and functional. Privacy Mode is an intelligent addition in today’s world. The app is a decent smart home companion experience irrespective of pricing. The company’s nationwide service network allows you recourse if anything were ever to happen, which is crucial for a device upon which you will have to depend for your daily entry into your house.
There are some shortcomings with the fingerprint alarm sensitivity and the reliance on a gateway, especially if you live somewhere where power supply is a concern. And ₹68,900 does seem like a steep price for a device like this but it is retailing on Amazon around ₹34,000, and it is worth every penny.
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