Yale Luna Pro+ Review: Great smart lock with a brutal price tag
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We bolted a ₹99,908 smart lock onto a plank of wood. No door, no hinges, no neighbours to judge the price. Just a slab and a lock that costs more than most flagship phones. A month later, I have opinions. The Yale Luna Pro+ looks like a face recognition lock. Yale sells it as one. The FaceScan branding, the 3D structured light and the “Your Face, Your Key” tagline all point straight at your forehead. After a month of use, though, the face scan turned out to be the weakest way to get in. Everything else behaves. That is a strange thing to say about a lock this expensive, so let me explain.
An hour from box to working lock
The installation process is built into the lock itself; this means that a professional from Yale will perform it in an actual household situation. Installation of the lock in our wooden test fixture required 30 to 40 minutes while configuration using the Yale Home application took around 20 more. One hour required to install a lock with so many sensors is reasonable enough. A word to be said here. A piece of wood doesn’t have a doorframe, doesn’t have any alignment issues, nor does it have any swinging doors.
Eight ways in, and seven behave
Every means possible offered by the lock has been tried – code, one-time code, face, fingerprint, RFID cards, phone via the app, phone via its NFC, and even the old-fashioned mechanical key.
The speed has been impressive, and I have not had any false positives in a month’s time. It meant no unwanted people gaining access to the house, and that is far more important than any number in the specification sheet, because an incorrect finger-opening lock can only be a decorative handle. There is plenty of capacity as well – 100 faces, 50 fingerprints, 100 PINs, and 100 cards can be programmed into it without difficulty.
The face scan has a hiccup
Now the headline feature. Yale says its face recognition feature works within 1.2 seconds from distances between 40 and 100 cm, with a height range between 120 and 190 cm. I experienced some delays on the part of the lock when recognizing my face. At times.
The irritating thing about this problem is that at times happens to be when you have to stand in front of your door with grocery bags in each hand or carrying your suitcase back from a long journey. The idea behind face unlock is for such situations. And if it fails when you both your hands are full, then it just fails to fulfill the only purpose that it was added for. Think about it. When it recognized my face, it worked flawlessly around 95 percent of the time.
The second issue is even more peculiar. Face entries never appeared in the application. The description provided by Yale itself offers an activity stream showing how and when your door was opened or closed. Since the door lock relies on knowledge of the people who have opened or closed the door, not seeing the information about face scanning, which is its most expensive function, looks like a mistake. But I reviewed the existing features of the package.
The alarm and the Wi-Fi bridge
I played with the lock mechanism that senses the state of the door – opened or closed – while the lock was locked. The intruder alarm sounded, as expected. And any of the ways to unlock disabled the alarm, which is a very good solution. When something triggers your alarm system in the middle of the night, you do not want to use a mobile application menu to shut it up; instead, you will be able to disable the alarm using a fingerprint. Yale mentions such features as anti-panic exit and automatic locking, and all of them work perfectly.
There is plenty of smart locks that provide remote access as some additional feature which can be bought separately. The Wi-Fi bridge doesn’t come with the package, but it really works great. This is important since it is this very bridge that enables a lock to go beyond Bluetooth and get the capability of checking your door wherever you are. Yale provides this Wi-Fi bridge separately on its website for ₹6,891.
What the spec sheet says
The offset handle keeps your fingers away from the door frame, and the lithium battery pops out for charging. A power bank can also feed it while it stays on the door, which gives you two ways out of a dead battery before you even touch the mechanical key. Here is the full sheet.
| Spec | |
| Unlock methods | Face, fingerprint, PIN, RFID card, mechanical key, Yale Home app |
| Face recognition | Up to 100 users, under 1.2 sec claimed, 40 to 100 cm range, 120 to 190 cm height |
| False acceptance rate (claimed) | Under 0.001% |
| Fingerprints | Up to 50 users |
| PIN codes | Up to 100 users |
| Cards | Up to 100 users |
| Mechanical key override | 2 keys |
| Battery | Rechargeable lithium, removable, charges in place via power bank |
| Backset | 60mm |
| Door thickness | 40 to 100mm |
| Dimensions | Front 103 x 424 x 49 mm, back 76 x 420 x 62.7 mm |
| Connectivity | Bluetooth, Wi-Fi bridge |
| Remote control | Optional, sold separately |
| Handing | Universal, left or right |
| Safety features | Voice guide, auto locking, break-in alarm, anti-panic egress, fake PIN, low battery alert, emergency power |
| MRP | ₹1,31,099 |
| Current price | ₹99,908 |
| Installation | Included |
Verdict
The MRP of the Yale Smart Lock with Alarm is ₹1,31,099, while it is available at a discounted rate of ₹99,908. This is still a hefty amount and makes Luna Pro+ spend its hard-earned points on it. You get a total of eight methods of entry access, including a face scanner capable of storing up to 100 faces, Wi-Fi bridge, mechanical key backup, and an alarm mechanism.
If you are not concerned about the cost, there is nothing to lose by buying it. You get exactly what you pay for in the form of security. But you can get quite good locks at far lesser costs.
Another name that Indian consumers would compare is Godrej. The Advantis series of Godrej starts from Rs. 18,499 with GSL D1, which is such that if you buy five units of it, you would be able to buy Luna Pro+ with money left over. This year’s release by Godrej in the realm of face recognition was the NX Pro Ncrypt home locker.
Hence, if you wish to install a face scanner on your front door, this is what justifies the premium charged by Yale, and this is also where I had problems with it. If not, Godrej has covered all kinds of locks with fingerprint, keypad, RFID, mobile app and even key access for much lower prices.
