Locks, Doors & Safes

Deadbolts, smart locks, door reinforcement, and safes. We care about steel and strike plates before apps and animations.

Most doors do not fail at the lock. They fail at the frame, where a strike plate is held by two short screws driven into soft trim, and a kick splits the jamb with the bolt still locked. Screws long enough to reach the stud behind the frame cost almost nothing and change the outcome of that kick. It is the least glamorous upgrade on this site and the one we recommend most often.

Smart locks get judged on what happens when the battery dies, the phone is flat, or the Wi-Fi is down. A keyway you can still use, a terminal you can jump from outside, a code that works with no network: those are the features that matter at the door at eleven at night. Auto-lock behaviour counts too, since a lock that relocks behind you is also a lock that can shut you out in a dressing gown.

Safes carry two different ratings and people conflate them constantly. A fire rating describes how long the inside stays under a temperature during a test fire and says nothing about a pry bar. A burglary rating describes resistance to attack and says nothing about heat. A light safe that is not bolted down is a container with a handle, and thieves carry it out to open it somewhere quieter.

Where a review cites a lock grade, it says what that grade was measured against, because a number with no test behind it is packaging.