Ring's $249 Lock Fixes the Dead Battery Problem, and I Still Have No Reason to Buy It

The one complaint I hear about smart locks is always the same: the battery died and I could not get into my own house. Ring announced its first lock on 7 October with an answer to exactly that. There is a dial on the outside. Turn it five to ten times and it generates enough power to wake the lock up and let you in. No key hidden under a plant pot, no locksmith at nine at night.

The rest of it: $249, four ways in (fingerprint, a backlit touch keypad, the Ring app and Alexa), and it fits a standard single cylinder deadbolt with no extra wiring. Ring plans to sell it in the US early in 2027. It has not cleared the FCC yet, so that date can move. Five new 4K cameras were announced the same day.

One detail worth correcting before anyone panics about their router: remote locking and status updates run over Amazon Sidewalk, not your home Wi-Fi, where Sidewalk coverage exists.

So, do I buy it? No, and the reason has nothing to do with the hardware.

Ask yourself what a smart lock is actually for. The honest answer is other people. You let the cleaner in while you are at work. You open the gate for the gardener without driving home. You give a code to whoever feeds the cat for a week. That is a real problem and $249 is a fair price for solving it.

I do not have a cleaner or a gardener. Nobody needs to get into my house while I am out. For me this is a lock that costs five times what a lock costs so my friends can watch me open the door with my thumb. That is not capable and cheap. That is the third C arriving on its own, and the third C never gets to come alone.

The crank still deserves credit. It is the kind of fix someone built after listening to complaints instead of adding another sensor. If you are the person with people coming and going, this is the first smart lock where a flat battery stops being the thing that puts you off. Wait for the FCC clearance and for someone to actually test the dial, because right now the dead battery claim is Ring’s claim and nobody has verified it.