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Liftmaster thinks your garage needs a smart lock

The company's new hardware lets you lock up your garage using an app, but it won't come cheap.

Ry Crist Senior Editor / Reviews - Labs
Originally hailing from Troy, Ohio, Ry Crist is a writer, a text-based adventure connoisseur, a lover of terrible movies and an enthusiastic yet mediocre cook. A CNET editor since 2013, Ry's beats include smart home tech, lighting, appliances, broadband and home networking.
Expertise Smart home technology and wireless connectivity Credentials
  • 10 years product testing experience with the CNET Home team
Ry Crist
2 min read
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The Liftmaster Automatic Garage Door Lock.

Liftmaster

Take a quick detour into the smart home aisle at your local hardware store and you're sure to see plenty of smart locks for your front door. But what about your garage? Doesn't the biggest, most visible door into your home deserve some consideration, too?

That's the thinking behind Liftmaster's newest product, an automatic garage door lock that promises to bring some peace of mind to the place where you park your car. Essentially just a big, automated deadbolt for your garage door, the Liftmaster lock works like any garage door lock, except for the fact that you can automate it to lock and unlock automatically, or control it remotely using a smart phone app. 

Shop for Liftmaster Automatic Garage Door Lock

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Liftmaster's selling the lock through a network of dealers as part of its latest automated garage entry systems. Specifically, it's compatible with Liftmaster's Wi-Fi-enabled 8550W and 8360W openers, as well as the new 8587W. Prices will vary by dealer, but buying the lock packaged with one of those openers will set you back somewhere around $650 once installation is factored in. And no, the lock isn't available on its own.

All in all, that's a lot more than you'll spend on a retrofit smart garage opener like Garageio (about $200) or Liftmaster's own MyQ Garage (about $100). Neither of those will actually lock your garage door, though -- they only let you open and close it.

Adding a lock into that equation seems perfectly sensible to me, but it might be a hard purchase to justify when standard garage door locks typically don't cost much more than twenty bucks. Shop around, and you'll also find automated locks that you can install yourself for less than $100.

Adding an automated lock like that to a product like MyQ Garage and selling them as a bundle for more like $200 might have been a better approach, but it's clear Liftmaster is targeting the high-end market to start with. That may very well establish this lock as a smart garage status symbol, but it may also lock out a lot of DIY-minded customers who would have otherwise been receptive to Liftmaster's pitch.

The Automatic Garage Door Lock is available now through Liftmaster's network of dealers, which you can browse here.