It is well-known that any invention has a long way to go before becoming perfect. So do intelligent fingerprint locks.
So, what are the advantages of fingerprint locks?
First, distinguished from the traditional mechanical lock, a fingerprint lock has fancy appearance, which might be the most appealing characteristic of the fingerprint lock for people noticing it for the fist time. But this advantage may not be that attractive for ordinary families.
Second, it is convenient for people to use the fingerprint lock. With intelligent technologies, the fingerprint lock can be opened and closed without a key while the traditional mechanical lock must be opened and closed with a key. Moreover, the key of the fingerprint lock can be changed for thousands of times. In this point, the fingerprint lock is more cost-effective than the traditional lock and is suitable for all people.
With the fingerprint lock, users are able to enter and leave the room without any keys, which saves time. Moreover, there is no need for lock users to worry about being unable to open the lock and enter their own houses if the keys are lost. Therefore, using the fingerprint lock can save both time and money.
However, this function is not suitable for most families and is only beneficial to places with high staff turnover. For example, in urban China, there are lots of families comprised of only three members without nannies or professional cleaners. These families almost have no need to change their fingerprint passwords, but they still have to pay money for the intelligent fingerprint lock due to the function which is useless for them.
The third point is the security problem of the intelligent fingerprint lock. In general, the fingerprint lock adopts the structure with a mechanical key hole for the unexpected cases and the key hole is similar to the key hole of the cheapest traditional mechanical lock with extreme low security. It can be easily picked just like the A class pin tumbler lock.
Except the old-style A class lock cylinder, there are new super B class lock cylinders and C class wafer tumbler lock cylinders on the current market. These two kinds of lock cylinders have not been picked until now. Therefore, it can be concluded that high-quality locks will not be picked and can ensure safety for users. Meanwhile, the cost of the high-quality mechanical lock is less than the cost of the intelligent fingerprint lock. First, the price of the high-quality C class wafer tumbler lock is only from 200 RMB to 300 RMB, which is much lower than that of the intelligent lock. Second, making duplicate keys for the lock may cost about 200 RMB, which is still cheaper than purchasing a new intelligent lock.
In the previous passage, several impractical advantages of the fingerprint locks are introduced. The appearance of the fingerprint lock is always attractive, yet the fancy appearance of the lock is not that important to ordinary families in China. The fingerprint lock can be opened and closed without a key and the fingerprint password can be changed for thousands of times, yet most Chinese ordinary families do not hire nannies or drivers. Thus, the turnover rate of these families is low and they have no need to change the fingerprint password.
To overcome the unexpected cases such as the breaking down of the fingerprint identification system, the fingerprint lock adopts the structure with the low-security mechanical lock cylinder. It is obvious that the low-security lock cylinder can not guarantee a safety environment for users.
In the following passages, we are going to introduce the differences of after-sale services between the mechanical lock and the intelligent fingerprint lock, and some accompanying problems of the different after-services.
Compared with the mechanical lock, nowadays, what ordinary people benefit from the intelligent lock is its characteristics such as fancy designs, convenient usage and working with intelligence. In a word, the intelligent lock can not offer high-level security protection for users and yet the price of this kind of lock is extremely high.
Finally, after-sale services of the mechanical lock and the intelligent lock are quite different. Generally, the after-sale service of the intelligent lock is provided by its local retailers, and lock components of the intelligent lock are supplied by its original lock manufacturers. However, there are no universal components of intelligent locks yet, and the new lock components, provided by other manufacturers instead of the original lock manufacturers, may not be able to replace the broken components.
As a result, you will have no choice and you can not adopt components produced by other manufacturers if the lock needs repairing and the broken components need to be replaced with new ones. In such case, the original manufacturer becomes the only supplier to offer new components to repair the broken intelligent lock, and the maintenance costs can be exorbitant.
How about the traditional mechanical lock? If a traditional mechanical lock is broken within the warranty period, retailers need to provide the after-service for free. Even though the warranty periods are different due to the different lock manufacturers, in general, the twelve month warranty period of the mechanical lock is provided, and warranty periods of the super B class mechanical lock and the super C class mechanical lock are longer: three years.
Therefore, if an unlucky user changes the mechanical lock with a warranty period of one year for three times in three years, he or she needs to pay about 800 RMB, while the working performance of the new intelligent lock and the business condition of the lock manufacturer in the following three years and after three years remain unpredictable.
All in all, the best way to purchase a lock is referring to your own preference.
