Yale Assure Keyless Bluetooth Smart Lock review:

a lock without a key" might sound like a lyric from a depressing piece of country music, but it's actually the pitch for the Yale Assure smart lock. For $200, it's a deadbolt that offers a touchpad for coded entry, a Bluetooth radio to pair with a companion app on your phone and, notably, absolutely no place to put a key.
Keyless locks like this one eliminate the threat of someone breaking in using a lockpick or a bump key, but they also remove a time-tested means of entry -- your key -- from the equation. With the Assure on your door, your only means of getting in are the touchpad and the companion app. And, given that you can get a keyless touchpad lock sans smarts for roughly half the price of this one, there's an awful lot of pressure on that app to make the Assure a worthwhile upgrade.
 
In the end, the Assure doesn't even come close. You can't use the app to lock the door from afar, and it won't even tell you if the door is locked in the first place. Aside from sharing access with others, all the app really offers is a way to pull out your phone and use it to unlock the door when you're already standing right in front of it. At that point, I don't know why you wouldn't just leave your phone in your pocket and punch in your code.
For an extra $50, you can upgrade the Assure with a Z-Wave or ZigBee radio module, or, starting in April, a $75 Apple HomeKit module that'll let you lock and unlock it using Siri voice commands. All of those will expand the Assure's smart features, but if that's the kind of thing that interests you, then you're better off just getting one of several other smart locks that include those sort of smarts from the get-go (and which don't ask you to pay extra for them). In general, almost all of those competing locks make more sense than the Assure does.

A dated design

The Yale Assure smart lock looks like the gadget that it is, which might not be ideal if you're looking for something inconspicuous that won't advertise the fact that you have disposable income to spend on things like Bluetooth deadbolts.
Aside from adding in nodes on the bottom of the lock that'll let you power it with a 9V battery if the juice ever runs out, the Assure borrows the exact same build that we've seen from Yale's smart locks for years now. Either the team at Yale is extremely pleased with that design, or they haven't bothered to put any thought into refining it.
The latter would be a mistake given how competitive the smart lock category is getting. Just look at the Assure's closest rival, an upcoming keyless smart lock from Kwikset called the Obsidian. It features a modern, minimalist design and a slightly smaller interior footprint than the Assure, too. I know which one I'd rather bolt to my front door.
Installing the Assure is simple enough, requiring only a screwdriver, some measuring tape and about 20 minutes of your time. That said, as with all smart locks, you'll want to make sure that your door is properly aligned before buying one. If you need to push or pull on the doorknob in order to turn the lock smoothly, then that's something you'll need to fix. You'll also want to make sure that the hole in your doorframe is deep enough for the entire deadbolt.
As for your phone, you'll need an Android device running Android 4.1 or later, or an Apple device running at least iOS 9.

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