Under the UL 1034 safety standard, the average anti-skid resistance of electronic door locks is 450 pounds, much higher than the mechanical locks’ 120-180 pounds. Seattle police data of 2023 indicate that in burglars employing the use of traditional mechanical locks, 83% gained entry within 90 seconds via the use of lock-picking devices. But ANSI/BHMA Grade 2 rated electronic door locks (such as Schlage Encode) will increase the intruder time by over 8 minutes, and the success rate decreased from 67% to 12%. But electronic locks are not entirely secure: At the DEF CON 2023 conference, one model of Bluetooth electronic lock was opened by a $200 HackRF device in 22 seconds because it was using the AES-128 static key, whereas mechanical locks at the same level (for example, Medeco M3) required over 15 minutes to repel the same attack.
The cost-benefit analysis reveals electronic door locks to offer some serious long-term benefits in operating and maintenance. For example, take the landlord with 50 apartments. The mechanical lock loses the average 23% of keys every year, and it costs $120 to rekey a lock. Electronic locks like Yale Assure SL cut the key loss rate to 0.4% by using dynamic passwords. The total five-year cost has fallen from $13,800 for mechanical locks to $7,200 for electronic locks, a return rate of 191%. The disparity occurs in adverse conditions: the failure rate of protection standard IP68 compliant electronic locks, say Ultraloq U-Bolt Pro, is as low as 0.5% at -30°C to 70°C, yet the likelihood of rust in the lock core in mechanical locks, like Kwikset 660, is as high as 34% if the relative humidity is > 85%. During the 2022 Florida hurricane disaster, The circuit-failure rate caused by water penetration is nine times greater in electronic locks than in mechanical locks. The management efficiency of user permissions differs greatly.
The electronic door locks can be controlled using over 2,000 groups of virtual keys. The updating time of permissions has been reduced from the mechanical lock’s 45 minutes (physical key replacement) to 10 seconds (App operation). For example, following installation of Salto XS4 system in a New York office building, employee pass card issuance efficiency was boosted 37-fold, and error authorization rate reduced from 6.2% to 0.3%. But electronic locks do require a power supply: The CR123 battery model, for instance, August Wi-Fi, has up to 12,000 lockouts and costs around $6 per year, while mechanical locks need no power. During the 2023 California wildfire power outage incident, there was a 19% chance that electronic locks would be inoperable for 72 hours because batteries had gone dead. Physical durability tests show material differences. Its 15-year median life of zinc alloy Lock body of mechanical locks (for example, ASSA Abloy 590) and its maximum impact resistance of 500 joules.” However, the aviation aluminum case of electronic locks (for example, Level Lock+) survives only 8 years of identical testing, though the motor works up to 250,000 times (three times longer than the mechanical lock tongue movement duration). Based on the statistics of UL laboratory in 2024, the compliance ratio of electronic locks in water and dust resistance (IP54 and above) is 78%, whereas that of mechanical locks, as it is easy for dust to settle in the structural crevices, the failure rate grows four times under the circumstance of dust concentration >150μg/m³ in the environment.
The market trends nudge towards technological upgrading. The global shipment volume of electronic door locks is expected to grow to 240 million units in 2025, up 217% from 2020, according to Statista. Of these, the share of Matter protocol-supported products will grow to 65%.
Yet mechanical locks still have some markets: 98% of prison systems are equipped with mechanical locks (e.g., BEST A series) because there is no danger of leakage of electronic signals; In explosion-proof areas like oil platforms, the proportion of mechanical locks (e.g., ABUS 83/45) that have received ATEX certification stands at 29 times that of electronic locks.