Smart Lock - Smart Padlock S501

A padlock you open with your thumb. No key to lose, no combination to forget, no key to cut for the second person who needs it. It stores 30 fingerprints, so a household or a small team can all be enrolled and any one of them can be removed later without changing anything for the others.

• Where a fingerprint padlock earns its place
• Thirty people, added and removed one at a time
• The app, and its limits
• Charging and weather
• Which padlock, and where it will live

Store rooms, a gate chain, a generator housing, a toolbox, a shop shutter, a locker. Anywhere the key currently lives on a hook and everybody knows where the hook is.

Three ways in: fingerprint, the Tuya app over Bluetooth, and remotely through the app if you add a gateway. The app also shows the access log, so you can see when the store room was opened, and a passage mode that leaves it unlocked during working hours.

It is Bluetooth. Your phone has to be near it, unless you add the Tuya Bluetooth Hub, which we sell separately. For a heavier shackle on an outside gate, see the S502 heavy padlock.

It runs on a built-in battery you top up over micro USB. The manufacturer publishes about three months on standby or roughly 2,000 openings per charge, and about 100 more openings after the low power warning starts, so there is plenty of notice before it stops.

Where a fingerprint padlock earns its place

Store rooms, a gate chain, a generator housing, a toolbox, a shop shutter, a locker. Anywhere the key currently lives on a hook and everybody already knows where the hook is.

A fingerprint padlock removes the key entirely. Nothing to lose, nothing to cut for the second person who needs access, and no keyhole to pick because there is no keyhole at all.

Thirty people, added and removed one at a time

It stores 30 fingerprints, so a household or a small team can all be enrolled and any one of them removed later without changing anything for the others. The first two prints enrolled become the administrators.

The sensor is a capacitive live fingerprint reader, so it is looking for a finger rather than an image of one.

The app, and its limits

Three ways in: fingerprint, the Tuya app over Bluetooth, and remotely through the app if you add a gateway. The app shows the access log, so you can see when the store room was opened, and offers a passage mode that leaves it unlocked through working hours and secures it again after.

It is a Bluetooth device, so your phone has to be near it unless you add the Tuya Bluetooth Hub, which we sell separately.

Charging and weather

A built-in rechargeable battery tops up over micro USB. The manufacturer publishes about three months on standby, or roughly 2,000 openings per charge, and about 100 more openings after the low power warning starts, so there is plenty of notice before it stops.

The weather rating is not published for this model. Ask us before leaving it fully exposed rather than trusting a figure nobody has stated. For a heavier shackle on an outside gate, the S502 heavy padlock is the one to look at.

Which padlock, and where it will live

Thirty prints on this one against ten on the heavier S502, and a slimmer shackle. If it is a store room door or a locker, this is the one. If it is a compound gate chain or a container, take the heavy one.

Tell us where it is going, because the weather rating is not published for this model and we will not pretend otherwise. Somewhere fully exposed deserves a straight answer from us first. Both padlocks are in smart locks; the app itself is documented by tuya.com.