The Austrian smart lock manufacturer Nuki is launching its new 5th generation of smart door locks: the new top model, the Ultra, plus the fully retrofittable Pro and the basic Go model. In what has become a good tradition, these new electronic door locks have once again made a stop in our laboratories before their release to put their security to the test. Just like all their predecessors did.
What strikes every user when they hold the Nuki Smart Lock Ultra or Pro in their hand for the first time is the completely new design of the 5th product generation. While the basic Go model should look very familiar to long-time Nuki users, the Ultra and Pro models set new standards in design – what remains is the iconic illuminated ring. The Nuki technology is now housed in a stylish stainless steel cylinder, in a significantly smaller form factor than all previous generations. Apart from that, the new locks offer all the features that users expect from a Nuki Smart Lock: The Ultra and Pro versions have short-range communication options via Bluetooth, as well as WiFi and Thread modules so that they can also be controlled remotely. The Go version allows remote control with the optional ‘Remote Access’ package, which can be activated at any time with a one-off payment. Setup is still very intuitive via the mobile applications for Android and iOS. A user account is still not absolutely necessary, neither for Bluetooth nor for remote control via the Internet, so that the Nuki products can still be used in a very data-saving manner.
The applications themselves were of course put through their paces again this year in our tests and here too, nothing seems to have changed for the worse in terms of the usual quality of the Nuki product range, which has been confirmed time and again over the years: The applications continue to be cleanly implemented, secure the most important aspects such as authentication and communication absolutely adequately and did not provide any other indicators of serious vulnerabilities or manipulation possibilities.
Communication of the devices themselves is also still securely encrypted – this applies to both local communication via Bluetooth and cloud communication. The former is, as usual, AES encrypted, the latter via TLS 1.2 – both absolutely adequate. Once again, we ran a whole range of standard attacks on the connections of the devices and applications, but found no evidence of any problems.
In terms of data protection, the Nuki solutions have been excellent since the first test more than 7 years ago and have continued to improve in this area ever since. The privacy policy is, in the most positive sense, “extensive” with detailed information on every cookie and date recorded, no matter how small. This is all the more remarkable as the Nuki solutions are really data-efficient and therefore do not really require a lot of explanation when it comes to data collection, processing and forwarding. Since recently, we also send the mobile Android applications of products to be certififed through our Android Privacy Analysis, which meticulously identifies even the small inconsistencies between user information and actual behavior. But even this did not reveal any reasons for appropriate criticism at this point: What data is collected (and this is exclusively data for troubleshooting and statistical analysis) is also mentioned in the privacy policy – exemplary!
All in all, the brand new generation of smart Nuki locks, like all its predecessors over the years, was convincing. In terms of security and data protection, Nuki products are still in excellent shape! Accordingly, we are delighted to once again award our “Approved IoT Product” certificate to the Nuki Ultra, the Nuki Pro and the Nuki Go this year. Congratulations to the manufacturer!
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