Introduction: the smart lock that should never have existed
For the past month, my front door has had no keyhole. No spare hidden under the doormat, no backup key tucked away in a drawer: the mechanism has vanished entirely from the outside face. In its place sits a glass module, understated, flat, that blends seamlessly into the handle.
The model I'm talking about today is the Loqed Touch Smart Lock 2S, and it has one quality very few smart home products can claim: without Shelly's last-minute acquisition of the brand in 2024, this lock simply wouldn't exist anymore.
The promise of a fully keyless front door isn't new on the market. What changes with this 2S is the approach: instead of adding a motor on top of the existing mechanism, the manufacturer chose to replace the whole assembly in one go. And that's precisely what fixes the recurring flaws of this product category.
The real flaw with most smart locks
The majority of smart locks sold today follow the same pattern: a motor block bolted on top of the existing interior handle. Practical on paper, but with two consequences that end up wearing thin in daily use.
The first is the visual result. It's hard to make an add-on module look like anything other than an add-on module. Whether it comes in chunky white plastic or brushed aluminium, the eye immediately spots the addition, like an electronic box taped onto a door that wasn't designed for it.
The second, more problematic, is the fixing method. Two schools coexist: reinforced adhesive of the 3M kind on the inner door panel, which always ends up giving in under thermal cycles, and clamping screws on the cylinder, which leave lasting marks on the barrel. For renters, this last point is no minor detail: at the end-of-tenancy inspection, a scratched or deformed cylinder gets expensive fast.
The Loqed 2S sidesteps both approaches entirely. It doesn't add itself, it replaces. The cylinder, the mechanism, the outer handle: the whole assembly is redesigned as a single product, manufacturer included. Visually, the result is striking: you'd think the door had been designed this way from the start.
A lock designed as a unified product
Before going further, an important disclosure. I'm the Shelly France Ambassador for 2026, which means two things: I receive certain products free of charge for testing (this lock is one of them), and I'm plugged into the product feedback loop, which is noticeably rarer. Your comments make their way back to the teams. In return, I keep full editorial freedom, and that's exactly why we're also going to talk about the limits of this lock, not just its strengths.
A brand rescued from disappearance
Loqed is a Dutch company that has been specialising for several years in high-end smart locks. The name stays under the radar in France and Belgium, because the brand had never really rolled out commercially over here.
In 2024, Loqed enters insolvency proceedings. In plain terms, the company was on the brink of disappearing, taking with it several years of R&D, specific know-how on European door mechanics, and patents on the touch module. Shelly, which at the time had no product in the lock category, took the opposite bet to the rest of the industry: buy out the technology, the stock, and relaunch the brand under its ecosystem.
The Loqed Touch Smart Lock 2S is the first model fully driven by Shelly's teams since the acquisition. The motor has been redesigned to complete a full cycle (locking or unlocking) in two seconds, hence the "2S" suffix in the commercial name.
What's in the box: everything is included
Where the direct competition usually sells the motor alone at an equivalent price, the Loqed 2S includes everything needed to switch from a mechanical door to a connected one:
- The interior motor block with its brushed metal handle
- The exterior touch module with integrated screen
- A European cylinder certified SKG 3 stars, the highest rating on the European market for resistance to break-ins
- The complete set of batteries (branded, not generic no-name)
- The screws and trims needed for installation
First instinct when you compare the bundle price to the competition: look for where the manufacturer cut corners. Cheap plastic handle? Bottom-shelf barrel? Dodgy batteries? Going through the kit reveals none of that. The handle is solid metal, the cylinder carries the triple SKG/EN1303/EN15684 certification, and the supplied batteries are Energizers. The cost saving probably comes down to cutting out middlemen on the key components, but the result in use is unambiguous.
The exterior module: the end of the keyhole
This is the element that grabs your eye the most. On the outside face of your door, in the spot where the cylinder used to sit, you now have a thin glass module with an integrated touchscreen. No optional keypad to buy separately, no numerical pad screwed alongside: everything is in this one piece.
Its fixing method deserves attention, because it solves a recurring physical security problem in this product category. The module isn't glued to the door or screwed onto the outer rose. It sits sandwiched between the two pieces of the handle, mechanically fixed, and made solid with the whole structure once reassembled. Direct consequence: impossible to rip off or peel away, unlike the deported keypads stuck on with 3M tape that you see on some competitors.
One drawback worth mentioning honestly: the height. Since the module is built into the handle, it sits at roughly 90 cm off the floor depending on your installation, so noticeably below eye level. For typing in a PIN code, it's not the most natural posture. To be qualified though, you'll see why, because in real-world use you'll hardly ever need to type that code.
What happens if the battery dies while you're outside?
A fair question when you remove every physical key. The Loqed 2S answers with a simple and effective backup mechanism: two exposed metal contacts are positioned on the front face of the outer module. If the battery is flat, you press a standard 9V battery against these contacts, just long enough for the lock to wake up and unlock the door once you've entered your code.
In other words, even if you ignore low-battery alerts for weeks (which nobody should do, but let's be realistic), you'll never be left stranded outside. A 9V battery costs a couple of pounds at any corner shop.
Installation: where to find the full procedure
Rather than paraphrasing the assembly procedure here, I'd rather point you straight to the official 3D installation video published by the manufacturer. It's probably one of the best installation videos I've seen for smart home hardware, step by step, with genuine clarity on the parts and the direction of assembly. No point reinventing a worse guide.
One detail worth anticipating before buying: the length of your door spindle. The new mechanism adds a few millimetres compared to a classic cylinder, and depending on your door, the original spindle may turn out to be just too short. On my own door, I had to swap my spindle for one 1 cm longer. This isn't an isolated case, so check this point ahead of time, or order a spare spindle 10 mm longer to avoid a second order on installation day.
The rest of the configuration (motor calibration, Bluetooth pairing, creating accesses) is done through the Loqed app, which walks you through each step once the mechanical install is done.
Living with the Loqed 2S day to day
A spec sheet says very little about the real comfort of a smart lock. The most telling thing is to describe a typical day, because it's in the repetition of mundane gestures that the experience gets judged.
Coming home: Touch to Open
When you leave your home and cross a radius of around 500 metres (configurable), the lock goes into deep sleep and shuts down the Bluetooth scanning for your phone. When you come back into that perimeter, it "wakes up" and anticipates your arrival. By the time you're within a metre or two of the door, the exterior screen displays Touch to open.
You press a finger against the module, the door unlocks. No phone to pull out of your pocket, no app to open, no code to type. And crucially, the module is a generic capacitive touch surface: it reacts to any contact, not only bare fingers. In practice, if you come back with your arms full of bags, a press of the knee or forearm does the job. It's the kind of detail that sounds trivial on paper, but transforms the experience when you arrive with your hands full.
The experience isn't 100 % perfect. Over a month of use, I had two or three cases where Touch to open didn't show up immediately, usually when I hadn't gone far enough past the perimeter. In that case, the module displays Connecting to phone, then opens in one to three seconds. Less instant, but still functional. If you've gone out without your phone, the module falls back to PIN code entry.
Locking up for the night: Twist Assist
From the inside, manual locking goes through a classic rotary thumb turn. The Loqed novelty here is Twist Assist: you only need to nudge the thumb turn very slightly, and the motor immediately takes over to complete the full cycle.
I'd enabled the feature as a test, with no great conviction. A month later, I still haven't turned it off. It's one of those features you can't imagine being useful until you've tried it.
In the morning: locking on the way out
As you leave in the morning, you pull the door shut behind you. The lock picks up on the closure, you press a finger against the outer module for half a second, and it's locked. No key to turn, no app to open, no code to type. A quick press as you walk past, and the routine is done.
Security: what if someone touches the module while I'm at home?
A recurring question, and a fair one. If the lock opens via Bluetooth detection of my phone, what happens when my phone is sitting on the living room table while I'm watching a film, and a malicious person presses a finger on the outer module?
This scenario was clearly anticipated, and it was handled on two complementary levels.
Two Bluetooth antennas for triangulation
The lock embeds two separate Bluetooth antennas: one pointing outward, the other inward. Every time it detects a registered phone, the lock compares the signal strength received by each antenna. If the signal is stronger on the inside, the phone is inside your home: the lock refuses to open on an outside press. If the signal is stronger on the outside, you're coming in: Touch to open activates.
It's a local triangulation approach, with no cloud dependency, that closes the obvious "phone inside, press outside" loophole.
Motion Sense: the lock ignores stationary phones
The second layer is more subtle. The Motion Sense feature outright cuts Bluetooth communication between the lock and any phone that hasn't moved for a minute. As long as the phone is static, the lock behaves as if it doesn't exist. It takes a movement (in practice, a phone carried on you) for the connection to re-establish.
Concrete consequence: when you're asleep or sitting still for a while with your phone on the table, your phone is invisible to the lock. No signal to compare, no possible opening via your identity. And a side benefit, battery life on both devices improves.
Over a month of daily use, and with deliberately tricky tests, I haven't managed to catch the lock out on this front.
Battery life, accessories and Home Assistant compatibility
Battery life depends (really) on your door
The battery life claimed by Loqed sits between 9 and 12 months on a set of batteries, which is in line with the market average. But you have to understand that this number is a rough range, valid for the competition just as much as for Loqed, and that it depends heavily on two factors: usage frequency, and above all the effort the motor has to put in to drive your door's mechanism.
The harder a door is to operate (poor alignment, dry seal, tight strike plate), the harder the motor has to push, the faster the battery drains. That holds for every smart lock on the market, but it's particularly true for motorised models like the Loqed 2S.
A personal note: my own door is frankly a pain to operate, and I'd tried another smart lock on it before. The result had been a nightmare, alignment was critical, the slightest shift sent the motor into fault mode. With the Loqed 2S, on that very same door, I had zero blockages in a month, including after three back-to-back installations for the needs of the shoot. It's a detail, but it says something about the motor torque and the mechanical tolerance of this product.
The rechargeable battery pack: take it in the same order
If you order the lock, add the rechargeable battery pack to your basket. It includes eight AA cells, a 3-metre cable and a power adapter. The principle is dead simple: when the low-battery alert lands, you plug the adapter into the batteries in place, you let it recharge, and the door stays operational throughout the process. No dismantling, no service interruption.
It's one of those accessories you always regret not buying with the initial order. Better to plan ahead.
Home Assistant compatibility: native integration since 2023
On the smart home side, the Loqed Touch Smart Lock has had an official integration in Home Assistant core since version 2023.7, which means it's well stabilised by now. Configuration takes a few minutes: the lock is detected automatically on the network via zeroconf, a personal access token is generated from the Loqed web portal, and the integration is added through the standard HA interface.
The strong point of this integration is the lack of polling: state changes (locking, unlocking, full opening) flow into Home Assistant in real time via local webhook. For automations that need to react quickly to an unlock (turning on the entrance lighting, a welcome scene, notifying your partner), that's exactly the behaviour you want.
That said, you have to stay clear-eyed about the radio layer. At the time of writing (May 2026), the Loqed 2S communicates over Wi-Fi only, with no Zigbee, Z-Wave, Thread or Matter. The local integration via the Loqed bridge is reassuring on cloud independence (communication doesn't leave your network), but on the radio layer itself, we're on Wi-Fi with all its constraints: power draw on the lock side, the need for stable coverage near the door, and coexistence with the rest of your network. For a single device, it's manageable. It's likely that future iterations of the range will broaden protocol support, but as of today, that's not the case.
Conclusion: the first smart lock that stays on my door
After a month of daily use, the question is no longer whether the Loqed 2S is technically good, it is, but whether it has a lasting place on my front door. And the answer is yes, without reservation.
My clear preference goes to this Loqed Touch Smart Lock 2S for one simple reason: it's the first smart lock I've tested that doesn't look like a module bolted onto an existing product. The disappearance of the keyhole on the street side, the polished mechanical integration, the touch module made solid with the handle, the backup power thought through from the start: the whole package shows a product designed as one block, not an opportunistic assembly.
The limits exist and they need naming: Wi-Fi only as it stands, low module position that makes PIN entry a bit awkward, and the need to check your door spindle length before buying. None of these points changes the verdict, but they deserve to be known before ordering.
If you decide to take the plunge, the code HOWMATION10 gives you 10 % off nearly the entire Shelly catalogue, including this lock and its rechargeable battery pack. In my view, it's the reference to recommend today in the keyless smart lock category for European cylinders.
Est-ce que par hasard, cette serrure serait compatible avec les portes dont il faut relever la clanche pour les fermer ?
Merci
je vois qu'elle n'est compatible qu'avec les cylindres type européens et par les cylindres ronds suisses, ce qui est confirmé sur leur site: savez-vous si une version pour ce type de cylindres ronds/suisses est prévue? Si non, pouvez vous remonter cette info en temps qu'ambassadeur France et grand voisin d'un petit pays en partie francophone? (même chose pour le multiprise ;))
Un grand merci pour cet article, comme pour tous les autres!!