Level Home unveils Level Touch, a $329 HomeKit-enabled smart lock that can be unlocked with a touch or included NFC access cards
The new Level Touch builds on the work started by the Bolt — Level is a relatively new company in the smart home scene, but today it's announcing its second product of the year: the Level Touch.
Context & Ripple Effects
Ten months after emerging from stealth with $71M and a $249 retrofit lock built around a Walmart in-home delivery partnership, Level Home is shipping its second product of 2020 — and moving upmarket. The Level Touch keeps the company's fit-over-your-existing-deadbolt approach but jumps to $329 and adds two things the original lacked: native HomeKit support and included NFC access cards alongside touch unlocking.
The category Level is entering has a graveyard of pricing experiments behind it: Lockitron's $99 phone-unlocked deadbolt set the low bar in 2015, August paired a $299 Siri-capable lock with a keypad and doorbell cam that same year, and Otto's $699 keyless Bluetooth lock tested the ceiling in 2017. Level's stealth-era debut already staked out the retrofit niche; the Touch now competes on access methods and ecosystem certification rather than price.
First-order effects
- HomeKit users gain a retrofit option from Level, whose first lock shipped without Apple ecosystem support — the Touch makes iPhone-native control the default rather than an afterthought.
- Level's own lineup now spans a $249 entry point and a $329 model, forcing the company to justify an $80 premium on touch sensing and NFC cards alone.
Second-order effects
- August, which reached Siri support through partner app integrations back in 2015, faces pressure to match native HomeKit hardware plus physical NFC credentials rather than app-level compatibility.
- The included NFC cards give landlords and short-term rental operators a key-fob-style handoff that phone-only rivals like Lockitron's Bolt never offered, opening a property-management buyer Level's first lock didn't target.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, smart lock competition shifts from connectivity specs to layered physical access — touch, cards, phones — with ecosystem certification (HomeKit today) acting as the shelf-space gatekeeper that decides which retrofit vendors reach mainstream buyers.
The trend: Smart locks are evolving from single-method phone unlocking toward multi-credential hardware certified for specific ecosystems, with retrofit installation as the wedge against full-replacement incumbents.