The Best Door Lock | Reviews by Wirecutter

Top pick

Resistant to forced and stealth entry, easy to buy, and widely recommended, the Schlage B60N is like a residential version of a high-security deadbolt.

The Schlage B60N is our pick as the best deadbolt for most people. This single-cylinder lock is affordable, widely available, and far more difficult to lockpick or bump than many others in its price range. It’s passed enough physical tests to earn a Grade 1 rating by ANSI/BHMA (the highest rating possible), which means it’s essentially a residential version of Schlage’s true high-security deadbolts, which are meant for government and commercial buildings.

Installing the B60N is straightforward, and its has a range of finishes. The various finish options (satin nickel, aged bronze, bright brass, antique pewter, bright chrome, satin chrome, and matte black) can likely match your current hardware. While reporting this guide, we asked four locksmiths to make a choice between Schlage and the other widely sold brand, Kwikset, that offers Grade 1 deadbolts. They were unanimous and decisive: Schlage.

For under $40, the B60N gives you a deadbolt that’s resistant to all common methods of forced entry. The Grade 1 designation means the B60N has passed tests for door impact, bolt strength, resistance to sawing and prying, lock cycles (250,000 lock-unlock operations), and other physical concerns. Simply put, this lock has been repeatedly sledgehammered, Sawzalled, and crowbarred—and stayed locked. (BHMA doesn’t make every detail of the tests public, but I spoke with Mike Tierney, standards coordinator for BHMA, at length, and this summary may be of interest.)

A steel sleeve protects the bolt against sawing, prying, and ice-pick attacks, and its sloped, sealed external housing means thieves can’t easily grab and twist it with pliers to break the lock mechanism. (Most Grade 1 deadbolts, including the B60N’s main competitor, the Kwikset 980, also feature these protections.)

When it comes to resisting stealth entry, the B60N features a five-pin tumbler that’s mounted with spool pins. Spool pins (they’re shaped like their name suggests) are much harder to pick and bump than standard cylindrical pins, which are used in many older and/or cheaper designs like the “tested to Grade 3” locks we eliminated from consideration.

That’s because spool pins have sharp edges, and as locksmith Wayne Winton explains, “When you bump it, you make the pins jump up, but they catch on those sharp edges. That also makes it more difficult to pick, because you get a false set [a false indication that the pins are in the right place to unlock the deadbolt].” Simply put, the B60N is hard to bump or pick; Winton, a highly accomplished lockpicker, considers Schlage tumblers “kind of nasty” to overcome.

That said, the B60N’s main competitor, the Kwikset 980, is inherently bump-proof and virtually unpickable, due to its different design: it has what’s called a wafer tumbler, as opposed to the Schlage’s pin-tumbler design. So I asked four locksmiths, point-blank: If they were limited to Kwikset or Schlage—the non-high-security models available to everyday customers—which would they choose? Their answers were swift and unanimous:

Richard Reichert, Major Lock & Glass: “Schlage.”

Gerard Corsini, Joseph Lock and Alarm: “Security purposes, I would go with Schlage.”

Vincent Divittorio, DV Locksmith & Hardware: “I would definitely go with Schlage before I’d go with Kwikset.”

Wayne Winton, Tri-County Locksmith Service: “I prefer Schlage highly over Kwikset.”

In short: Schlage has the confidence of every professional we spoke with. And faced with the B60N, most thieves would look for other points of entry—like your windows—or, more likely, simply move on to a more vulnerable home.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

We’d gladly point out any flaws in the Schlage B60N, but this product is generally excellent.

One complaint is that it comes with a very basic strike. A pierced metal plate that leaves the bolt-hole lined with unreinforced wood. To Schlage’s credit, the strike is made of thick metal and is anchored by a pair of seriously robust 3-inch screws, but we prefer reinforced strikes that line the bolt-hole with metal, like the one that comes with the Schlage 600, 700, and 800 series (see The competition, below); and we prefer three or more screws, too. To that end, we also have a pick for a reinforced strike you can pair with this lock.

The B60N also has no inherent defense against breaches of “key control”: effectively, knowing who has, or more importantly who could have, your keys. Basically, anyone who gets hold of a B60N’s keys can have a copy made at any hardware store or locksmith. But we’re not convinced that’s a major concern to most people. First, simply by replacing your deadbolt—and thus, replacing your house keys—you gain a significant measure of basic key control, because nobody with a set of the old keys (a babysitter, for example) can unlock your door anymore. Second, to gain complete key control, you have to buy into high-security locks, whose keys can be copied only by certified locksmiths after a positive ID of the owner. That’ll add $100 or more to the cost of a deadbolt, and again: Most of our experts said other security upgrades—like sturdier window locks—are a better investment.