Quick answer: pick by who is going to be standing at the door. An iPhone household that wants to tap and walk in should take the Schlage Encode Plus; a household with kids, dog walkers or anyone who would rather not carry a phone is better served by the fingerprint pad on the eufy Smart Lock C220, which also costs a tier less.
Bottom Line
The way this choice goes wrong is predictable. Someone buys the lock with the better reviews, then discovers that the one person who uses the door most, a ten-year-old, a cleaner, a parent who leaves the phone in the car, has no good way to get in. Entry method is the decision here. Everything else is a tiebreaker.
Schlage Encode Plus
HomeKit is native and needs no bridge, and the lock can be added to Apple Wallet so an iPhone or Apple Watch tap opens it. Alexa and Google Home work alongside that, the keypad is a full touchscreen, and the deadbolt carries an ANSI/BHMA Grade 1 rating. It runs on four AA cells. There is no fingerprint reader.
See Schlage Encode Plus →eufy Smart Lock C220
A fingerprint scan, a PIN code, the app or the included physical key all open it, and Wi-Fi lives in the lock rather than in a bridge you have to plug in nearby. It sits a full price tier below the Schlage, which is most of its argument. Read the ecosystem and certification details off the current listing; eufy's regional pages have not stated them consistently.
See eufy Smart Lock C220 →Side by Side
Where a cell below reads "Check listing", that is deliberate: the published sources disagree, and a guess in a spec table is worse than an honest gap.
| Feature | Schlage Encode Plus | eufy Smart Lock C220 |
|---|---|---|
| Price tier | $$$ | $$ |
| Ways to unlock | Touchscreen code, app, Apple Home Key, physical key | Fingerprint, PIN code, app, physical key |
| Fingerprint reader | No | Yes |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi built into the lock, no bridge | Wi-Fi built into the lock, no bridge |
| Apple HomeKit | Yes, native, no bridge needed | Check listing |
| Apple Home Key (tap to unlock) | Yes, via Apple Wallet | Check listing |
| Alexa / Google Assistant | Yes, native | Check listing |
| Certification | ANSI/BHMA Grade 1 | Check listing |
| Install type | Full deadbolt replacement | Full deadbolt replacement |
| Batteries | Four AA | Check listing |
| Physical key backup | Yes | Yes |
Price tiers are approximate. $ = under $50, $$ = $50 to 150, $$$ = $150 to 300, $$$$ = over $300. Tap any link for the current Amazon price.
A Thumb or a Phone Tap
Apple Home Key is the Encode Plus feature people actually notice. The lock is added to Apple Wallet, and from then on an iPhone or Apple Watch held near the keypad opens the door without unlocking the phone or opening an app. For an all-iPhone household that is close to frictionless, and it is the reason the lock keeps showing up in our HomeKit lock roundup.
It is also a feature that only works for people who carry the right phone. Kids without one, a dog walker on Android, a neighbor watering plants for a week: all of them fall back to a keypad code on the Encode Plus. That is a perfectly good fallback, and the touchscreen handles it, but it means the headline feature covers maybe half the people who use the door.
The C220 inverts that. A fingerprint works for anyone whose print is enrolled, no phone, no code to remember, no battery in anyone's pocket to run flat. The trade-off is the one every fingerprint lock shares: cold fingers, wet hands and gardening calluses all degrade a read, and a scanner mounted outdoors collects grit. The honest expectation is a quick scan most of the time and a PIN fallback some of the time, which is why the keypad on a fingerprint lock matters more than the spec sheet suggests. We get into that trade-off in more depth across the fingerprint lock comparison.
What Built-In Wi-Fi Buys, and Costs
Both locks put the Wi-Fi radio inside the lock body. No plug-in bridge sits in a hallway outlet, nothing extra needs a power source, and there is one fewer device to re-pair after a router change. Anyone who has lived with a bridge-based lock knows the failure mode: the bridge gets unplugged for a vacuum, and remote access quietly stops working until someone notices days later.
The cost is power. A Wi-Fi radio sitting on a door draws considerably more than a Bluetooth-first design that wakes only when a phone is near, and that shows up as a shorter battery interval. Schlage rates the Encode Plus on four AA cells, and owner reports across the smart lock category put Wi-Fi deadbolts in the months-not-years bracket rather than the year-plus that older keypad deadbolts managed. Budget for a battery change on a schedule instead of waiting for the low-battery alert, and keep the physical key somewhere that is not inside the locked house.
One install note specific to these two: both replace the whole deadbolt rather than fitting over an existing cylinder, so the exterior escutcheon is visible from the street and the interior thumbturn changes too. Renters who need the original hardware back at move-out should price a retrofit lock instead; the full smart lock guide splits the field that way.
Where the Grade 1 Rating Matters
ANSI/BHMA grading is run by the Builders Hardware Manufacturers Association and tests locks on cycle count, forced-entry resistance and finish durability, with Grade 1 the highest of the three residential tiers. The Encode Plus is rated Grade 1, which is the strongest hardware claim either lock makes.
Keep it in proportion. A Grade 1 deadbolt in a door frame with short strike-plate screws is only as strong as the frame; swapping the supplied screws for three-inch ones that reach the stud does more for real-world resistance than the grade jump does. That upgrade costs a few dollars and ten minutes, and it applies to whichever of these two you buy. The grading program itself is documented by BHMA.
The C220's certification is listed differently on different eufy pages, so this comparison does not assign it a grade. That is not a knock on the lock, just a refusal to print a number we cannot stand behind.
What Owners Keep Reporting
Across verified-buyer feedback, the recurring Encode Plus theme is that Home Key works as advertised and the Wi-Fi is the weak point: owners describe the lock dropping off the network after router changes or firmware updates and needing a re-pair, and a smaller group reports battery life falling short of the published figure. Installation comes up as straightforward on a standard door prep.
On the eufy side, owners consistently report fast fingerprint reads and appreciate not needing a bridge. The complaints cluster around the app and setup rather than the hardware, plus the usual fingerprint caveat about wet or cold hands needing a second attempt or the keypad. Neither lock has a complaint pattern that suggests avoiding it; they are different trade-offs, not a good one and a bad one.
Which One to Buy
Buy the Schlage Encode Plus if the household runs on iPhones, you want Apple Home Key tap-to-unlock working today rather than through an add-on module, and you want a confirmed Grade 1 deadbolt. It is the premium option here and it earns the tier on hardware and ecosystem certainty.
Buy the eufy Smart Lock C220 if people who do not carry phones use this door regularly, or if a tier of savings matters more than the Apple integration. Fingerprint entry is genuinely the better answer for kids and for anyone whose hands are full on the way in.
If the answer is "both matter", the question to settle first is Apple Home Key, because only one of these two confirms it. Everything the C220 wins on is a matter of degree; Home Key you either have or you do not.
Prices and availability reflect Amazon listings at time of writing. Confirm on the product page before purchase.
Common Questions
How This Matchup Was Put Together
Specs for each lock were read off the manufacturer's own product page rather than a retail listing: Schlage's Encode Plus page and eufy's Smart Lock C220 page. The ANSI/BHMA grading tiers referenced above come from the Builders Hardware Manufacturers Association. Where eufy's regional pages disagreed with each other on certification, battery life and smart home support, this page prints "Check listing" rather than picking the more flattering figure. Owner themes are drawn from verified-buyer feedback read in aggregate, never a single review, and no verbatim review text is reproduced.
We take no payment from Schlage, eufy, or any brand named here, and the ranking was set before the affiliate links went in. If you spot an error, please let us know.