Hello, do you guys have any recommendations for a budget safe? Don’t really want to overpay for a safe, but at the same time don’t want to get some cheap crap.
I think you might want to provide more detail. Are you looking for a safe to protect from theft or environmental damage or both? Is there a size requirement you will need for the stuff you want to hold in the safe?
For example, I use a fire safe box to keep important documents in at my house but, it only holds value to protect against that type of threat (fire). The safe could be easily stolen (ie anyone could just walk away with it) and my guess is, the keys for the safe are not particularly unique.
This is where i draw a distinction between a lockbox and a safe. A safe should protect against physical theft and environmental threats; where a lockbox is typical smaller*, so they can’t properly protect against phyiscal theft.
*yes portable safes exist, i just consider these lock boxes
As to the original topic, and making a recommendation; I haven’t looked into safes recently; but i did get an inexpensive honeywell lockbox very similar to the one linked above, for environmental protection of some items.
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Fair enough, I am not sure I would feel safe (no pun intended) assuming everyone makes that distinction but, I am no expert, it very well could be a common distinction.
I need it to be protected from environmental damage and someone trying to get inside it. I’m not really worried about someone actually stealing the safe itself.
Depending on the environmental protections you need, you may want to do a bit of research about the ratings you want this safe to have.
I used this video
to help me decide that a 30 minute fire rating is enough for me.
30 min is more than enough for me too.
Same thing is valid as with fire “proofness”: who do you want to keep out/for how long?
Every safe can be opened if time and noise don’t matter.
I’d recommend Deviant Ollam’s gun safe video. It is gun safe specific, but he goes into a lot of detail about what generally makes a safe “good”. I don’t know where you are but a lot of safes sold in the US don’t even meet the basic UL requirements to be classified as a safe. Most of them are “residential security containers”.
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I just don’t want the safe to have stupid design flaws like these:
If one needs special skills and/or tools to unlock the safe, then it’s good enough for me.
TBH there are no cheap safes without design flaws.
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Its hard to say this without actually knowing what @Lukas had in mind for a budget but, it does seem like if you are using the safe for protection from theft, the cost is significantly higher.
When you look at the fire ratings, make sure it is independently tested.
On Amazon, manufacturers (especially Chinese ones) are telling outright lies about well their safe would resist a fire.
Don’t trust any temperature/duration information from the manufacturer, only from the independent tester. That tester depends on the country, but it should be a respected 3rd party.
For example Intertek in Europe test and rate Honeywell fire safes here.
Depends what you mean by “budget”. I’m not super knowledgeable on safes, but I’ve heard that anything under $1000 is likely to have fatal design flaws against human attackers and/or environmental damage. Depending on what you need to store, if you can’t spend enough on a good safe you might be better off hiding it.
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I’m not 100% certain, but it could be better within a lower budget to get a reinforced steel cabinet with a place to put a padlock, then invest into a high security pad lock.
I would trust a high security padlock more than a lock from an amazon basic safe.
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If you want protection against fire and burglary and one heavy enough that walking off with its isnt possible then you arent looking for a budget safe.
Other specifics depend on the value (to you) of the intended content , whether or not you expect to have a loss covered by homeowners insurance and what the contents will be. Documents, electronic media and guns for example have different enviromental requirements.
The only recomendations I can make is to go to a speciality safe retailer and see what they recommend. Avoid big box stores and general online retailers like amazon they only sell theater props. To avoid traceless magnet attack avoid all solenoid based locks and if it weighs less than 250lbs get one that bolts down.