A good safe used to cost a lot of money. Many of you young people might not realize how much us used to pay to keep our belongings safe. But these days you can get a reasonably good one for less than $200 bucks and sometimes even less than $100. That’s great for buyers but you still gotta pick the right one.
One of the aims of this website was to identify a few safes that did represent value for money and to talk about the positives and negatives of each one. Another of my aims was to warn you about some products you shouldn’t buy. The Paragon 7775 Lock and Safe 1.8 CF is one of those products you definitely should not buy. But first, let’s go to the good news.
Strong Exterior
What’s the first, second and third thing you should look for when choosing a safe?
- Weight
- Weight
- Weight
Everything else comes after these three things
Weight is the most important thing for identifying a safe’s security. Manufacturers will always tell you their products are made of solid steel.
They’ll always say their safes are strong and durable.
The weight of a safe will tell you if their claims are true or false. Good strong steel is heavy, so bypass all the sales tactics and go straight to the weight. This is 47 pounds. It’s a huge chunk of metal. It’s good solid steel and it’ll be durable. Good start right?
Very nice size
This safe has big internal dimensions. 19 inches by 13.5 inches by 12 inches. So, you’re going to fit a lot into it.
There’s two levels separated by a shelf, so if ya’ll have some guns, jewelry, important documents, passports and stuff of sentimental value then you’re gonna be able to fit it all in here.
The price of under $100 is really quite amazing given that with the size, they had to use a lot of quality steel. I was very impressed by the size and the strength.
Floor or wall mounting
They’ve even pre-drilled holes and included bolts for you to fix it to the floor. So nobody will walk off with it.
Electronic lock
Some people prefer biometrics over safes like this with coded openings. This is due to two things:
- A code is just something else you have to remember.
- During a burglary, biometric safes are easier and faster to get into. Still, as far as coded electronic safes go this is pretty simple to operate. You type in the code, turn the handle and the door opens. Create your code by pressing the red button and typing in whatever 4 number combination you like.
Then put the safe in locked position with the door still open and type in your code again.
So what’s wrong with It?
Well the problem is that if you bang on the top of this safe while you’re holding onto the handle, it just opens. Sometimes you don’t even need to be holding onto the handle. This is due to faulty electronics inside. But only the design team truly know what went wrong here.
Verdict
They plucked defeat from the jaws of victory, so to speak. They made a very strong,durable safe with good solid steel that you can’t pry open.
You can’t even see the hinges, and the steel is so good that it would bend a crowbar before it opened your Safe.
Many people would rather go with a biometric safe over a coded one, but this safe otherwise gives you an easy to navigate coded lock that anyone can use. They did almost everything right except one thing. A teenager could easily work out that if you hit one side while holding the handle, you’re in. A burglar will also get in easily because most have no brains so will give anything they see a good bash. It’s a huge fault so don’t buy this.