This video shows two testers setting up an Amazon Basics portable safe on a cable, pulling it off a mock car seat by hand, and checking what fits inside.
Setup took under two minutes for one tester and just over five for the other. In the pull test, the lid deformed and the first box came free from its cable in less than a minute. The film says the cable stayed intact and the weak point was the lid. The second tester got his off soon after.
For fit, a P365 went in. A Maxim 9 and an M4 chambered in .22 did not. Firearms are stored unloaded.
The written account is in our Amazon Basics lock box in a car article, and the whole comparison is on the pull test page.
Transcript
0:00 Okay, today we're out here doing some testing on different safes. We're trying to find out what is the best safe for you, best safe for your vehicle, best safe for your personal protection. And we've got our friends Austin and Lance. Our first safe up is going to be the Amazon Basics safe. It's like [...] and we're just gonna see how long it takes them to set it up and get it attached to something. Here we go. You got to set up a new code, and you have to have it attached to the chair somehow. It doesn't matter how. So just rip into it, go fast. First one to get it set up with the brand new code, you know, wins this round. That's our time we're at. We got a...
0:59 So this is a very basic type of box. It looks like it's a stamped metal three combination lock. So most places wouldn't consider that a safe, because you only have a thousand different combinations. You got triple zero up to 999, and for a child or a burglar, that's, you know, that's maybe an hour worth of playing around with it. Probably less. Looks like we've got the cable tie on this one. So they've got to get a new code set and it tied and strapped down to a part on the seat to be considered complete.
1:51 It looks like Austin's got it secured to the seat, and does he have a new code set? That's the question. Is it a new code? New code. Triple sevens. All right. Time. That was pretty quick. Less than two minutes. Lance, we'll let you get to finish that up. Okay. Done. Time. So we've got the two safes set up. We've got the low end of just below two minutes, and the high end, what do we have? Just above five minutes. All right.
2:38 So step one as far as removability. We're going to have a pull test to see if you can yank this free. See if the strap breaks or if anything else on the safe breaks, and if you can't yank it free, then that's a win. And then we'll move on to step two. Give it a go, boys. Might have to chain it to the car instead. That's right. So we are getting some deformation. It looks like Lance is actually making pretty good headway. Oh, there we go. So first step. We'll give you another minute of this and then we'll move on to step two if you can't do it this way. That's incredible. So that took less than a minute to break free from the cable.
4:26 10 seconds. Let me see if you can do it in the next 10 seconds. If not, we'll move on to some scissors. There it is. You got it. I'm actually pretty surprised at how easy that was. If you have the strength of a grown man, you can rip that safe free.
4:52 Now we're going to see what can fit inside. We've got a P365 right here. That looks like it fits just fine. It's locked. It's closed. It's in. It's hard to unlock. There we go. We've got a Maxim 9. Maxim 9 is not going to fit. It's not going to fit. And then we've got the M4 chambered in .22. Also, it's not going to fit. That's for our Amazon Basics. You got [...] worth of security there.
5:34 It was pretty simple. Cable's just long enough where it would hang on the seat and you could just step on it and break it right off. You could put it in the door and slam the door shut and break it off. Definitely seemed like the weak point was the shell itself, just deforming it out of the way, and you can pull the cable off if you get enough leverage on it. That kick got it out. It's a metal. I don't know the gauge, but it doesn't seem flexible by hand. But when you really leverage on it, it bends. I mean, I can kind of pull it a little bit too. Get a little gap in there.
6:05 So the weak point was not the cable itself. The cable stayed intact. It was actually just the deforming of the lid. So we'll see if the next safe pans out any better. We will do some more destructive tests on these later, but for now we'll move on to the [...] safe. So this was our [...] safe. We got it up. I think it's like [...] safe next, and we'll see if that does any better.
The safes that replace a cable
- Boosted Safe Basic: 16-gauge steel. Code and key, no batteries.
- Boosted Safe Elite: 16-gauge steel. Opens with fingerprint, keypad or key.
- Shop car safes: All six safes in one place.
- Will it fit my car: US passenger vehicles from model year 2003 have the anchors. Check yours.
- Compare the models: Every model side by side.
- Car safe rip-out test video: Seven safes, one mock seat, the full film.
- Billconch test video: The longer cut of the Billconch round.
- StopBox test video: Setup, combination guessing and the pull.
