Safe Luxury

Is it better to buy a home safe with a digital lock or a combination lock?

Public Comments

1. I prefer a combination lock. Most of the combo locks have 60 numbers. With 3 numbers in the combination, that's 60 X 60 X 60 = 216,000 possibilities. With a digital lock, you have 10 numbers. 10 X 10 X 10 = 1,000 possibilities. It also takes much longer to turn the dial on a combination lock than it does to push buttons on a digital lock. The thief who just happens to spot an opportunity could just get bored and leave before he hits the right numbers on the combination lock. Of course, if a thief wants to open something nothing can be guaranteed.
2. The best home safe is one that can't be seen. If a thief doesn't know you have a safe then he will not try to break in. Think outside the box and keep them in several different ones.
3. Can the safe be moved? Then time doesn't matter when the safe has been moved to where the crook can work on it as long as necessary. http://www.howstuffworks.com/safecracking.htm But while going through all the possible combinations of a mechanical dial may be time-consuming, it can be short-cut by listening directly to the detent of each internal wheel. But with a digital electronic lock, it either releases or it doesn't. The drawback to a 3-digit electronic code is that very few people wipe the keys after each use, or they don't bother to ever touch the unused keys just to make sure they all have fingerprints on them. With a proper light, a crook can see which 3 buttons have fingermarks and suddenly 1,000 combinations are down to just 6. Even a 4-digit code (10,000 combos) can be similarly reduced to 24 possibilities. Frankly, there is more valuable stuff that a thief could carry off from your home than anything locked in a safe, such as your TV, stereo, computer, etc. Huge amounts of cash is better simply left in the bank.