Biometric gun safes used to be the realm of spy-fiction and the well heeled. But now, they’re not only widely available, they’re also affordable. But a quick glance of some Amazon 1-star reviews of budget gun safes talk about their weak locks and unreliable biometric security.
A Chinese marketing company contacted me to ask if I would test and evaluate a Rexmeo biometric gun safe, a brand I’d never heard of. Upon initial inspection I was surprised at the weight topping 15lbs. This didn’t appear to be to be some cheap, thin-skinned lock box.
The unit comes with 2 sets of keys to open the box. Inside it has a enough space to contain 2 full sized pistols and a fair number of spare magazines and/or accessories (or a single pistol with a hard case holster depending on the model). The interior is padded with foam to protect its contents and has cut-outs to allow the safe to be securely screwed into a wall or furniture. The unit comes with a cable lanyard and pass-through hole to allow it to be secured to a post, pipe, or vehicle seat.
Activation was straight forward, you open the safe with the keys. Insert 4 x AA batteries (included) and following the instructions, you set up your finger to be read by the biometric sensor circle on the top of the unit. The unit requires multiple contacts with your finger to set up but once read, the unit would only open with my right thumb. I attempted other fingers and my left thumb but none of them would activate the lock.
Impressively the unit can store up to 50 different fingerprints! Not only could you use all 10 of your fingers but you could also allow access to other individuals through their fingerprints. I wonder if more fingerprints degrades the specificity of the biometrics (allowing for less precise biometric activation?)
Upon opening a digital voice informs you that the unit is unlocked. You can disable this voice but turning off the sound output. But this can lead to unintended issues as I’ll get into.
The unit also has a password entry through a 1-6 number keypad on the top of the unit. The unit allows for passwords between 6-8 numbers as well as adding non-opening scramble codes. When the correct passcode is entered the biometric sensor turns green and opens the safe. My initial unlocking occurred without issue but later in testing I ran into a troubling series of “wrong password”, the unit signaled a red light and would not open.
I discovered that this was because I was pressing the keypad buttons too quickly. The keypad required about a 1-second press per button to register correctly. When I had the Digital Voice/Sound on, I could get audible cues when a button was pressed correctly, when the Voice/Sound was turned off there was no positive feedback.
This degree of user-error in the interface could give some gun owners pause. But I consider biometric or electronic locks a secondary rather than a primary entry method. Think of it is a standard key-entry gun safe with biometric backups.
The makers did include some clever features to make the battery power less of an issue. The unit has a low-battery audible alert and if the batteries completely die, there is a USB-C port next to the key lock which allows you to power the biometrics or keypad through a powered USB cable. In addition, the unit claims to have a pick-lock alarm though I was not able to test the mechanism of how the unit knows the lock is being physically picked?
The safe could also be improved with some additional changes. I wish it had a way to turn off the annoying digital voice while retaining the keypad beeps at a lower volume. It could use an automatic red LED light to illuminate the interior contents when opened like with some other safes by Wincent and Vaultek. But for the price, the Rexmeo is a solid gun safe with generous interior space that most gun owners.
Available on Amazon through my affiliate link: https://amzn.to/37Yz1lC
