ZKT is a custom retail display company near New York City. They design gun cases for gun stores that can be easily secured against robbery with a built in rolling door. The gun wall display transforms into a gun safe, that’s biometricand code locked. It’s the kind of bad ass gun safe you’d expect to see in a John Wick film or Fast & Furious.
At the ZKT booth at SHOT Show 2024, they showed off this flagship display safe in addition to their biometric pistol cases. Perhaps the most unexpected product they showed me was the prototype of an electronic earmuff they were developing; keeping your hearing safe as well as your guns.
Given the rising crime rate you may be seeing ZKT products soon at your local CVS.
Biometric gun safes have gotten cheaper but some of the cheapest are cheap for a reason. I’ve seen a video of the biometric sensor activating when another finger or even just the palm of the hand was pressed down upon it. One Amazon reviewer reported that their son was able to open his safe, presumably because of the similarities in fingerprint between father and son due to genetics.
So I wanted to make sure that in testing a RexMeo biometric gun safe, that it couldn’t be defeated by genetics. After keying in my fingerprint into the sensor and confirming that only my thumb would open the lock (and another finger). I asked my 9-year old son to try and open the lock using his thumb and other fingers on the sensor. I’m happy to report that he was unsuccessful.
As a parent, I’ve taught both of my children gun safety and have taken them shooting at the gun range. They know I keep guns in the house and not to touch our firearms without my direct supervision. But I know that I can’t watch them all the time or any child that may enter my home as a guest. That’s why I keep firearms hidden, in safes and in locked cases. While no solution is completely fool proof or child proof, it is a fool relies on technology to keep his family safe. The first and most important step you can take is education.
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.
Wincent sent me their π1 Biometric Portable Gun Safe Lock Box to test and evaluate. I was hesitant after reading some negative Amazon reviews. Some early models of this safe had issues with the biometrics lock, which would unlock using any body part.
But this new lockbox worked correctly. I set the biometric reader to my right thumb and was unable to open it with any other finger (or palm). It opened every time with my right thumb. As with any gun accessory, two is one and one is none. Biometric reader may fail at the most inopportune time. That’s why it come with a key to open the box manually. So keep the key hidden but accessible.
The box had enough internal space to fit my Glock 17 with an attached Streamlight TRL-1. It would not accomodate my O-Light Valkyrie or Surefire X300. But there was ample enough room for 2-3 spare magazines and a backup EDC light, in addition to my pistol.
