Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Pros: Price--I paid $160 for this safe including shipping. This is a very competitive price. Stack-on might be a little cheaper, but has a reputation for poor quality and poor reliability with their biometric readers. Gunvault and Barska are both typically more expensive for a similar size. So Viking wins here. Seamless welding--more durable, more secure, and looks better. What's not to like? Fingerprint reader--I scanned my index finger in 5 different positions/angles and then tested the safe's ability to read. It opened with my index fingerprint every time, but didn't open when I tried a non-registered fingerprint. Better reliability than many competing products. LED lighting inside (batteries included)--it's a nice touch and makes it easy to see what you've got stored. Ease of use--it's easy to register fingerprints, to turn sounds on or off, change batteries, etc. The user manual is actually surprisingly straightforward and understandable. I expected some horrible direct Chinese-to-English translation in the manual but it was actually fairly decent English. Fully-carpeted interior--don't want to scratch the finish on your guns? This has you covered, no need to buy a liner mat. Cons: Finish--the non-scratch finish was chipped off in two locations when my safe arrived. Possibly due to shipping damage, but more likely due to poor application. One area lost about a square inch of finish material on the upper left corner, the other area was near one of the pre-drilled bolt holes in the floor of the safe--it looked like they applied the finish and then drilled the holds, and the finish had chipped during the drilling. I don't really care if the steel is exposed since I care more about function than appearance for my gun safe, but this may be an issue for some folks. My biggest complaint, however, was lack of product testing. When my safe arrived I installed the batteries, registered my fingerprint, closed and locked the safe with the key, and then opened it with my fingerprint. Everything went smoothly. Then I tried to re-lock the safe. And nothing. The safe made a little whirring noise briefly, but did not lock. I tried again. Nothing. I referred back to the instructions, yes I was doing it right. I locked the safe with the key, then re-opened it with my fingerprint. No issues. But once again it wouldn't lock on its own. I repeated these steps with minor variations several times, but each and every time the safe failed to lock with its motor, and the only way I could get it to lock was manually with the key. Being mechanically minded I opened up the locking mechanism and started fiddling. After a few minutes I was able to identify the problem--a small piece of the locking mechanism was snagging on one of the mounting bolts in the door. This required me to disassemble the locking mechanism, bend some steel with pliers, and then carefully dremmel-smooth some edges. Once I did that and re-assembled the locking mechanism everything went smoothly. Now my safe functions perfectly. Opens and closes appropriately with key, PIN pad, or fingerprint. But it was a hassle getting there. I'm assuming that most people will use this safe to store guns. If you own a gun, I'm assuming you know how to break it down and clean it. And if you can break down and clean a gun, you can break down and fix this safe no problem. The fix was not difficult or complicated. But the fact that I had to do it in the first place costs them one star in the review.