It was around April of last year that I purchased the Hornady Rapid Safe Night Guard. I was looking for a quick access safe that was slim but would still hold a full-sized handgun and allow me to quickly get a good grip on the handgun. I also wanted a safe that would open quickly without having to punch in a code. This safe will open by rfid, key, or a code. The safe comes with one rfid bracelet, a couple double-sided taped rfid chips, and a rfid keychain. If the users need more of certain rfid items, more can be purchased from Hornady. The rfid setup process is fairly painless. The rfid works just as a hotel key works. The chip does have to be swiped very close to the front screen. It is very reliable on opening on the first try of swiping the rfid chip past the screen. I got into the habit of just dragging the rfid chip against the screen to ensure it was close enough and to have a higher success rate of it opening. I have been impressed with the reliability of it reading the chip each time. It isn't perfect, but opens for me 9 out of 10 times on the first try.
I have used the safe a fair amount. It has almost been a year of getting into it twice a day. I used it a lot with both the rfid devices and by punching in the code. The keypad is also very reliable. The user must tap the screen for the keypad to light up and then type in their four digit combo followed by tapping the H symbol in the middle of the keypad. When doing this slow I can get it to open every time on the first try. When doing this keypad process quickly, I did fail to open the safe on the first attempt here and there. I would say when working the keypad fast, the success rate of the safe opening on the first attempt dropped to 7 out of 10 times for me. The nice thing is you can type the code in wrong or the keypad not pick up your touch an unlimited amount of times and it will not lock you out or make you wait for it to reset before attempting to open it again.
The only failure I had with the safe is when it became unplugged for an unknown amount of time, it became very sluggish on how fast the drawer would open and the keypad would not register my touch as easily. After a few days of this, I finally started looking into the problem. The power chord became unplugged from the outlet. The safe does also take batteries, which I installed. The batteries are supposed to be a backup in case of a power outage. From my extended "power outage" of not being plugged in for my guess would be a month or two, the safe finally sucked the batteries almost dry from having to power the drawer a couple times a day. Worst case scenario if the batteries also die and there is no power source to plug the safe into there is a manual key to get into the safe. Thinking back, the telling sign that my safe came unplugged from the outlet is that the clock display would not show until I tapped the screen. With the safe plugged into an outlet the clock is always illuminated on the screen when it has full power.
I would definitely recommend this safe. The only negatives I have to say about the safe is how sluggish and how much more unresponsive it is when the batteries are drained and not plugged into an outlet. That wasn't the safes fault, it was my fault for not checking the outlet more often or at least noticing that the display was off until touching the screen. I have since learned to ensure the clock display is always showing. The only other negative thing I have to say about it, is that it is not camouflaged very well. It looks too big to be a normal digital clock. I like the effort of Hornady to try to camouflage it from looking like a safe but I think many people would recognize something is off about it. I prefer to keep it out of plain sight and then this is not an issue. I would say my most favorite feature besides the the reliability of the rfid feature is that when the drawer is fully closed and latched the screen will display a green lock so the user has peace of mind that it is fully seated and locked. The face of the drawer also is tucked nice and tight into the housing so I think it would be fairly hard to pry the thing open.
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