Barska are well known for creating quality biometric fingerprint safes and gun safes such as the Barska Biometric Safe and the Barska Drawer Safe just to mention a couple. The company knows how to make strong safes and have gained a reputation for doing so.
Now they have ventured into the diversion safe market can they produce just as good quality hidden safes such as the book safe? Let’s take a look.
It looks as though Barska did a pretty good job with this compact safe disguising it to appear like a hard back dictionary book. From the exterior, it really looks like the Standard English dictionary.
If you already own a Barska safe then you know that their products are made from tough materials and designed to keep thieves out. For a book safe this is pretty tough and if you are need something just to hide a few small items then this will certainly be right for the job. Just don’t expect high security as it is obviously not a heavy duty safe.
It has a good exterior size of 6.25 x 2.25 x 9.5 inches and the interior lockbox is 4.75 x 1.25 x 8.5. This dictionary book safe has a solid steel construction and a lightweight design. The inside is strong compact steel that can protect a number of small items including higher end items such as handguns, (although I would not recommend this).
As with a few other book safes the pages are made of white plastic which can stand out if the book was stored in the wrong place such as in plain sight.
The actual safe itself has been created from scratch rather than cut into a real book like some other safes.
The Coffee Table Test
Can this safe be stored and hidden in plain view for safekeeping, such as on a coffee table? Well, yes it can but I mentioned this in some of my other book safe reviews that if you are going to do this I would make sure that the pages are hidden or that you have some items surrounding it. Try to make it look as though it belongs on the table.
Pros
It is a good weight at over 2 pounds.
Is one of the toughest book safes available; made from steel.
The interior is a good size.
The product includes a set of keys.
Has a one year limited warranty.
Cons
The pages don’t really look like pages at close glance.
Conclusion
The BARSKA Hidden Dictionary Book Safe is definitely a good buy. It does what other booksafes do but with the added advantage of being a little tougher. Having said that, this is just a diversion safe and not a high security device. So, it is not designed to keep burglars out because even with a locking system a thief would just pick the whole book up and walk out with it. As a book safe hidden amongst other real books on a shelf, this would be perfect.
