Boosted Safe Elite Review: Best Gun Safe For Your Car?
Boosted Safe promises secure, discreet, and roomy storage with their Elite car safe. We check it out to see if it is worth the price tag.
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Pros
- Discreet design
- Large capacity
- Easy to move between vehicles
- Secures directly to modern vehicles
Cons
- Eliminates one seat in the vehicle
- Expensive
The Bottom Line
The Boosted Safe Elite uses both physical security and deception to provide a fairly large car-centric safe that’s incredibly secure and fast to open. The safe eats up an entire seat, but can be easily removed when necessary. It’s a clever option that solves a common problem.
How many times have you been carrying a concealed weapon and realized you have to run into a place that doesn’t allow you to carry, or even where you can’t legally carry, but there is a gun on your hip?
Leaving your gun behind for an entire day, thanks to a 15-minute errand, isn’t always a great idea. But stashing it in the glove box or center console isn’t ideal. The first place a thief looks after they smash your window is the glove box or center console.
Some people rely on a safe bolted to the vehicle, usually hidden under a car seat. That’s a valid way to secure your firearm for short periods, but today, we are looking at something a bit different.
The Boosted Safe Elite is a large, secure safe with multiple access options. Its big trick is combining security and deception by looking like a good old-fashioned booster seat.
So, does it work? Join us as we find out if the Boosted Safe is a better solution than traditional, bolted-down car safes.
Table of Contents
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Boosted Safe Elite Specs & Features
Specs
- Length: 15.1"
- Width: 13.6"
- Depth: 4.25"
- Material: 16 Gauge Steel
- MSRP: $399.00
Features
- Key, fingerprint scanner, and digital combination access methods
- Gas-hinged lid
- Removable pick and pull foam layers
- ISOFIX connector interface
Boosted Safe Backstory
The creator of Boosted Safe, Skyler Baird, developed the safe system after leaving a mix of expensive electronics in his vehicle and becoming dissatisfied with the lack of security.
While installing his son’s booster seat, the idea hit him: make a securable safe that looks and acts like a booster seat.
Boosted Safe currently offers two models — the Basic and Elite. The Basic model uses a manual combination lock and key, while the Elite offers electronic locking systems.
Using the Boosted Safe Elite: Accessibility Analysis
I dread setting up safes to the point that most of mine are simple lock-and-key or manual combination. I have found that most biometric and electronic locks require many silly steps to set up combinations and fingerprints.
That’s not the case here. Hit the learn button and then program the combination, between four and eight digits, and hit learn again. Setting up the fingerprint part is just as easy. It took no time at all to program my code and my thumb and forefinger into the safe.
The buttons are small, but offer good feedback and are easy to press. The fingerprint scanner is responsive and large enough to find with ease. All the locking systems are on the front of the safe, making them easy to access.
As soon as you hit the right combination, fingerprint, or twist the key, the gas hinge lid springs upward, revealing what’s in the safe. The addition of the hinge gives the safe a nice, refined feel.
The wide-open safe design offers plenty of room for whatever you want to store. Heck, you can fit a full-sized Glock 17 in a Recover Tactical S-Pro Kit and still have room for more goodies.
While this is Pew Pew Tactical and we focus on guns, you can store much more than just guns in the safe, such as pepper spray, a knife, a wallet, electronics, and more.
You can also divide things with the included foam, which helps keep your goods from bouncing and sliding into each other.
The Boosted Safe Elite’s electronic locks use four AA batteries, and there is a backup USB-C port to supply power in the event of a battery failure. In addition to powering the locking systems, the safe has an internal light, which is a nice feature.
How Secure Is It?
Exactly how secure is this system? Like any car safe, or any safe for that matter, with enough time and tools, you can get into it. The idea here is to create a layer of difficulty to make the thief work to access your goods.
Work takes time, and if someone’s breaking into your car, they’re likely in a rush. They want to get in and out with whatever valuables they can get.
All vehicles produced after 2003 have ISOFIX attachments. This is a standardized system that allows you to connect car seats and booster seats to your chair. The Boosted Safe Elite uses these ISOFIX connectors to latch the safe to the vehicle.
A secondary cable connector is also provided if you need to lock the safe down without ISOFIX connectors.
So, does the Boosted Safe Elite make the attacker take time? It certainly would appear so.
The ISOFIX attachments can only be released from inside the safe. Once they clip into the attachment points inside your seats, the safe is secured to your vehicle. It can’t be swiped without some serious cutting tools.
Another benefit of the ISOFIX attachments is the ease with which the safe can be removed from the car. You can easily swap the safe between cars, move it to a rental, or just move from the car to your house. The ISOFIX attachments are much easier than dealing with cables and locks all the time.
The key lock isn’t your standard setup. It’s a disc retainer design, which means it uses rotating discs instead of traditional pins or wafers.
This makes it tougher to pick and tougher to drill out. I dabble in lock picking, and while I can defeat standard Master locks pretty easily, I couldn’t get through the Boosted Safe Elite. In fact, I don’t think I even understand how to get through the disc retainer design.
Keep in mind, lockpicking is just a hobby of mine. I’m certainly no pro, and my lock picks are straight from Amazon’s sort-by-cheapest first.
Could someone break into the Boosted Safe? With enough time and tools, most certainly. In a basic smash-and-grab situation, it would be hard to do quickly.
And that’s if the thief ever even notices the safe. Your typical thief is trying to get in and out as quickly as they can, and it’s doubtful they’ll give a booster seat a second look, especially with the cover installed.
Something like the Boosted Safe Elite allows you to go about your day and run those errands in gun-free zones with peace of mind.
But remember, you shouldn’t use any car safe for long-term storage, not even overnight.
Improvements We’d Like to See
There isn’t much I would like to change on the Boosted Safe Elite. If I had to nitpick, I think an RFID keychain unlock device would be fantastic. If I am in my car, I have my keychain with me, so it seems logical.
Who Is It For?
The Boosted Safe Elite is perfect for anyone who needs a capable locking solution for their vehicle. I think a good portion of us face the occasional no-carry zone and have to secure our firearm in our vehicle, and the Boosted Safe Elite does this very well.
Besides just storing guns, it’s a solid tool to store anything valuable you might have. From cash sums to expensive electronics. The clever way it's secured to the vehicle and the quality of life features put it above a basic lockbox and cable setup.
By The Numbers
Protection: 7/10
For a portable safe, the protection level is about as high as it gets. You could break into this safe, but it would require patience and some heavy-duty cutting tools to get through the ISOFIX attachments or the lid itself. The disguised design adds another layer of security.
Quick Access: 9/10
Being able to choose between fingerprints, combinations, and a key lock makes access easy. The gas-assisted lid also helps with access speed. I’m nitpicking and taking one point off because you have to remove the outside cover before you can open the safe.
Durability: 8/10
While 16-gauge steel isn't the thickest metal, the overall build quality is tough to beat. It’s clearly well-made and well-thought-out.
Features: 10/10
The Boosted Safe Elite has three access methods, customizable pick-and-pull foam, a gas-hinged lid, and a unique attachment system for your car. This thing is packed with features.
Value: 6/10
Having tons of features and good build quality doesn't come cheap. At $400, this is an expensive vehicle safe that might be outside a lot of people’s budgets.
Overall: 8/10
How We Tested The Boosted Safe Elite
I’m no lock picking pro, but I tried my hardest to get through the Boosted Safe Elite. Even with a video open explaining disc retaining designs, I couldn’t get through the Boosted Safe Elite. I tossed in a blue gun, dropped the safe on its corners, and tried to get it to pop open through force to no avail.
After giving it a wipe-down, I tossed it in my car and tried to pull and twist to get the ISOFIX connectors to detach, but I couldn’t. Maybe if I brought an angle grinder, I could detach the safe, but I wasn’t ripping up my car’s interior to try that.
Other than pretending to play thief, I programmed and cleared different codes and fingerprints a few times to make sure the design works as intended and encountered no issues.
Meet the Experts
Pew Pew Tactical author Travis Pike wrote this article. Travis spent a lifetime shooting as a kid and later joined the United States Marine Corps, where he spent five years as an infantryman. His experience as a machinegunner, recreational and competitive shooter, hunter, and concealed carry instructor has given him unique insight into various gun storage solutions.
Additionally, Travis has thousands of articles to his name with a variety of publications, and has tested countless firearms and related accessories, including numerous gun safes.
Final Verdict on the Boosted Safe Elite
The Boosted Safe Elite features a novel design that attaches to your vehicle. It provides both rugged physical security and a fair bit of camouflage by offering the safe equivalent of a glasses-and-mustache disguise.
It’s not cheap, but it offers a high level of security for your firearms, electronics, cash, and more. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to watch a tutorial on how to properly use pick-and-pull foam to better customize my case.
How do you store your firearm in a vehicle? Let us know in the comments below. Looking for at-home gun storage solutions? Check out the Best Safes for Handguns and Long Guns!