Sanctuary Safes are made by SA Consumer Products who also make Sports Afield and Remington. While I’ve never been a huge fan of the lock used on Sports Afield products, they made this Sanctuary home safe line pretty well. For the price and relative to the competition, I recommend the Sanctuary home safe line and in this review I will help you understand all of the features that make the Sanctuary SA-DIA1-BIO-DP Diamond Home Safe one of the better low end home safes on the market.
Lock – Sanctuary SA-DIA1-BIO-DP Diamond Home Safe
First and always most important for any gun safe is the lock. Sanctuary uses an un-rated biometric lock with two fail safe override keys included for emergency use. Normally, I would never recommend an un-rated biometric lock and while it doesn’t compare to a UL Rated high security biometric lock, for the price it is far better than competing products. With the included key override, you’ll always be able to get into the safe and if anything goes wrong, it is covered by the Sanctuary comprehensive lifetime warranty.
16 Gauge Steel is not thick and could be pried very easily with basic tools. For reference, 16 gauge is the thickness of a penny. I would not necessarily recommend this safe from a security stand point. The lock also does not feature a hard plate or re-locker leaving it vulnerable to drill attacks.
Fire and Water Rated – Sanctuary SA-DIA1-BIO-DP Diamond Home Safe
Fire Rating
The Sanctuary SA-DIA1-BIO-DP Diamond Home Safe is both fire and water rated which is not common on home safes. The fire rating is for 90 minutes at 1800 degrees which is 600 degrees hotter than the standard 1200 degree rating. It also includes an intumescent door seal. This seal expands to multiple times its size during a fire to keep smoke and heat out of the safe. Keep in mind this is a factory test and not independently verified by an agency like ETL or UL so we have to just take their word for it.
Water Rating
The water seal is rated for 7 days in up to 2 feet of standing water. Sanctuary is now the only brand that offers a quality waterproof home safe. The lifetime warranty also covers fire and natural flood.