At Mycube, we take safes very seriously. No matter what brand you're purchasing, your safe should be able to give you the peace of mind of knowing exactly where your valuables are, and that no one else has access to them. For anyone who wants to improve their organization and security, a personal home safe is a must-have.

However, for the potential safe buyer, there's a lot of pitfalls and potential mistakes to make. We'd know - when designing all our Mycube products, we took the time to make sure that our safes were the most reliable, the most stylish, and the most comprehensively secure.

So to help you avoid home safe heartbreak, here are some of our top tips on what to watch out for when buying home safes.

Too Thin Frames

If a safe can't keep intruders out, is it really worth the space and money? Too many people simply assume that a metal box is "good enough" if you slap a lock on it. However, dedicated safecrackers aren't simply going to decide to rethink their career choices if they are met by a locked safe. They're simply going to try and crack it open with whatever tools are on hand. While it might be overkill to get a safe that can stand up to the best-specialized safecracking devices, it's not too much to ask for a safe that can stand up to basic household tools such as drills, bolt cutters, and saws. You had better believe that a desperate safecracker is going to try all of these. Mycube's home safes, for example, come with eighth-inch-thick reinforced steel casings. Equally important, the bolts on our safes are tamper-proof. When getting a safe, you need to ask if it could be bested by a home hardware department. If it could, you should skip.

Easily Fooled Locks

A safe is only as good as its locking mechanism. You could have a huge monster of a safe, but if the lock can be compromised, it's nothing but a hunk of metal. There are some sorts of locks that you should just drop (figuratively - locks can be heavy!) the moment you see them. Combination locks are for high school or the gym, not for a proper safe. Padlocks are for your bike, not your valuables. You ideally want an electronic lock directly on the safe, which is opened either through a code, fingerprint, or app. By having the lock built into the safe, you're removing a serious weakness in the safe's defenses. Just having an electronic lock isn't a total guarantee for safety. In particular, you want to watch out for "wireless" safes. Secure wireless safes, like our iCube, will use their own unique application and wireless connection. If a safe is using an easily hackable connection like Bluetooth, it's more of a liability than an asset.

Worth the Weight At first glance, it seems to make sense that a heavy safe must be, well, safer. If it's heavier, it's got more metal in it, after all… right? However, the weight of metal doesn't say anything about its quality. A real clunker of a safe is going to be hard to move around your house, and might not be actually adding any real security value. At the same time, you want to make sure that a safe isn't too lightweight and that it can be properly secured. If a safecracker comes across a small home safe that they can crack aren't going to give up - they're going to try and toss it into the trunk of their car to open at a later date. A good safe should be able to be secured to two surfaces, making it hard to simply carry off.

##Takes the Heat A lot of safes are advertised as "fireproof", and this has to be one of the most contentious claims that a safe maker can put out there. Just claiming to be fireproof doesn't necessarily mean anything, as there is a wide range of different fireproof ratings out there. All too often a safe will claim to be able to take the heat but will leave whatever is inside as ash. What you are looking for in a proper fireproof safe rating is a clearly outlined temperature and hour limit. For example, our own fireproof home safe, the Firecube, is rated for 1200F for 1 hour. If you see a fireproof safe claiming total immunity from all fires, you are dealing with future disappointment.

Just Plain Not Fun to Own

A lot of safes are plain ugly. And you are going to have to try to find a place for that ugly thing in your home and make it work with your decor. Even if you want to hide it away, you'll still need to find a safe sleek enough to fit wherever you want it. A lot of safes are also just not fun to use. Their locks are annoying to set up and a hassle to unlock. And heaven help you if you lose that passcode and key. The worst part is that we're too often trained to expect this out of safe ownership. That doesn't have to be the case, however. Take Mycube. You can own sleek safes with gorgeous Tiffany Blue Casing. You can own a safe that opens with just a touch of your fingerprint or phone. You can own a safe that looks good, inside and out, and will fit perfectly into your stylish home. And best of all, you can own a safe with a full warranty and customer service, with someone ready to help you at any hour of the day. Just give us a call.