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Travel Gear Review: The Pacsafe Travelsafe

This week we got to try out the TravelSafe, the portable safe from Pacsafe.

It doesn’t look like much when you unpack it – it’s a flat, pouchlike bag that doesn’t at first glance resemble anything like our traditional notions of a safe.

But when you start loading it up with all your valuables, you start to see how much it can actually hold, you feel the comforting layer of safe-guarding mesh hiding under the cover of slashproof material, and, with a sense of achievement, you begin to figure out how it all works.

We stuffed our TravelSafe with two medium-sized travel books, a passport, a plane ticket, an entire travel wallet with money and documents, an ipod, a cellphone and a digital camera, and it all fit just fine with a little breathing room to spare.

Consulting the simple manual we worked out how to close the safe, pulling the stainless steel cord tight (bit stiff at first, but it started easing up after a few goes at it), thereby closing the mouth of the pouch and locking our goodies inside.

We docked the locking bead into the ‘locating recess’ and looked around for something to which to attach the safe. A chair leg was the closest to hand (pick something more secure when travelling!) so we wound the draw wire around that, lined its ‘eye’ up with the locking device and clipped the padlock into place.

Pretty simple, really – the bead can’t move because of the padlock, which means the mouth of the pouch can’t be opened. The outer material is slash-safe and the cord and mesh are made from high tensile stainless steel: basically you’d need some serious hardware and a whole lot of undisturbed time to get through to the treasures inside.

When you’re done guarding your goods, you just unlock, unclip and flatten it out again. It’s light and lies flat so packing space won’t be an issue.

Times this baby is going to come in very handyl:

• when you’re on an overnight train and you want to get some sleep without worrying that your stuff will be whipped away during your slumbers (secure it to a rail)
• when you want to do outdoor activities that preclude carrying your documents with you (bit hard to snorkel or abseil with all your valuables ain’t it)
• when you’re travelling with people you don’t know too well, and you really want to go for a swim, or take a bath – basically anything that involves having to part from your valuables (you can secure the Travelsafe to a thick tree branch, a pole, a door hinge – whatever’s secure).

Whatever you do, though, don’t go losing those keys, and definitely make sure you leave one with a trusted person who can rapidly post it to you should that happen. Otherwise, it’s going to be one long exercise in finding out just how safe these things really are.

The TravelSafe is available online here at a recommended retail price of US$39.95.

PS. We’ll be taking the TravelSafe with us on a backpacking trip later this year, so watch this space for a follow-up review, rating its performance ‘in the field’!

Related entries:
Travel Gear Review: The Pacsafe Stashsafe

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Posted in Reviews, Travel Gear, Travel Tools