Pacsafe Travelsafe GII 12 Liter Portable Safe (Black)

The thing to know about this bag? It's part of a strategy to keep your items from walking away with a savvy thief looking for an opportunity to grab unsecured items. It's not a perfect security solution, nor is it meant to be. As part of a strategy to keep your stuff secured? It's a nice tool in your artillery.Several people have noted - this bag can be cut through with sturdy scissors. And of course it can - it's a mesh-reinforced fabric bag! It is not made of Vibranium...i.e. - a totally mythical substance that is both indestructible yet highly malleable. If you have an item that is extremely valuable, this bag is not the appropriate secure storage solution, and you should make sure that whatever hotel you are staying at provides room safes or has a communal hotel safe where they might store very expensive or sensitive items for you. But for keeping your iPad, Kindle, and other small electronics or some small pieces of jewelry secure? This is a perfectly adequate solution.So what this bag is good for is, in the absence of a room safe, to secure your small valuables to an immovable object. It is not a guarantee your goods will be 100% safe - it just means a thief savvy enough to look for people who leave their objects unsecured will see your stuff in this bag, decide they don't feel like messing with it, and move on to a more vulnerable target. (Similarly, we have a 48-inch steel cable I used to secure all of our luggage together in a corner of the room. A smart thief isn't going to try and walk off with two roller-bags connected to two soft carry-ons - it's too obvious.)We used this bag safe last year on a nearly month-long trip around the UK. For over half of our stay, we were in larger hotels that provided room safes, so we could leave our iPad, passports (in a secure case), and all of our smaller electronics and chargers out of sight. But in three of the smaller cities when we stayed in either boutique or budget hotels, room safes were not provided. So in that case, we would attach the bag with those items to a sturdy, immovable item in the room - the leg of the turned-off radiator in two rooms, and the metal support post of the night-table that was screwed to the floor in the third room. In all of those cases, it worked successfully from keeping anyone from even touching the bag - cleaning staff don't appear to have even moved it, and just let it be.Once we got this thing properly closed and secured - you will have to practice at home to learn how to get that bead into the slot to keep the top from opening - nothing was falling out. The iPad was fine, but I'm not sure a laptop would have fit in there, otherwise a Kindle and all of our chargers for our phones and other travel electronics fit in there nicely. (Our chargers were collected in a cord organizer, though, so they were all neatly rolled.)On the lock - there is nothing particularly magic about this lock. I thought it looked too flimsy, so I swapped out to an older, quasi-carabiner combination lock I've had for years that has a hasp that just fit through the hole. It was an awkward fit, which meant that it was not easy to use, but we thought that was a benefit. It wasn't a style of lock that was easy to pick, and as it was difficult to remove, it was an added layer of security. So if you don't like this lock? Don't use it. You'll still need to find something with a relatively slender hasp, but slender cable-style locks would work just as well. The idea behind the lock is that it just keeps the bead in place and the top of the bag stays cinched.The nice thing about this bag was when it wasn't in use, it was just a flat layer in the bottom of one of our suitcases. It didn't take up too much thickness, and we could put our packing cubes on top of it, no problem. Sometimes, you regret bringing something on a trip, but I didn't regret this. One of the budget hotels was kinda sketchy, and I felt better having our stuff in the bag.So overall, yes, I was pleased to use this bag for the several overnights where I didn't have a room safe available to me. But knowing that was an issue, we certainly didn't travel with anything overly expensive or irreplaceable. For the kinds of items we needed to secure, this bag safe was a great option.

I had to give this thing 5 stars, just to respond to some of the unfavorable reviews. It is exactly what it says it is and what you're paying for: an inexpensive, light, portable low-security device. It has the security level of a decent cable-based bicycle lock. It comes with a lightweight but perfectly adequate 3-number dial-type combination lock with a TSA-approved key slot. The closing mechanism of the bag is simple and reliable. The lock is simple and reliable. The whole thing is about as idiot-proof as any similar device could be: set the combo on the lock; put your stuff (15" laptop fist with room to spare for passports, cables, wallets, cell phones, etc); pull the cable through the locking mechanism, using the steel beads to select a tightness of closure; flip the free end of the cable over some convenient fixed object; lock the lock. Presto. Your stuff is safe from casual thieves. To open, reverse the process. No fuss, no mess.-Your stuff is not safe from anyone with time or tools. A $15 bolt cutter would defeat the device in seconds. A set of trauma shears would get you into the bag in 5 minutes. It's a fabric bag reinforced with bike-lock cable. It's not Fort Knox. To the reviewer who had $20,000 worth of stuff stolen, I can only say: don't put $20,000 worth of stuff in an 80 dollar fabric bag. That's not what this thing is for. It's to keep the housekeeper from pilfering your stuff or the casual snatch and grabber from snatching and grabbing.-To the reviewer who couldn't figure out how to open a 3-digit combination lock and had to leave the bag locked to a pipe in a hotel in Mexico, a lock in which the user sets the comb by the usual mechanism of rotating the shank 90 degrees when open, pushing it down, and changing the default code of 0-0-0 to some other set of numbers, then closing lock, I can only ask whether they are safe to travel alone. Come on. Figure that stuff out before you leave home. The instructions are written at a 6th grade level. If you can read this review, or even if you can't read this review but can look at pictures, you can figure it out in 3 minutes.-To the reviewer who couldn't figure out how to close the bag all the way and so could not secure their small valuables, even though when you use the inner, tighter, metal bead to close the bag the opening is smaller than a wedding ring (Yes, I'm sure. I put mine inside, closed the bag, turned it upside down and shook. No ring came out and my ring was still inside when I opened the bag.), I can only say that I wonder whether they can use a pair of scissors without inadvertently removing a digit or two. Not rocket science.If you have an intact brain and want a quick way to get some basic security for your low-level valuables, this is for you. If you're brain dead or traveling with serious valuables, look elsewhere. One thing, though, if you have $20,000 worth of stuff you need to secure, I can't imagine what a portable safe would look like. It has to be light. Therefore it has to be vulnerable. Do the math.Have a great trip, wherever you're going! This thing gave us piece of mind on a 2-week home-stay visit to Costa Rica... just let us know that the honest people would stay honest. That is, after all, what locks are for.

The cable lock mechanism is a little bit awkward to use. However, it’s a practical solution and I think overall the design is pretty nice. The directions are written in tiny print and they’re difficult to understand. I suggest you look online, you will find YouTube videos to show how to lock it.I tested the 5 L unit with two 11 inch iPads in Slim cases, and that’s about the maximum it will hold. I tried adding my Microsoft surface pro laptop, and it was just too much. I also bought the 12 L unit, and that’s what you would need if you want to be able to hold a laptop.I weighed them, and the 5 L unit is 18 ounces, the 12 L unit is 25 ounces.I used a caliper and measured 15/64” inside diameter of the hole where you would insert a lock for the cable. The lock that comes with it is TSA compatible and does not seem to me like a very secure lock. If you want to buy your own lock the shackle diameter must be no more than 14/64" (5.5mm) to be sure that the shackle will fit.I chose the Abus 75/30 lock to use with this. It’s a well designed lock that is more secure and pick resistant.