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not quite time to get the safe yet but what are the general thoughts of the experienced on the cheaper safes

Nothing wrong with them. It will do the job. Just make sure its got room for all you firearms. Scope rifles with pistol grips will take up a lot of space.

I prefer the Brattonsound range - and they have a single key with multipoint locking. You can also get exactly what you what, height, width, top box, ... &C

There was a chap on evilbay selling 5 gun seconds for around £40 a few months ago. I contacted him and asked if they actually closed and locked. He told me that the door scraped a little when it was closed. I sent off for one (free postage) and when it arrived I struggled to find any real problem. Use it for my Black powder rifle, as I need to break it down to fit in a cabinet. And as there is still a bit of room left I just stick my PCP air rifle in there as well.

Mine are all Brattonsound been using them for at least 35 years with out any issues. Bought my first one to store my handguns and ammo back in the day.

I bought a DJS one, easily as good as brattonsound but was half the price and did the exact size I needed to squeeze in to the space I had. their website seems to be missing, so no idea if they are still going.

Brattonsound have been around for a age I have several of them dotted around my premises. Some of them have not been opened in a while God knows what is in them.

bradaz11 wrote: ↑Sat Jan 28, 2023 11:29 pm I bought a DJS one, easily as good as brattonsound but was half the price and did the exact size I needed to squeeze in to the space I had. their website seems to be missing, so no idea if they are still going.

DJS were, I believe, in High Wycombe, however a Companies House search suggests that DJS Products "are no longer"!

I have a GDK one I bought from their ebay site. It lies on its back so I attached another handle to the door to make it easier to pull open. 7 years on and it's doing fine.

I have the exact one you have pictured. It does the job absolutely fine. There is only one problem which is fairly small but irks me. You can't remove the key while the lock is open. So you can't open the top lock, pull the key out, open the bottom lock with them on the same keyring. You have to separate them to open the safe. I keep mine on a carabiner style thing so I can easily unhook them to open it so it doesn't cause any massive problems. It's just one of those things and annoys me as an engineer because any real design review would have flagged it up.
Anyway, I need another safe for the missus and I want them to match so I am buying the same one again over buying 2 new ones so can't be that bad...
As a side note, I had to drill 2 new mounting holes for mine because the bottom 2 lined up with a recessed power cable in the wall. And it was pretty tough going drilling through even with decent drill bits and a good drill so it is seemingly well constructed with fairly tough steel.
Side note 2, I currently have 1 scoped rifle, 2 open sight target rifles (1 smallbore, 1 fullbore), and 2 O/U shotguns. At one point I also had a semi-auto SG and it all fit reasonably well so it is a genuine 6 gun cabinet for most guns and takes scopes well.