Same here, and for that reason I almost never buy the cheapest stuff. Just recently I made an exception and bought Trezor Safe 3 and like an hour after buying I regretted for nothing going for at least Safe 5 as difference was like $60, which is something I spent very next day in the restaurant.

From my experience, midrange devices offer the best value for money. They include almost all the features of high end devices, only missing a few minor things that most people won't even notice. Of course, we all have different priorities, and sometimes you don't care about getting the "best value" and you just get what you want. For some its the smartphone and for some the hardware wallet.

Yeah, that makes sense, especially since the differences between wallet prices aren't like $1k, but usually like $50–$100.

The main reason I ended up with the Safe 3 instead of the Safe 5 is that I plan to move on to the Safe 7 in the near future. I didn't want to get that one yet, since I'd rather wait a bit longer to get more feedback. Its still too new, and I needed a new wallet asap as Ledger's screen is dying.

Agreed, I would prefer to have the higher priced Real McCoy HW than cheap plastic stuff that lacks fail-safe or fault-tolerant components. One may find wallets at a low price, but they often fall apart after the short period of use. A striking example of this is Ledger’s product, which constantly shows malfunctioning screens, failing batteries, and other issues.

I bought my Ledger Nano S years before Covid, back in 2017, and have issues with screen.

To be fair, that problems appeared only maybe 6 months ago, but also I haven't used Ledger often, with periods of more than 6 months without touching it. Either way, it served me well all these years and I don't think its a big deal that screen started dying after 8 years.

I think mine is from that period too, and if memory serves me right I bought it when the price was around $8000. Honestly, I haven't looked at my S in a long time because I've been using the X more, but it doesn't really matter now since I won't be using them anymore.

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Haven't you learned anything from @Rikafip experience? I guess the T3 isn't a bad model, but why not go with version 5 or even maybe 7? By the way, I have a smartphone that is exactly that old and still works like it did on day one - the only thing is that it stopped receiving updates a long time ago. Still, it was worth buying it and paying, if I remember correctly, around 700 EUR, which is a device that would cost at least twice as much today.

What experience is that? He didn't specify what's wrong with his Safe 3 if I remember correctly.

I didn't buy the Trezor Safe 3. I won it in a competition on the forum together with a steel plate for recovery words. I think it's more than a year ago now, lol. As I said, it's still not in my hands, so I haven't had a chance to test it out yet and possibly figure out what problems Rikafip had with it.

It's true that Ledger Nano S often has problems on the screen, I had a case like this in 2022 and left this device alone, like a useless item but fortunately there are no assets.

Have done all kinds of tare to replace the OLED screen with the tricks shared here but still for me it is difficult to open the screen, rather than the Ledger Nano S being damaged (broken) it is better to be in a museum. Lol and give the new hardware is much more secure than the Nano which I know is now limited to store assets in this HW.

Same! Except there's only one purpose I'd ever use a Ledger for.

I use my old Ledgers as decoy wallets. I store them in the first place a thief would look if somebody searched my home.

I doubt anybody ever will, but it made more sense to use the Ledgers as decoy wallets rather than destroy them.

Nice appliance! You are pretty witty. I would never think about this, but if I could, I would probably put a few sats in it ^{(no more than $20)} and accompany such decoy wallet with  PIN/SEED placed in a visible spot, so that anyone potentially prowling in the corridors of my home would be satisfied and make themselves scarce.

I agree. My way of doing it is to buy what looks like a lot of something but is actually trash. 1 million Shib, for example. That costs less than $8, but it looks impressive to an idiot. Stick a sticky note on the hardware wallet that says "1 Million Shib!"

A thief would either not know what that means, and think it's something worth stealing. Or, the thief will know it's trash and think I'm an idiot for believing it'll someday have value (which, of course, it won't). Either way, the decoy served its purpose.


The topic of the thread is covered.

Hardware wallets aren't becoming a luxury. A Trezor Model One costs $19. Trezor Safe 3 is still on sale for around $50. With Krux, you can easily get very advanced DIY hardware wallets that are airgapped, stateless and offer encrypted seed QR for under $50. Those aren't lux prices.

What's becoming a luxury are silly gadgets for gadget guys who care more about being trendy and having the latest thing for the sake of online street-cred.