Swiss Safe 120-Piece Review

Performance Comparison

For about the same price, the Swiss Safe offers way more quantities than smaller kits, which could make it more valuable to you. It's a poorer choice, though, when heading out into the backcountry due to its size and weight.

Photo: Ryan Huetter

Quality

The Swiss Safe is a medium quality, general-purpose first aid kit. It comes in a heavy nylon carrying case and opens fully to reveal its contents. The supplies are mostly of reasonable quality, though we were unimpressed with the flimsy fabric triangular bandage. The included extra items, such as the glow stick, cold compress, compass, and emergency blanket were all of lesser quality than we would hope for, and we found removing these items was a good choice unless you are just going to leave the kit in the back of your car.

The organization of the Swiss Safe 120-Piece kit is a bit lacking, we found it harder to find items in this kit than in others.

Photo: Ryan Huetter

Usefulness

The Swiss Safe kit is useful as it has a number of items and comes with good quantities, making it a good option for a home first aid kit or one you keep in the car for roadside emergencies. There are a lot of bandages, so this kit anticipates a lot of minor wounds and actually has two CPR masks (one is included in the mini pocket-sized kit), adding extra protection to the rescuer when performing rescue breathing during CPR on a victim. Some of the novelty items would be unnecessary if camping, and we would recommend taking them out, but for the general home or car kit leaving them in presents no major problem, and having a compass or a sewing kit handy might prove useful at some point.

Some of the extraneous items that could be useful for the car or home first aid kit, but are generally unnecessary for overnight camping.

Photo: Ryan Huetter

Durability

Supplies in the Swiss Safe kit are packaged fairly tightly, which should keep them from getting accidentally torn open or damaged, but in rifling through to find what you are looking for it is easy to keep things organized. Some items showed defects right off the bat, a problem systemic to these kinds of first aid kits, but overall it is a decent kit that should last as long as you keep it well-stocked and inventoried.

The Swiss Safe kit comes with a very small roll of first aid tape, which is much less than what is required for ankle wraps. We would prefer supplementing with a larger roll of cloth athletic tape.

Photo: Ryan Huetter

Versatility

While many of the kits we reviewed tend to be better off for short trips into the mountains over a weekend, and are generally carried in a backpack, this kit is better off staying put. It is rather heavy and has way more equipment than a group might need, and so serves better as a car camping, home or car kit. You could bring this on a backpacking trip, but with so many unnecessary items you would want to go through it first and see where you could eliminate some weight and bulk.

The included pocket-size first aid kit is not really a stand-alone kit but contains a few extra wound closures and a CPR mask for short trips close to home.

Photo: Ryan Huetter

Weight

The Swiss Safe kit weighs 16 ounces, making it one of the heavier medium sized kits. This is totally fine, seeing that we are recommending it as a base kit, not intended for multi-day backpacking outings. Its weight means that it is well-stocked and should last through several minor injuries before needing to be fully restocked (except the tape).

The Swiss Safe kit is on the larger side, and so is not as packable for camping trips.

Photo: Ryan Huetter

Value

The Swiss Safe is a reasonable value. You get a prebuilt first aid kit with a lot of supplies, and while some of the items are not what we would consider vital to a first aid kit, do make it more useful in certain applications.

Conclusion