Which hardware wallet do you think is the best to get in 2017? (price not important, security and ease of use is)
How do you know the manufacturer hasn't installed something malicious in the hardware wallet?
I saw a unanswered question on youtube saying, what happens if the hardware wallet chip fails can you get you bitcoin back?
I'm happily using both a trezor and a ledger nano S. I gave my ledger HW.1 to my daughter.
Can you be sure the manufacturer did not tamper with the initilisation workflow so they only create pre-generated seed phrases during initialisation? No, there is no 100% guarantee if you use the device out-of-the box and do not check the sourcecode, compile and verify everything yourself . However, trezor's design and firmware is completely open, they both use bitcoin standards, so you can easiliy check wether or not the seed you entered corresponds with the deposit addresses generated by your device. You could even open up your hardware wallet and check if all components are correct, you can verify the firmware,...
Like i said, the only thing they could tamper with, is the initialisation of their wallet... But you could potentially check the sourcecode and compile everything yourself, or roll a dice to create your own seed phrase. So, if they tampered with the procedure, i guess sooner or later somebody would find out and destroy their business.
As a matter of fact, did you check your other wallet's sourcecode and compiled everything yourself on a clean, potentially airgapped system? Did you check all signatures of your wallet before running it? In case you create a paper wallet, did you check the RNG they used???
I don't know many people that use a dice and an airgapped PC to create their private keys, so sooner or later you're going to have to trust somebody (wether it's the community, the reviewers, the manufacturer,...)
If not, your other wallets are less safe than your hardware wallet.
