Several months ago I was contacted by representative of BitHD and offered a free product of my choice for testing purposes.
I wanted to try metal plate for backing up my seed words, called Frozen Armor.
This all happened before worldwide pandemic event, so I had to wait 3 months to receive my Frozen Armor.

Frozen Armor came well packed and protected in white box with BITHD logo



When you open the box, you will see metal plate protected with hard foam material and basic instruction manual.



Logo stickers and super small screws with screwdriver are also included.



Also included are 4 metal plates with 304 stainless steel and laser engraved characters (letters and numbers).
3 plates contain letters (one side is lower case and other side is upper case)
It is easy to pop out every character and create your seed words combination.
Edges are very sharp, so watch out and prepare for some small cuts on your hands...



Plates are double sided, and each can have 12 words, 24 in total.



On BITHD website they say that Frozen Armor is built with aviation aluminum alloy casing. Fire, water, shock, acid & rust proof.
I did not test any of this features so far, but it is possible I may do it in future



What I like about Frozen Armor?
- Solid cold metal
- I don't have to worry about ink and paper ruined by time or elements

What I don't like about Frozen Armor?
- you can only make seed word with first 4 characters (that is enough to identify mnemonic)
- steel plates have very sharp edges, so I had several cuts on my hands (nothing serious, I survived ) but they can make rounded edges for sure
- I noticed that paint is easy to scratch off from aluminium panel
- Missing letters like noticed by o_e_l_e_o HERE
- Can't hadle most of the claims from website like stated by Lucius HERE

On their website BITHD charges for $29.99 for this FrozenArmor and they also sell it on Amazon and Ebay.
Not sure I would pay that to be honest, but then again I got it for free with no conditions whatsoever.
There are also other more expensive alternatives for backing your seed words, like cryptosteel or cryptotag,
but I didn't test them out yet and I can't make proper comparison.

If you have any questions please ask, but I think I covered everything I wanted to say here.

Have you tried putting your seed words or some random words together? Seems like a very lengthy process. I wondered how long it would take for all 24 words. 

Correct. All I got is that 4 metal panels (with sharp edges).
And it is true that there are only 9 letters 'D'.
Photo quality is not perfect, but when enlarged you can see there are 7 letters 'H'  (one side is upper case and other lower case).

One solution for missing letters is to use some of the 11 empty space characters and engrave your own letters.


I did do it on my own seed words.
It does not take much time, but you need to have a bit of patients with small screws, and have some gloves to avoid mini cuts.

I agree it's very stupid.
Not only that, other side of that plate contains characters like: +,-,),(,*,%,$,#,@,!
ftw bloody dollar sign?!
how about ฿ ?  

PS
There are 3 sides of upper case, and on other sides are lower case characters.
1 plate are numbers and on the other sides characters I mentioned.

Makes you wonder if it's an "off the shelf" product that they put some very minor customization on.
No other reason I can think of for the non letter stuff to be included and the odd amount of letters.

-Dave

Nice looking images. Thanks for providing this additional information.
Interesting read for sure.

How long will your average paper last in fire?
Note:
Plates are made from Aluminium, but not the characters. Like it was stated before.
`304 stainless steel: 2624℉.
Aviation aluminum alloy: 1220℉.`
source: bithd.com

Looks like the best alternative for this purpose would be:

source: https://blog.lopp.net/metal-bitcoin-seed-storage-stress-test-round-iii/

Definitely something that gives a much clearer picture in case someone decides to invest in this type of protection. There is the old saying "Not all that shines is gold", and it is obvious that there are a lot of such products on the market, some of which are definitely not reliable.


Plain paper will burn even if it is caught by the flame of an ordinary match or candle, but here we cannot put things in that context (unless we are joking of course). Aluminum housing is really not a good idea because it deforms at relatively low temperatures (when we talk about fires), and characters in that case can be made of the most resistant material in the world, but if they fall out of the housing we can no longer say we have a backup (at least not 100% correct one).


The author of the test eventually concludes that his choice would be Quadrat Register because "device is built like a tank and I suspect could survive getting run over by one", but quality comes at a price of 365 EUR.

Definitely one of the options I would personally consider, cheap + easy + proven fire, acid and high pressure resistant. It also comes bundled with 3D printed stamp holder (as option), and all that for $35.


The simplest and cheapest solution, in any case much better than plain paper that is in a common place in the house/apartment, exposed to fire, curious pets or children looking for any available paper for their artwork.

Sure, having backups on several places and locations is best thing you can do.
I just don't like using paper and pen, as I saw many examples of that being faded or lost.


There is always small chances for that to happen, or like in quarantine for example.
You can not move to your other location even if you want.
So you don't have access to second or third location if first is destroyed.

Sure it does, but you can also split seed words in multiple locations, so that no single location have all seed words.