I have several of those S&W handgun electronic pop-up safes and one of them failed to opened because of weak batteries as i could hear the motor struggle.



I used the cheap ass ray-o-vac AA's that came with the safe and they don't last long at all - replaced all of my safes with new energizer lithium ones

I change mine every time I change my smoke detector batteries.
Christmas and 4th of July.

Another advantage of the GunVaults... They've got external power supplies + a key backup.

I change my safe batteries every time my birthday rolls around.  I won't forget.

famous last words  

I don't mean to flame anyone, but I tried the Gunvault and had numerous failures with it.  I think it's sort of insane to trust a pistol safe that relies on batteries and keypads, and then has lockout routines that cause the safe to lockup if you fail to hit the numbers accurately enough.  I went with a simple American Security safe with a mechanical pushbutton combo lock.   I would recommend it because it is simple.