The Keystone Tablet is a stainless steel seed phrase backup from the company behind the Keystone hardware wallet. It is the least expensive metal backup we sell that we would actually put our own words on, and it works with any BIP39 wallet, not just Keystone's. This review covers how it is built, how it compares with the Billfodl and Cryptosteel, and who it suits.

What it is

The Keystone Tablet is a flat stainless steel plate with a hinged cover. Inside are rows of slots that hold small steel letter tiles, and you spell the first four letters of each recovery word, which is all a wallet needs to recover the full word. It holds 12 or 24 words. The kit includes more tiles than you need, a tool for inserting them, and screws to lock the cover. The newer Tablet Plus adds extra rows for Keystone's own passphrase and additional characters.

Filling it in

The process is the same as the Billfodl: pick four tiles per word, slot them in, check, close. It takes about half an hour for 24 words. Mistakes are reversible until you lock the cover, and the cover can be unscrewed later if you move to a new wallet. The slots are slightly tighter than the Billfodl's, which makes tiles less likely to shift but a little fiddlier to insert; the included tool helps.

Durability

The plate is 304 stainless steel, which melts at around 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit, comfortably above a house fire. It is unaffected by water. Like every tile based design, it is less resistant to extreme crushing than a solid punched plate, because deformed slots can release tiles. For a backup kept in a safe or a bank box that is not a realistic concern.

Against the Billfodl

The Billfodl uses marine grade 316 steel rather than 304, which resists salt corrosion better, and its frame is a little more substantial. It also costs roughly twice as much. For a backup that will live indoors in a dry safe, the difference in steel grade will not matter in your lifetime. If you want the extra margin or the Multishard option for splitting the phrase across locations, buy the Billfodl. If you want the same approach at a lower price, the Keystone Tablet is the sensible choice.

Against punched plates

The Cryptotag Zeus and Trezor Keep Metal are solid plates you mark with a center punch. They cannot lose tiles and they are thinner, but a mistake is permanent and the process takes longer. The Keystone Tablet is for people who value being able to correct and reuse the backup over absolute solidity.

Who it suits

  • Owners of any BIP39 wallet, Ledger, Trezor, BitBox, SafePal or Keystone, who want a metal backup for the price of a few coffees a month.
  • People making a second copy of a phrase already stored on a Billfodl or Cryptotag, to keep in a different location.
  • Anyone buying a first wallet on a budget who still wants to retire the paper card.

Verdict

The Keystone Tablet does the job a seed backup needs to do, survives fire and water, and costs around $50. It is not the toughest option and not the most refined, but it is the one that removes the paper risk for the least money. Pair it with a Trezor Safe 3 or a Ledger Nano S Plus and you have a complete cold storage setup for well under $150.

The Crypto Merchant is an authorized Keystone reseller. The Tablet ships from Florida with free US shipping.