Note: This review was not sponsored and the product was personally purchased by the author.
Wallet Outline
The Cobo Vault Pro is the updated version of the Cobo Vault Ultimate. The Cobo Vault Ultimate was Cobo Vault’s first hardware wallet, geared towards enterprise users who favored durability over security. However, the Ultimate came in at $479 USD, hence the Cobo Vault Pro and Essential was released, favoring security over durability and dramatically lowering the cost. Overall, the Pro is geared towards frequent users with the fingerprint sensor and rechargeable battery, whereas the Essential is designed for users who are more towards “HODLing”.
Company Background
Cobo is based out of Beijing, China and founded by former Facebook engineer, Changhao Jiang and founder of F2Pool, Shixing Mao with offices in Shanghai, Xi’an, Seattle and Shenzhen. Cobo comprises three divisions: Cobo Wallet, Cobo Custody, and Cobo Vault. Cobo Vault launched in October 2018 with the release of the Cobo Vault Ultimate, designed by Head of Hardware of Cobo Vault, Lixin Liu. Aside from the three variations of Cobo Vaults, Cobo Vault also designed the Cobo Tablet, which is an extremely affordable metal wallet, a solid budget alternative to the Billfodl and Cryptosteel Cassette, to securely back up private keys.
Price and Availability
The Cobo Vault Pro is available on their website at https://shop.cobo.com/ for $169 USD. The Cobo Vault Essential, which is similar to the Cobo Vault Pro but without a fingerprint sensor and a battery pack is available for $119 USD. It is also available on Amazon for $169 USD.
Unboxing
The overall packaging of the wallet was quite nice and featured two smaller boxes within the package. One box included the rechargeable battery, whereas the second box included the wallet itself. One key issue is that on my package, the anti-tampering seal was not securely stuck onto the box, and could easily be peeled off without leaving any residue.
Overall, we get a quickstart guide, three recovery phrase sheets, a USB C to USB cable, an SD card remover, a rechargeable battery, an AAA battery holder and the wallet itself. The rechargeable battery has a capacity of 1000mAh, while the AAA battery holder can hold four batteries and simply clip onto the back of the wallet. Although the battery could be wiggled slightly sideways while attached to the device, it feels quite sturdy and securely fastened. The battery is also quite small, as I found it to last for about an hour of continuous screen on time before running out of battery. However, I did not find this to be that big of a deal considering that signing transactions did not take up a lot of time and be used often. The battery can also only be charged while not in use.
The inclusion of an AAA battery pack is extremely thoughtful of the Cobo Vault Team and can be overlooked: by making the battery replaceable, this means that we can be more confident that we can use the wallet for longer, as batteries are usually the first part of electronics to fail. Furthermore, even if in the future Cobo ceased to exist, it is extremely likely that we can still find AAA batteries to use with the Cobo Vault and thus still usable. The rechargeable battery at the time of writing is not available on the Cobo website and only on amazon but currently out of stock.
Build Quality
The build quality overall is quite nice. The body is made of Fiberglass with the surface having a brushed finish. It feels nice to the touch, although not as sturdy compared to something like a mobile phone. This is in contrast to the Ultimate which features an aluminum body that is impact resistant and waterproof. However, for $169 this is overall a well built quality device.
The Cobo Vault also features a 4inch 800x640 touch screen. The screen is nothing spectacular, it does get decently bright and clear. Coming in at only 4 inches, it’s slightly smaller than most phones. For normal use cases this is basically not an issue, only when inputting my seed phrase did I feel the crampedness of the screen and make some typing errors.
Security
The Cobo Vault is one of the most secure wallets currently on the market. It is a true, air gapped wallet, meaning that it is almost impossible to attack by software as it is not connected to the outside world. There is no Bluetooth or Wi-Fi functionality, and the wallet cannot be connected to your computer. Instead, the only way information can be transmitted is through QR codes which are auditable. The only time the Cobo Vault is exposed is during a firmware update, as you need to put a file onto a Micro-SD card and insert it into the Cobo Vault.
Another feature of the Cobo Vault Pro is the fingerprint sensor. One of the issues with the Cobo Vault Ultimate was that as a tablet, whenever someone wanted to sign a transaction in the public they would be required to type out their password. This makes the wallet vulnerable as it wouldn’t be difficult for others to look at someone typing their password and stealing the device. With a fingerprint sensor on the Pro, that means you don’t need to type and expose your password in the public, and overall it’s much more efficient to open the device and sign transactions with my fingerprint over typing in a 10-character password. The device can also be secured with a pin or pattern, like most Android devices.
The Cobo Vault Pro (and Essential) features an EAL 5+ security chip that randomly generates private keys and securely stores it. The firmware is also open-source, meaning that anyone can verify the code themselves, which is nice especially considering Cobo is not as established of a brand compared to Trezor and Ledger. Furthermore, a Bitcoin only firmware can be loaded onto the Cobo Vault Pro and generate a seed using dice rolls. The normal firmware also gives you the opportunity to choose your own seed, where you can choose the first 23 words and the 24th world will automatically be generated for you (the 24th word is a checksum of the first 23 and needs to be mathematically generated), but this feature should be reserved for advanced users to ensure true randomness of the seed. The Pro also features a self-destruct mechanism that will wipe the secure element chip in the event it detects the screen separating from the body (the full rundown can be found on their medium website). Passphrases and other vaults can also be created with the Cobo Vault wallet.
Usability
Set up
Setting up the device was extremely fast and effortless. It included a web authentication guarantee to check if the device is genuine, followed by a wallet creation with the option of either a single backup or shamir backup. In my case, I decided to restore another wallet, and that process took about a minute max, thanks to having a keyboard (unlike using the Ledger’s two buttons which took almost ten minutes). I then synced the wallet to the Cobo Vault mobile app by using my phone to scan several QR codes shown on the Cobo Vault.
Signing Transactions
The design of the Cobo Vault Pro makes it that it basically only works with a mobile phone. 3rd party apps are basically not supported, unless you install the Bitcoin only firmware then it is compatible with 3rd party wallets such as Specter, BlueWallet, Electrum, Wasabi Wallet, and Sparrow (however you can not revert it back to multi-coin if you do decide to go this route). Another note is that the standard firmware (the firmware that is shipped with the device) only supports BTC segwit addresses. If you want to use native segwit, you’ll need to update to the bitcoin-only firmware, which may be a problem for you. Their app is only available on mobile devices, thus not really supported to use with a computer.
To send a transaction, you need to first select your desired asset and click send. There, you can select the receiving address, amount, fee, and a personal memo. Then, after clicking send, a QR code will appear on your mobile phone, which you will need to scan with your Cobo Vault. The wallet will show all the details, including the recipient and amount, which is extremely easy to verify thanks to the large screen. After signing the transaction, you will need to verify the transaction with either your password or fingerprint, which will display a series of QR codes that you scan with your mobile phone and send the transaction. The process itself does take slightly longer than using a Ledger, but it actually feels much more convenient since this process is wireless and not need to deal with plugging it in or dealing with USB issues.
3rd Party App Compatibility
The Cobo Vault Pro can be used with a computer for Ethereum only through a forked version of Metamask designed by the Cobo Team. This makes it so that not only can you send Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens with a computer, but also interact with DEFI apps such as Uniswap. More information can be found on their website, but personally I preferred using this over standard Metamask with my Ledger. I felt that it was significantly more convenient and faster to scan two QR codes, as opposed to having to get a USB cable, connecting it to my computer, typing my passcode, etc. One problem with this is that it is currently not possible to sign messages, which may be a deal breaker for some users, especially in the NFT space. I found it impossible to use opensea with my Cobo Vault, and had to resort to my Ledger.
The full Uniswap and Cobo Vault guide can be found here: https://support.cobo.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500002129022-How-to-Use-Uniswap-with-Cobo-Vault
Software
The software on the Cobo Vault itself is quite simple. It appears to be running a proprietary version of Android, with only a few different tabs for settings, wallet switching, and to sign transactions. The experience was quite smooth, but appearance wise did look somewhat basic and not refined.
As for the mobile app, it was also quite basic with a simple wallet balance page and a settings page. The app is nothing extraordinary, and when compared to the Ledger does feel less professional and rough on the edges. The Ledger app looks significantly more finished, polished and professional compared to the Cobo Mobile App, but it is purely visual and the Cobo App is just as functional.
Supported Tokens
The Cobo Vault team is consistently updating the supported token list, with the full list found here: https://cobo.com/hardware-wallet/supported-crypto-assets with a road map on what the development team is working on. Most tokens are currently supported, including Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens, Bitcoin, Litecoin, and even Polkadot natively. However, as of the time of writing this (March 2021), Cardano is yet to be supported, which is still being worked on the last time I had a conversation with Lixin.
Support
Cobo’s support is almost unparalleled. Their customer service was on point: I emailed them asking when the Cobo Vault would be restocked and they replied in a day. The founder of Cobo Vault, Lixin, is very active on their Telegram channel and answers almost any question regarding the Cobo Vault almost instantly. Lastly, their support page is also very extensive with lots of useful guides and troubleshooting steps. There are also other advanced features that can be found on their support site.
Conclusion and Thoughts
In conclusion, the Cobo Vault Pro is a well designed and built wallet that I can recommend. The security of this device is unparalleled, which doesn’t compromise the usability and convenience of this device. The feature list is also extensive, which means that almost every user will be satisfied with the Cobo Vault Pro. Furthermore, the support team at Cobo is some of the most helpful I’ve found, they work on what people want them to, their Head of Hardware, Lixin Liu is active on telegram, constantly listening to suggestions people have. They are continuously working on supporting a wider range of tokens, and are extremely transparent with what they are doing, including making their code, schematics, and circuits all open source. Lastly, all the gripes I had with this wallet were basically inconveniences and not deal breaking, aside from the fact that Cardano is not supported which I need and thus using in conjunction with a Ledger. Overall, I am extremely happy with this device, and will use this as my main wallet once Cardano is supported.
