I’ve never really been a bag person. As in, while I do occasionally develop the sudden intense interest to look closely at what’s available over the course of a week, bookmark several web sites, watch probably hundreds of videos on what’s good – much to the missus’ amusement – that interest more often than not fades after a while. But, and again coming out the fact that I’m not getting younger, I’ve been paying more attention to comfort matters when of my daily carry-on to work, or for travel.
But my favorite brick and mortar wallet and bag store – The Wallet Shop – was having their periodic travel fair with pretty good discounts for the items that I’d coincidentally bookmarked to keep an eye on. As in: their online store offers a ready 10% discount if you subscribe to their newsletter, 20% if you’re a member, 30% if you’re one of their premium member. And the fair items itself were largely already pegged at 20% discounts or more. Moreover, these aren’t already marked-up prices that would reduce any real savings from these discounts. So, a pop by their travel fair at the Suntec City’s atrium, and I picked up two bags that can both dual purpose for work and also travel.
The first is the Bellroy Tokyo Work Bag. The current messenger bag I use for work is a very old Lowepro slim laptop bag that I’ve had for more than 10 years that’s pretty faded, so I figured it was time to get another. The options I looked at, and my general comments on them:
Timbuk2 Classic Messenger M-size bag : pretty big bag and maybe even too big, affordably priced at SGD133, felt a little flimsy, laptop compartment not really padded.
Tenba Messenger DNA 15 Slim: slightly smaller than the Timbuk2 above, well padded laptop sleeve, normally pretty expensive but I found a local retailer selling it discounted at SGD191.
Bellroy System Work Bag: big bag, looks a little like a tote, premium materials and manufacturing, expensive at SGD299 retail.
Bellroy Tokyo Work Bag: slightly smaller than the System Work Bag above, similar Bellroy quality, slightly cheaper at SGD279 retail.
Normally I would have gone with the Tenba, but the travel fair’s discounts was just incredible: the Bellroy Tokyo Work Bag was discounted at 30% at the fair, and I got another 10% as a store member after exceeding the required qualifying amount as I was also buying other items. So, the final reduced was SGD167 – nice!
Pictures and comments of the bag:
In all, I’d been pretty happy with the Bellroy Tokyo Work Bag. It can’t carry as much as my current work bag: the Thule Subterra 30L I bought in 2018, but it’s not as though I’d always needed a 30L bag for work anyway. Odd note though: the bag has just been further discounted to 50% on the store – oh well.
The next post on a Thule backpack I also picked up at the fair!