I should start this by mentioning that I am not the biggest fan of a tote bag. I get their value, have loads of them, and I do use them often. However, it’s almost always for carrying food stuffs — either home from a grocery store, or to the next Airbnb adventure. Outside of that, I’ve always felt a little awkward with a long handled tote bag.
But, when DSPTCH dropped the Corpsware line, and I saw the Market Tote — I was intrigued enough to pick one up. One of the biggest selling points was the shoulder strap, making this a tote-messenger — it looks sharp too with a cotton fabric.
Unfortunately, in practice, this isn’t a very good bag for many reasons.
Materials
Quick rundown:
– 12 oz Cotton Duck Fabric
– 12.5″ H x 16″ W x 7″ D for 20L
– 1 lb 3 oz
– Strap is: smooth nylon seatbelt webbing and herringbone polyester webbing.
All of the materials on this bag feel amazing, with the exception of the shoulder strap. The duck fabric selected is amazing feeling, soft, durable, but with the right flop to it all. As with all DSPTCH items it’s made very well.
The shoulder strap though feels like an afterthought of materials. It feels disconnected from the rest of the bags design language. It feels wrong.
In Use
I’m not going to beat around the bush on this, this bag is not overly functional. There’s so many little tidbits here which should make this bag functional, but when executed the way they are, it makes the bag annoying. There are not many good things I have to say, so I’ll get to the positives first:
- As mentioned the materials used are both lovely to handle and to look at.
- The sizing is really spot on for this, it’s large without feeling large when you carry it. It can hold a ton.
- The two pockets on the back of the bag, which sit against your body, are really useful when out and about.
Now that we are done with the positives, I’ll not dwell to long on the negatives:
- The front pocket is all but useless. It’s a great size, and the fact that the press snaps are stood off the bag like Filson would do, is excellent. However they are spread so wide, and the material for the flap so soft, you have to fight to open this pocket. And once you get it open, it’s a lot shallower than you hoped, and nothing is where you left it because of the length of the pocket and lack of dividers.
- The strap is not good. It’s a two part strap where there’s wider nylon for the area which rests on your body, and thinner parts with a ladder lock. There’s so much wrong here, I need another list:
- It looks like it was made out of left over materials and is not cohesive aesthetically with the rest of the bag.
- It’s attached at the back edge, so it pulls awkwardly when items are in the bag.
- The ladder locks are very hard to adjust the strap, and;
- You need to evenly adjust both sides of the strap to keep the wide section positioned on your shoulder comfortably.
- There’s no way to hand carry the tote.
- The main compartment closes with a single g-hook, which is one of the two biggest buckle scams in the bag industry (the other is a cobra buckle). This is both hard to fasten and hard unfasten it. It doesn’t do that great of a job closing the very wide bag either. It feels like it was added after the design was set, because otherwise the bag will be carried looking like it’s in a perpetual state of yawning.
- There’s cinch cords on the two main pockets, they are best if you use them, but they don’t cinch nearly enough to really do anything with them. I like the ideas of these, but the execution is yet another miss.
I am going to stop there, I honestly cannot fathom what this bag was made to carry or do in an ideal fashion. What I can say is that a good tote bag is a jack of all trades, and this one barely works well for a stroll down Main Street with a water bottle and camera in it.
Overall
I am not a fan. I do not recommend this. No link.