Note: this item was provided for review.
When Pioneer Carry sent over the Co-Pilot Travel Wallet, I let them know it would be quite some time until I could test it. Well, I have returned from a long international trip where I was able to test this out, and I am thoroughly happy with this Passport Wallet. It’s a lot more than just another passport wallet, and has a couple of interesting attributes that I used over and over again.
This is good kit.
Materials
The shell material is ‘840D Baby Ballistic’ nylon with a DWR coating — Pioneer Carry has been using this for a bit now, notably on the Savant Backpack. It’s a fantastic material that feels a little more polished than standard ballistic nylon. The lining is their signature 10XD material.
Here’s a refresher from Pioneer Carry on the Baby Ballistic, since it’s the main material you interact with:
We shrunk down a well-known workhorse fabric and put it through finishing school. Maintaining the rugged/tactical spirit of ballistic nylon we reduced the bulk, shine, and oversized weave, creating a refined and precise material better suited for your pocket and our fine-tuned construct
The wallet itself measures out at 8.25” x 4.75” and 1” to 1.5” deep depending on what you have in it. It’s a beast of a wallet, with Pioneer Carry rating it at being able to carry up to six passports. It has RFID protection, can fit Fields Notes sized notebooks in the inner pocket, several credit cards, pens in the outer pocket, and even hold full length airplane tickets if you happen upon one (and of course cash).
The construction and finishing is very well done — nothing feels overlooked here. I love the materials on this.
In Use
When I first took possession of this, it was Spring and any international travel was far into the future. I had mentioned to the brand that any review was simply going to have to wait until I could try this with a passport. I’ve been burned by so many passport wallets — I was not going to guess. You never know how these perform until you are juggling all your gear in a customs line sweating your ass off trying to figure out a foreign language and signage. And you need your passport, or your card, or something from the wallet.
I tossed this to the side. A few days later, I needed something to carry some odd gear in, and I grabbed this. Turns out, that this little wallet can hold a mountain of gear if you want.
This is effectively a large zip wallet. Inside are a few slots for credit cards, and a couple oversized pockets which can hold bills or passports. On the outside is a u-shaped zipper which can hold odds and ends, or coins. Or, if you are me: pens and pen refills — which it holds quite well.
I ended up stashing a battery bank, USB charger, Swiss Card, a notebook, a charging cable, and a few other small items in the wallet.
That’s how I ran this case for months, before international travel prompted a quick change over. Extra credit cards, cash, four passports, a backup pen and pen refill — off I went.
Some thoughts:
- This wallet carries flat shaped gear (power banks, power adapters, passports, cards, cash, notebooks) really well.
- There’s a ton of structure to this for the main compartment, such that whether it’s packed or not, it feels like essentially the same size. This means you get the most value if you pack it full, not leave it empty. It also keeps anything inside from getting bent/warped.
- It’s quite large to carry around from place to place in your EDC if you are only needing to carry a handful of passports.
- It’s really nicely made, and the materials are spot on.
- The front zipper pocket is a gem, and takes this from being “another” passport wallet, to something I find much more useful generally. It’s sized for pens, but can carry so much random stuff, and do so securely, that it’s wonderful to have as an addition.
- The zipper setup is very secure, and leaves me with no worries of stuff falling out.
For flights, I carried this in my bag with our passports, credit cards, international driving permit, cash, pen refill, and an extra pen. It worked well, kept everything I needed right on hand, and easy to access. It also kept that all protected and well organized. It was easy to find in my bag, and get out. Nothing fell out as I dove into it to get my passports out, or to put them back in.
Once at the destination, I carried the passports in my bag on an inside secure pocket. I then used this wallet to hold two extra battery banks, and my flashlight in addition to cash/cards/pen refills as we moved about the country. This kept the entire wallet highly useful to have with me even when not using it for passports.
Overall
I worried this would be one of those items I test for a trip, write up here, and toss aside for the next trip. I suspect that won’t be the case. The Co-Pilot Travel Wallet offers a lot of utility for securely carrying things given the structure and zipped nature, and I keep finding things which seem to fit perfectly in it. One thing you cannot overlook is keeping a pen and a refill with you when you travel, and this is perfectly designed to do just that, and keep them from bending/snapping too.
This is a nice bit of kit.