Note: this item was provided for review.
As spring gave way to summer, the jackets went into their dust covers to hide from the heat — and I lost substantial pockets. This happens each year, and each year it takes me a few weeks to find my footing and realize I need some small bag to carry my gear in. I always start too large, but this summer I decided I would switch to carrying a sling full time, and ditch any grand ideas of not needing one.
I’ve been rotating through a bunch of options, so the offer to test the Safari Sling from Pioneer Carry was one I was not going to pass up. This is a small, if not tiny, sling which is about as minimal as I can push myself. It looks solid, has fantastic materials, and in practice is quite great.
Materials
The Safari Sling uses the excellent “Mandarin 840” fabric that Pioneer Carry is using on a bunch of their gear now. It’s a ballistic nylon adjacent material, though I find it to be better in every way than ballistic. From there the strap is a high-density webbing (and is fantastic) with a nylon style zipper. All in all the materials throughout leave nothing to be desired. There’s an internal zip pocket that fits a passport, and a small divider pocket with a key leash.
The part of this that you are unlikely to be expecting is how small this is. It measures out at 7-1/4” wide x 5″ tall x 2-1/4” deep. It’s quite a compact footprint, but the added depth gives it enough substance that it doesn’t look like a wallet on a strap.
The fit and finishing on this is really nice and particularly clean around the zipper, which is not something I normally look at, but is well done enough here that it keeps catching my attention while using the bag.
In Use
Here’s the blurb from Pioneer Carry on this:
The Safari Sling offers effortless organization for essentials like keys, phone, wallet, and passport, accommodating all phone sizes and glasses cases. Perfect for seamless navigation through terminals or summer city explorations …
This feels very much positioned as the bag you keep on your person for travel, whether out in a foreign city, or going through airports and train stations. To that end the design is near perfect. Small enough to be discreet and stay out of the way, large enough to hold everything you need, while everything is protected behind the main zipper. It makes a lot of sense for that context, but I’ve found it to be a great companion around town as well.
For me, this has proven to be just large enough. I had to scale back on what I would normally carry with me, but I lost no overall utility in that scale back. I certainly filled this sling, but this is one benefit of the thicker material: nothing prints through from inside. So even though I was stuffing this at times, it didn’t look like it was crammed full of gear, it just looked as designed.
And, as designed, this is a good looking small sling. The straps wrapping the exterior offer good visual interest, and nice spots to snag the sling with your fingers. The green color I was sent is fantastic, and a nice deviation from black.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised with how much this holds. Even after putting in my gear and feeling as though the sling is maxed, I’ve still been able to sneak my key fob and wallet into the sling without fighting it.
I have run into two wishes with this:
- The black model has a removable strap with gatekeeper clips attaching it to the sling, all other colors (including mine) have a fixed strap. I’d love for this to have a removable strap so that it was easy to toss inside another bag (as a pouch) when carrying something larger like a backpack. You can do that, but the strap is always in the way. Additionally, a removable strap would allow you to use the webbing on the exterior of the sling to clip to another larger bag if wanted. Not a huge deal, but the small size here does make you wonder “what if” when it comes to removing the strap. (Though, if one wanted, it would not be hard to make this modification yourself.)
- The zipper pulls on this can/do jingle quite a lot. When moving the sling around by hand, this is very apparent, but oddly when walking and moving around while wearing the sling, this has been a non-issue for me. I would have expected it to keep jingling, but it seems to not on your person.
Those are the only two things I would want to change/modify with this sling. Speaking of those zippers, since the teeth are not metal, it means you can slide your hand/phone in and out of the sling without a worry of scratching. A pet peeve for my wife is often how metal zippers can chip/scratch her nail polish — no such worry with these zippers. They are also very smooth to open/close without any catching when you are using them.
All of this, and the center position of the zippers, means that it’s quite easy to get in and out of this bag without needing to fumble. I have plenty of other slings which can require a lot of attention to cleanly get gear out of. The Safari Sling is one of the few where I have no such issues.
The inner zip pocket, sized for a passport, is additionally quite discreet. The black fabric and black zipper disappears in the bag, such that even when I am emptying the sling to swap to something else, I often forget there’s a pocket holding items in the bag. A very nice touch, especially for travel. And well placed so you can get to that pocket since it is on the outside edge when wearing the sling.
Overall
I wasn’t entirely sure how useful this would be given how small it is. After a few days of using it, I had completely forgotten about the small size, and found that (more than any other sling I have) I was more than happy to take this with me wherever I found myself heading. It’s easy to carry, stays out of the way, and looks good without being so large that people are thinking you are carrying a work bag.
I love the materials, the colors, the size — it’s a fantastic little sling and I am a big fan.