Welcome to a new series of mine I’m calling In The Bag. I am a long time lover of bags of all types. I’ve always been fascinated with the bags people carry and what they keep in them. Over the years, I have amassed a collection of backpacks, messenger style bags, slings, totes, & fanny packs. I also am constantly watching YouTube videos of bag reviews as well as browsing the onebag, manybaggers, & whatsinthebag subreddits. Suffice to say, I love bags & I have a lot to say about them. I’m starting this series to highlight some of my favorite bags and to tell you why I love them. I want to begin this series with a new bag in my collection, the Tom Bihn Medium Cafe.
The Tom Bihn Medium Cafe is a messenger style bag made by Tom Bihn. Several things drew me to choosing Tom Bihn to buy my next bag from. First, they are known for their quality. They make high quality bags and they stand behind their products. Second, the bags are made right here in the USA, Seattle to be exact. Lastly, they have a ton of accessories and customization options for their bags. They are available in various materials & colors and they have all kinds of different accessories both tailor made for specific bags, as well as accessories that you can use from one bag to another.
I ended up with the Medium Cafe bag due to its size and looks. The Medium Cafe is an 8 liter bag, so much smaller than my current backpack, but also larger than my sling bags. I also found a color that I really liked, Tom Bihn calls it logic blue with the cloud interior. As I said before, I typically alternate between my large backpack or one of my smaller slings when I leave the house. Often when I bring my backpack, I wish I had brought a smaller bag while when I bring a sling, I wish for a bigger bag so that certain items of mine could fit. This bag is a perfect middle ground for me. I can take all of the gear I typically need on a daily basis without any wasted space or bulk.
As far as the features of the bag, here is a brief overview. The bag has a seat belt like shoulder strap as well as a handle on the back for hanging on a hook. The strap is very comfortable and I appreciate the hook which I use to hang by my desk when not in use. The bag has three compartments: one large opened-top main compartment, a smaller zippered compartment in the front, and a slanted open-top pocket at the back of the bag. Starting at the front, the small zippered compartment is great for smaller items that you don’t want bouncing around in the main open-top compartment. The main compartment is very roomy, with four organization pockets on the inside front. Two of these pockets are perfect for pens or pencils. The other two are roomier, for reference I keep my MagSafe battery pack and external battery in one pocket & my sunglasses in the other one. Other than that, the main compartment is just an empty bucket to put your larger items. I keep my iPad Pro 12.9″ in it’s Magic Keyboard case, Nintendo Switch, Kindle Paperwhite, & a small pouch with my various charging cables, lip balm, microfiber cloth, & allergy meds inside. The main compartment also has three O-rings in it. Tom Bihn includes an 8″ key strap on one of them which I use to clip my AirPods Pro to. Tom Bihn also sells all sorts of different organizer pouches and accessories that you can attach to the other O-rings. I’m excited to eventually purchase some of these accessories at a later date when the bag fund is replenished. Lastly, the back compartment is not super useful, but works for holding documents or maybe a magazine in a pinch.
Overall, I am very happy with the Medium Cafe bag. It fits a gap I had with my other bags, I can tell it is a quality bag that will last me years and years, and I got it in a color I absolutely love. What’s more, I can now start researching all of the various accessories and other bags Tom Bihn sells and plot my next purchase!
Thanks for reading!
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