The Mee-Plus Mini As A Wallet

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If you’re the kind of lunatic who carries a notebook everywhere scrawling to-do lists, half-formed revelations, bar napkin poetry, conspiracy diagrams, etc… The Mee-Plus SlimPad Mini might just be your Holy Grail. This isn’t some limp, mass-market card sleeve for accountants and conference attendees. It’s a hybrid beast that is part wallet, part binder and engineered with just enough beautiful madness to actually make sense.

The layout? Brilliantly deranged. Crack open those Krause rings and you’re in control of your own modular universe. Need to carry a fat stack of plastic? Load it up with as many card holders as you need. Folded bills, receipts from questionable truck stops, weird sketches you swear were important at the time? No problem. Want fewer cards and more room for ink-fueled rambling? Stuff it full of pages until it bulges. And yeah—Mee-Plus makes pen holders too, so you’re never caught without your weapon of choice.

As a travel wallet, this thing is damn near perfect. Passport fits (with a little noble overhang), boarding passes tuck in clean once folded, and every chaotic scrap of your globe-trotting paper trail has a place. It’s like carrying a well-organized explosion of your personality.

Materials? Top shelf. The leather is rich, thick, and smells like it belongs in the glovebox of an old Jaguar. The Krause rings – industrial-grade German engineering – click open with a kind of confidence that says, “We’ve survived worse.”

The downside? Weight. If you’re an ultra-slim wallet purist, you’ll notice it. Not in size—this thing’s shockingly compact—but in density. It’s there. You feel it. Like a flask, or a loaded snub-nose. But if you’re already the kind of person who carries a notebook on the daily, this isn’t a con, it’s a calling. You are the target. This was made for you.

Bottom line: The Mee-Plus SlimPad Mini isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s for thinkers, travelers, sketchers, and the quietly obsessive. Built for the long haul. Priced for the unapologetic. And just eccentric enough to be exactly right.

I’ve carried mine for a month now. Haven’t used the notepad section all that much (I’ve got other Mee-Plus binders for that), but I’m blown away by how damn functional and adaptable this little bastard is.

Highly recommended.

For more information or to get your own, click here.

Rimowa

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Rimowa—the high priest of absurdly expensive luggage—is branching out. No longer content with rolling aluminum status symbols through airports, they’re now dabbling in new territory.

First up: a stool that echoes their iconic suitcase design, and a handful of sleek tool trays that look like they were pulled from a Bond villain’s garage. I have no idea who the hell they’re targeting with this stuff (sure as hell not me), but the design? It’s absolutely stunning. Cold, clean, industrial decadence.

Details here.

Evergoods Element Bifold

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Evergoods—those beautiful maniacs known for crafting bags with surgical precision and damn near poetic design—just dropped a wallet. Yeah, a wallet.

It’s a slim bifold, the usual front-pocket operator, but stitched from some mystery textile I’ve never even heard of. Early intel says it feels fantastic, looks even better, and might be tough enough to survive a knife fight in a gravel pit.

Consider me intrigued.

Details here.

Rofmia Shoulder Bag

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This stone-shaped sling landed in my mailbox last week, straight out of Japan—a handmade piece from a family-run outfit obsessed with modern materials and downright insane build quality. No exaggeration, this might be the cleanest, most precise fit and finish I’ve ever seen on a bag. Everything—from the stitching to the absurdly lightweight Dyneema fabric to the flawlessly designed interior—is just right. Every inch of it feels intentional, refined, and borderline overengineered in the best way possible.

But, of course, that kind of craftsmanship doesn’t come cheap. And even if you’re ready to drop serious cash, good luck—these things are rarely in stock.

Mine’s going to be used exactly as intended: a camera bag. Holds an M-body and a two-lens kit like it was made for it. Because, well… it was.

More details here.

Pelican ATX Collection

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Pelican has unleashed a new breed of suitcases—lean, mean, and practically indestructible, like a grizzly bear in an armored tuxedo. These things are supposedly as tough as their iconic protective cases, built for the hellscapes of airline baggage handlers, but now tailored for the weary, paranoid traveler. Lighter, roomier, and still impervious to the elements, they’re the functional offspring of overengineering and common sense.

Frankly, this strikes me as a better option than those glitzy aluminum cases that the jet-set crowd loves to parade around. Sure, the shiny metal numbers have the look of a high-stakes poker player’s bankroll case, but for my money, the Pelican gear feels more honest—cheaper, tougher, and less likely to buckle under the pressures of reality. Style be damned; give me durability any day.

Details here.

Global Travel Bag

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The family needed another roller bag—or maybe two—and I pulled the trigger on this one with all the finesse of a drunken gambler. No research, no analysis, just gut instinct. The colors and materials caught my eye, and that was enough. Turns out, it’s a surprisingly solid piece of gear. At 44 liters, it’s got enough capacity to haul the essentials while still sliding under the carry-on radar without much fuss.

The internal organization? Overkill. Too many compartments, too much structure for a minimalist like me. But once it’s packed, all that nonsense disappears, leaving a bag that just works. At $200, it’s a steal—damned hard to beat for something I bought on a whim. Sometimes, dumb luck pays off.

Details here.

The Pioneer Savant Pack

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The last stop on our Pioneer Carry tour… The Savant Pack. And if you’ve learned one thing from this ride, it’s that these guys have a borderline obsessive knack for picking the right materials. Wallet, pouch, pack—it doesn’t matter. Pioneer knows what the hell they’re doing with both textiles and a sewing machine.

The Savant Pack is wrapped in Mandarin 840, a ballistic nylon that sounds tactical on paper, but in person? It’s got a luxury swagger to it. Imagine if 1000D Cordura went to charm school, but spent its nights lifting weights in some dimly lit basement gym, plotting revenge. This thing feels more Prada than GoRuck, which is to say—don’t let the fancy texture fool you. It’s still tough as nails.

In any case, that ballistic nylon is cut and sewn into a three compartment bag. First, there’s one of the best laptop compartments I’ve ever used. It provides easy access through the top, is spacious enough for just about any laptop, and is both padded and suspended for your machines protection.

Forward of that is the main compartment fed through a clamshell opening. It feels a bit on the smallish side for a 20L bag, but provides enough room for one layer of pouches or a few rolls of clothes. There’s also a document sleeve and two zippered pockets featuring some of the best flex mesh I’ve ever encountered – very smooth, flexible, and luxurious.

Finally, the last compartment up front… A half zip provides access to the full length of the bag and organization is abundant. The back wall features four sleeve pockets as well a smartly designed key leash with a simple button snap to secure anything you can fit the leash through. The interesting part here is that the further down the bag your hand goes, the more it opens up in dimension. In fact, this compartment feels larger than the main compartment. It could easily fit a fairly thick top layer, a pair of shoes, or a generously outfitted tech pouch.

To be frank, the allotment of volume between the compartments initially confused me. Why would I want to restrict the space in the main compartment to provide more in what is typically considered a quick access compartment? And then it hit me… The Savant isn’t limiting itself as a dedicated travel bag. It’s an everyday bag that seems to be targeted towards the professional.

Look at the material again. Sure, it’s tough enough to ride shotgun next to your denim jacket, but it’ll also slide right in with your business attire, no problem. And then the layout makes sense—space for a powerhouse laptop, a document sleeve for the corporate grind, and plenty of organization for all your business gadgets. And that front pocket? Perfect for overflow gear or your gym clothes and shoes after the 9-to-5 grind.

I don’t know if this clicks for you like it did for me, but once I saw it through that lens, the bag started to make sense. It stopped being confusing and started being brilliant.

So here’s the million-dollar question: Is the Savant Pack worth its $335 price tag? Is it a three-hundred-dollar bag?

Abso-fucking-lutely. After weeks with this thing, my takeaway is simple—Pioneer is serious about using the best damn materials out there and putting them together with top-tier craftsmanship. The Savant is no exception. It’s an expensive pack, sure, but worth every single penny. The only question is, do you have the right use case?

More details here.

The Pioneer Global Pouch

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For years, the only thing I knew about Pioneer Carry was their wallets—functional, no-nonsense, and built beautifully. Then a few years ago, they unleashed the Global Pouch, a travel organizer so damn flexible it can morph into anything: a tech pouch, a Dopp kit, whatever your chaotic lifestyle demands.

The magic, once again, lies in the materials. This medium-sized beast comes in your choice of Baby Ballistic, 10XD, or 3XD. My review unit arrived in slate 3XD, and it’s fantastic. Smooth as a politician’s handshake, but with none of that lightweight, fragile nonsense. It’s tough, built for action, and in my opinion, the perfect fabric for something you’ll be dragging through airports, hotel rooms, or wherever the road spits you out.

The interior? It’s like a Swiss Army knife of organization. Four slip pockets, equally spaced, surround a gaping main compartment with a zippered flap that gives you a total of seven storage zones. That’s the beauty here—you get all this flexibility without the thing becoming an unwieldy mess of zippers and tangled cables.

Personally, I see this thing shining brightest as a tech pouch. The slip pockets are tailor-made for keeping cables from turning into a rat’s nest, while the main compartment easily swallows up charging bricks, backup batteries, and whatever other tech junk you haul around. The zippered pocket is perfect for stashing the small, easy-to-lose stuff.

But me? I’ve put mine to work as a film camera gear organizer. The slip pockets handle filters like a charm, the main section holds my rolls of film, and the zippered pocket is a home for my lens cleaning kit.

Bottom line: This thing’s pure dynamite. Pioneer nailed it again with killer materials and impeccable craftsmanship. If you’re in the market for a general-purpose pouch that won’t quit, this might just be your new best friend.

More details here.

Next, we tackled a Pioneer Carry built backpack.