REVIEW – I am always trying to be a bit more ‘green’ and environmentally friendly. One way I try to do that is to bring reusable shopping bags with me to the grocery store. I have lots of freebie bags that I use. All of them work ok, but none of them are comfortable to carry, and several concern me about how much actual weight they can carry. Tom Bihn has come out with a new shoulder based tote bag that seems to be ideal for the task. Let’s see how it works out.
What is it?
The Tom Bihn Large Zip-Top Shop Bag is a bag of many uses. You can use it for grocery shopping, a personal carry on, an all-purpose hauler, or every day carry bag.
Hardware Specs
- It is made of 200 denier Halycon nylon/ripstop fabric or 210 ballistic nylon. I received the bag in the Wasabi Halycon nylon.
- External Dimensions: 15″ (w) x 13.4″ (h) x 11.8″ (d) / 380 (w) x 340 (h) x 300 (d) mm
- Weight: 200d Halcyon: 8.8 oz / 250 grams or 210d Ballistic: 10.9 oz / 310 grams
- Volume: 1650 cubic inches/27 liters
- Handle Length: 26 inches or 660 mm
- YKK #5 Coil Zippers
- PORON foam handles
Design and Features
This first picture above shows a closeup of one of the handles. You can see that it has that nice PORON foam insert.
This next show shows a picture of the single double zipper that makes up the entrance to the main compartment of the bag. Having two zippers makes the bag easy to open and close around a larger object.
This next shot is a picture of the interior of the bag. You can see that it comes with a nice key tether that has a plastic clip to hold on to your key ring or whatever you wish to attach to it. There are two interior side pockets to allow you to organize items. Finally the main large interior pocket. There is no padding of any sort on the bottom of the bag.
This shot shows a close up of the stitching of the handle to the bag and how the edges are seamed. You can see they are quite durable.
Performance
I needed to make a grocery run, so I decided to test out the bag. Let me state that I really, really, really detest grocery shopping. I purchased about 17 and one-half pounds of various items and had them pack it all into the single bag. From the picture above, you can see the bag fully loaded. I carried it on my shoulder across a very large parking lot. During that whole time, I never felt any pain in my shoulder. It was wonderful!
Above you can see a picture of the bag fully loaded. You can see that I was able to zip the bag closed with no issues.
Finally, you can see a picture of everything that was inside the bag. Lots of stuff to place in the bag, and I am happy to report, that nothing got crushed including the two tasty dessert items on the left!
What I’d change
I think the only thing I could change on this bag would be to see if it could be cheaper. $65 is a lot of money to pay for a bag that you use for shopping. If you were the kind of person to use this bag as an everyday hauler I could see spending this money. The problem with using it as an everyday hauler is there is no padding in the bag so you would have to be careful what you placed in there.
Final thoughts
I love this bag and it will be my go-to bag for grocery shopping. I would love to purchase a second one if the price were to drop a bit. The fact that I can carry over 17 pounds on my should with no pain is a big plus to me. Our grocery parking lots are huge and I always seem to pick the worse day to go shopping.
Price: $65
Where to buy: Tom Bihn
Source: The sample of this product was provided by Tom Bihn.
Filed in categories: Reviews
Tagged: Bags
Tom Bihn Large Zip-Top Shop Bag review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on June 30, 2019 at 12:00 pm.
Note: If you are subscribed to this feed through FeedBurner, please switch to our native feed URL http://the-gadgeteer.com/feed/ in order to ensure continuous delivery.