Aer Street Sling Review

We’re no strangers to Aer making a bunch of pint-sized gear. From their tech pouches, such as the Cable Kit 3 and their Dopp Kit 3, this is a brand that’s more or less covered the entire gamut of travel-related gear under the sun. That said, a lot of that sunshine has been stolen by their flashier, often bigger, offerings, such as the Aer Travel Pack 3 or the City Pack Pro 2—top-of-the-line stuff that brings the best of what Aer has to give into one package. But then, we heard of the Aer Street Sling, gently but firmly reminding us that Aer isn’t just about big backpacks.

This 2.4-liter rounded little rectangle of a sling is designed specifically for everyday use by urban dwellers. However, fans of the brand already know that Aer already has a bunch of other slings of similar sizes and with similar intended use cases. So what makes this different? Let’s dive into the details and find out.

External Components

Aer’s penchant for CORDURA 1680-denier ballistic nylon is on full display as even the modest Street Sling gets it. There’s just something neat about seeing the fabric’s thick weave on a bag about the size of a football. Is this level of robustness necessary? Probably not, but it’s the kind of overkill that feels reassuring, though there is some tradeoff in terms of weight. Simply put, the 0.6-pound (or 272-gram) weight feels quite hefty for the Street Sling’s size, though considering that the smaller WANDRD X1 Crossbody Bag is 0.74 lbs (around 335 grams), it’s not too shabby, either.

For that weight, you get other goodies as well. The zippers are from YKK, while the adjusters and most of the hardware are from Duraflex. Both brands are basically bywords for reliability and quality, and these ones on the sling itself have proven as such. None of the zippers have jammed, and adjusting the strap feels smooth, with just the right amount of resistance to maintain those adjustments. Meanwhile, the prominent central buckle is from FIDLOCK, and so you already know what that means: magnets, and a very tactile feeling one at that.

At the top is a carry handle that’s visibly thin but still suitable for the Street Sling’s size. As hefty as this sling gets, a padded handle still isn’t necessary in our opinion. The most we use the handle for is to bring the sling closer to us when it’s been sitting in the passenger seat, and we need to grab our wallet for whatever reason. Equally, we also use it to pull the sling closer up when we have it slung over the shoulder since—spoiler alert—it’s a sling designed to rest by your side.

Two loops on each side flank the handle. The two inner loops are already occupied since they serve as mounting points for the sling’s strap. However, the two loops left—the ones at the far sides—are still available if you want to attach cutesy accessories or useful tools; the choice is yours.

The Street Sling comes with a notably narrow strap, much narrower than the ones we’ve seen on Aer’s other slings, though almost similar to the Aer Go Sling 2. As mentioned, they’re attached to the loops nearest to the Street Sling’s corners via gatekeeper clips. We’re glad to see them use gatekeeper clips since we’ve had shoulder-slung bags with carabiner-style clips that were prone to disengaging under very odd circumstances. Gatekeeper-style clips aren’t that dissimilar in design, but they have divots in the plastic assembly preventing the metal gate from opening; you need to squeeze the entire clip to get past that.

There’s only one point of adjustment, which is more than enough for a relatively modest strap setup such as this one. That said, we like the little touch of still, including a strap keeper, which is a nice little quality-of-life feature often overlooked. The implementation is quite simple, too: the slack is captive to the rest of the strap so that it’s not left swaying, no matter how long or short your adjustment is.

Fit Notes

As alluded to earlier, the Street Sling is unlike a lot of the brand’s other slings, which are optimally worn across the chest or around the back crossbody-style. Instead, the Street Sling is the type that hangs low and beside you in a more casual and relaxed fashion. Honesty is the best policy, and we’ll be the first ones to admit that we’re not huge fans of this satchel style; it’s a polarizing topic among the Pack Hacker crew. That said, if you’ve been waiting for Aer to do something like this, then they’ve done so rather well.

Because of how simple and narrow the strap is, it’s very easy to grab the Street Sling and go. On the other hand, there are no concessions to make it behave like its more crossbody-style siblings. This means, no matter how we tighten the strap, the Street Sling really prefers to hang low. Fortunately, there is that handle we mentioned earlier that you can use to bring the bag up if you need a closer look.

Inside The Sling

At the back of the Street Sling is an open-top slip pocket. It’s simple, deep, and it’s incidentally secure because it rests against you. These all make it an ideal stash spot for a smartphone so that you don’t have to keep holding in during those times you really shouldn’t be while walking down the street. It is worth noting that the main compartment can squeeze into this pocket once you’ve packed out the interior. It’s not a huge issue, but you may need to push your smartphone down the last inch or so when it does occur.

The front pocket is a bit fancier, primarily because it’s sealed by a flap held down by that prominent FIDLOCK buckle we mentioned earlier. The buckle opens via a corded latch at the front, and the entire process is easy to do since most of the tension is due to the magnet built into the buckle. Admittedly, the whole setup feels more aesthetic in intention rather than a strictly functional consideration, though there’s really no harm in this approach either.

If anything, we’re more appreciative that they’ve made the flap itself big enough that you can easily move it out of the way. That may seem trivial or downright nitpicky, but we’ve tested slings and bags before that had flaps so stubby that reaching into their pockets felt like reaching into a front door’s mail slot.

The front pocket doesn’t have much room, but there is enough for us to store a bundle of keys that we need daily. Luckily, Aer elected to put the key leash here, and we’re not taking that for granted, as we have seen other bags have more obtuse key leash placement. This is an obvious place to put one, allowing us to quickly fish out our keys and open whatever it is we’re trying to unlock. However, having this many keys as we do doesn’t leave much room for anything else. And whatever item we can squeeze in is inherently at risk of getting pulled out alongside our keys each time we have to unlock something.

One of our apprehensions about vertically-shaped slings such as this one is main compartment access. Having a relatively deep interior means the opening has to present a decently wide view. Fortunately, the Street Sling delivers, with its dual-zip design going quite deep into the sides so you can really pry the opening apart.

The main compartment packs a fair number of pockets so you can get organized easily. At the front is a large slip pocket where we store our wallet, with adjacent elastic liner pockets, one being narrower than the other, for smaller accessories like a pen tool and a set of AirPods. Meanwhile, the back area is dedicated to a lone elastic pocket that’s big enough for a Kindle.

What’s left is a fairly open middle area. This is an often sore spot of small, vertical slings, often forcing users to stack gear on top of each other. In turn, this causes a lot of inconvenience once it’s time to fish out the gear stuck at the bottom. But, again, thanks to the Street Sling’s large opening and a surprisingly wide floor space, a lot of the items we put inside can sit side by side without the need to stack.

Traveling with the Street Sling is also quite convenient because its footprint is very pouch-like. Simply remove the strap, and you can toss this into your travel bag like any other packing cube or tech kit. We can’t say the same for every sling, as some of them either have permanent straps or are too oddly shaped to fit inside a bag. In other words, the Street Sling is also convenient if you’re looking for a sling to use once you’re actually at your destination, not all throughout your trip.