ALPAKA Zip Travel Wallet Review

The ALPAKA Zip Travel Wallet is a lightweight, minimalistic solution for carrying everything you need, especially for a flight. It is compatible with their HUB modular system, aiming to provide easy and efficient access to everything one might need while traveling. The travel wallet features thoughtfully designed pockets that can store anything from passports to credit cards, providing quick access to essentials like boarding passes with a quick zip. Additionally, it provides RFID protection to ensure your sensitive and personal information stays safe and secure throughout your travels. ALPAKA, known for making intuitive and thoughtfully designed products, does not disappoint with this wallet. It offers an abundance of slip pockets and dedicated compartments for most everyone’s essentials, holding passports, travel documents, and cards in a secured pocket with easy-to-use zippers.

The Rundown

The ALPAKA Zip Travel Wallet has a variety of pockets to fit various travel essentials. The exterior is made from Axoflux™ 210D recycled ripstop nylon, giving it a matte finish and the traditional texture of X-Pac ripstop nylon. It feels fairly smooth and nice to touch, even with its tactile texture. The exterior design is straightforward, featuring a quick-access slip pocket, the ability to integrate with their HUB accessories (sold separately, of course), and YKK zippers that ALPAKA describes as “silent,” but we think are more accurately called “quiet”. The wallet also offers RFID protection for data security, which is always a welcome addition.

The interior is made from the same material as the exterior and feels built to withstand the test of time in terms of durability. Its high-visibility orange color provides plenty of contrast for visibility and ensures the contents inside are not lost or left behind. We are big fans of the super vibrant hue, which can only be described as “highlighter orange.”. Of course, with an all-black exterior, the wallet itself isn’t always easy to find in an all-black pack-out, but that was not a major issue in the scheme of things.

Packability

As a travel wallet, it works well, making everything you need for your trip quick and easily accessible thanks to the slip pocket on the front and the internal organization pockets inside. However, when used as an everyday wallet, its large size doesn’t comfortably fit most pants pockets. Its size makes it clear that the wallet is intended for quick access when placed in a sling, purse, or bag.

Despite the term “wallet” in its name, it only has two dedicated card slots for credit/debit cards. While the other slip pockets can store more cards, their size makes it less ideal for quickly grabbing a specific card. ALPAKA claims that between the two internal pockets (three additional pockets, not including the credit/debit card slots), it can hold from 12 to more than 20 cards. However, finding the right card in these large slip pockets might take some time since they do not do the best job of containing the cards.

We found the Zip Travel Wallet useful as a jack-of-all-trades during a weekend getaway. It’s important to note that when we try to slip this wallet into a pants pocket, it is uncomfortably unwieldy in the front pocket and sticks out too much in the back pocket, so we worry it might fall out or get plucked. We primarily carry this in a backpack and a sling, and even when thrown into a large travel backpack, everything stays in its dedicated pocket (even if it is a bit chaotic), making interactions with it quick, easy, and worry-free.

Quick Comparison

When compared with similar products in the category, the ALPAKA Travel Wallet functions well as a jack of all trades, even if it doesn’t specialize in one particular area. As a travel wallet, it provides a better approach to organization and security than a standard, ordinary bifold passport wallet. Its multiple interior slip pockets allow for flexible organization in a form factor that secures everything inside with a zip, preventing items from falling out.

On the other hand, when compared to a minimalist wallet, its size can be somewhat unwieldy. However, in a pinch, it performs adequately. It can hold various essentials, and its multiple internal slip pockets can accommodate different-sized currencies, folded up nicely and stored securely. The vibrant highlighter orange interior provides excellent visibility and contrast when unzipped. But once zipped up, its minimal exterior blends in well and does not draw any unwanted attention, which is likely ideal when traveling in unfamiliar areas.