Pacsafe GO Anti-Theft Lunar Crossbody Review

When exploring New York City or taking in the acts at Coachella, you probably don’t have enough gear to warrant carrying a travel daypack. That’s why we love slings. Whether you wear them crossbody or around your waist, they’re the perfect size for the essentials. And they usually do a good job of staying put when you wear them, too.

The Pacsafe GO Anti-Theft Lunar Crossbody is for just those occasions. It has enough space for a phone, wallet, keys, and a few more accessories, with security features to ensure you’ll still have your iPhone when you return to the hotel (assuming you didn’t leave it on the table at the cafe). But is it easy enough to use that you’ll still want it at the end of the day? Let’s find out.

External Components

As a brand, Pacsafe has two primary objectives: keeping your gear safe and protecting the planet. We’ll get to the former shortly, but let’s start with their work on the latter.

The material on the Lunar Crossbody is rPET (recycled polyethylene terephthalate), which is a long way to say it’s 600D recycled polyester made from the plastic of about six plastic bottles. The creatures living near the Great Pacific Garbage Patch thank you for your efforts to shrink the trash island (and if you want to be a greater part of the solution, can we interest you in a reusable water bottle?).

The material is coated with a durable water repellent to keep your gear dry in case the skies open up at the art fair or Cedar Point, and it’s free of nasty perfluorochemicals (PFCs), which are bad for you and the environment. We’re testing the Fresh Mint colorway, which is more blue than the green we expected, but you can also get it in Rose (pink) or Jet Black. There’s a black Pacsafe logo patch on the front of the bag, no matter which color you choose, and a few pops of accent color on the Fresh Mint (yello) and Jet Black (gray) colorways.

That’s great, you say, but I grabbed a Pacsafe to make sure my cash makes it home at the end of the day. How will protecting Mother Earth in a fun-looking crossbody bag do that?

We’re happy you asked! A built-in eXomesh slashguard (read: wire mesh) between the exterior and interior materials prevents a thief from cutting into your bag. We can feel it if we reach inside and press against the interior and exterior of the bag near the bottom at the same time. Plus, the YKK zipper clicks into place with a Dock Lock. YKK zippers are some of the best around, and we’re happy to report that this one works well. The Dock Lock is easy to use, too. It’s a plastic, well, dock at the end of the zipper. If you use a little more force when zipping the bag, it pops into place, and we have no trouble feeling if someone tries to get into the bag while we’re wearing it. To undo it, simply push both sides of the dock and release the zipper.

It’s easy to use, but it can be a little bit of a hassle, so we find it most convenient to zip up to the dock for everyday use and only use it when we know we’ll be distracted and have the bag on our back, like when we go exploring a new city or shopping. If you’re concerned about the weather, you will want to zip it completely, though, since there will be a little hole left at the end of the zipper track if you don’t lock it in. Whether it’s locked or not, Pacsafe has a short webbing strap ending with a circular plastic pull attached to the end of the metal zipper pull that makes it easy to grasp when we want to get into the bag, especially if you have dexterity issues or are wearing winter gloves.

The harness system is seemingly pretty simple. There’s an adjustable webbing strap that you can lengthen to wear crossbody near your hip or shorten up to wear over one shoulder or tighter to your chest. It includes a built-in elastic strap keeper, so you don’t have to worry about the extra strap dangling, whether you like to wear it tighter or are a smaller user like some of us here at Pack Hacker. The bag is vaguely banana-shaped, with the strap attached where it curves up at the ends, but while it can lay pretty flat against your body, it can flop around during vigorous activity. It’s decently padded all the way around, though, so it’s not uncomfortable.

The strap has a few secrets, though. First of all, the white stripe down the center (or black, on the Jet Black) highlights the Dyneema wire that reinforces the Carrysafe slashguard strap to, once again, prevent someone from cutting the bag off of you or where you locked it with the strap. While we hope you never need it, it’s a nice inclusion for peace of mind wherever you travel. The strap is sewn to the bag on the right side and connects with a swivel clip to a plastic ring on the left side.

The clip includes Pacsafe’s TurnNLock, allowing us to wrap the strap around a chair leg or another fixed object to keep it from walking away. The TurnNLock blocks a would-be thief from simply clicking it open quickly. There’s a black toggle blocking the lever that you have to spin out of the way to open it. It’s a matter of a few extra seconds to do so, but that extra time may be all you need to spot someone messing with your bag. It also keeps the clip from accidentally coming undone if something bumps the gate, which we’ve all experienced with carabiners and clips before.

Fit Notes

The Lunar Crossbody is super simple to wear and has a casual vibe whether you wear it across your body or over one shoulder. It stays in place better crossbody, especially when wearing a packable travel jacket or a puffy vest. However, we can feel where the keeper holds the strap in place because the end is coated in a flexible plastic. On some smaller users, that ends up laying against the upper back or shoulder area, which can feel like a buckle pressing into you. It didn’t bother us too much, but it may be more of an issue if you wear a thin T-shirt or tank top.

What bothers us more is that the strap twists very easily on the TurnNLock clip, so it’s nearly always twisted when we go to put it on. Small potatoes, but an everyday irritant that you should know about.

Inside The Sling

There’s one more security feature hiding inside the bag, and it’s part of the only organization in this otherwise open bag.

Open the Lunar Crossbody across the top of the bag, and you’ll be greeted with Pacsafe’s signature gray camouflage print liner. It’s 150D recycled polyester and is water-resistant in case something spills inside. We have to take a moment here to point out that while Pacsafe says the water resistance on this bag is good to 1,000 mm, your gear won’t stay dry if you take it swimming. It doesn’t include watertight seals or zippers, and the water resistance is more for keeping rain at bay than for making it float if it falls off a boat (which it would if it was actually waterproof, which it is not).

Back to the bag’s interior, now, you’ll find a small slip pocket topped with a hook-and-loop fastener against the back panel. There’s a Pacsafe label on its front and another specifying that this is an RFID-blocking pocket that’s the perfect size for your minimalist wallet and your passport, although the latter is a tighter squeeze. Putting that gear here protects your data from digital theft by skimmers at the airport or other crowded places and saves you from digging to the bottom of the bag to find your ID at security.

That’s because the rest of the bag is open space, which is good for tossing in quite a lot of small gear but not as great for quickly grabbing your lip balm, for example. There is a key leash with a simple clip attached to the right side of the back panel. We like its location at the end of the zipper track because you can pull it out and have your keys hanging outside the bag as you make your way to the door with your hands full of shopping bags. It’s especially convenient when heading into work or another place we can access by just touching a fob to the lock. Still, even if you have to grab a key with your hands, you should have enough flexibility to open a door without taking them off the leash.

As for the remaining area, there’s plenty of room for sunglasses, a phone, a small notebook, hand sanitizer, a snack bar, and earbuds. Its broad base makes it easy to pack and dig through when trying to find something tiny lying on the bottom. While it can be nice to have different pockets to hold your gear, sometimes it’s better to have an open space to organize as you wish, and we like that Pacsafe gives us plenty of room for small pouches if you prefer more organization.