“The X-Pod sling bag is built very well and with great materials … for the most part. But then it has some major flaws which make it - at least for me - totally unusable.
The Pros: excellent material choice for the body of the sling bag. The quality of the zippers is excellent and the interior or the x-Pod is very well conceived, for practicality for daily use.
Cons: the strap is cheap, thin, and it is uncomfortable to wear. It is bearable on top of jackets, but if you live in a hot place and wear mostly t-shirts, the strap becomes immediately a nightmare to deal with.
Furthermore, if you try to wear it as a bum bag to make it a little less uncomfortable, the strap simply doesn’t stay in place; it is so thin that the little teeth of the buckle simply don’t hold the chosen length (regardless of how you choose to wear it - shoulder, cross chest or bum bag) and as a result, the fit is simply never right.
Is this all? No.
The back of the x-Pod also becomes soon a nightmare for wearability: it’s made of smooth spongy material, which at a first impression looks like it’d make it more comfortable to wear. The problem is, it takes the shape of anything you put inside the bag, so that even if the sling bag is not filled much, you end up with a bulge at the back of it, which will give you the impression of constantly having someone’s fist pressed against your back of chest, as you wear it and walk with it.
The only way to improve the wearability of the X-pod is to keep the strap loose and have it hanging to the side of your body ……. Which totally defeats the purpose of this Bag, in my opinion, since at that point I may as well wear a regular shoulder bag.
Conclusions: I tried it for a day, hated it and regretfully ended up leaving it in a drawer. The best way to describe it is .. you are constantly aware of the fact that you are wearing it on you body: the discomfort coming from the strap and the “bulgy” back is subtle, yet always there.
I have had all sort of inexpensive chest bags in the past and although they were not as refined as this one, the wearability of those was far superior.
Which is extremely annoying, because this X-Pod could have very easily been the best and more versatile sling bag ever made.”
