We buy all the products we test — no freebies from companies. If you purchase through our links, we may earn a commission, which helps support our testing.
Though the shape and design of messenger bags have evolved and expanded dramatically over the years, the original concept remains the same. It's a bag to carry your daily toolkit wherever you're going and however you plan to get there. For bike messengers, the volume, balance, and ease of access are critical. For daily commuters, it's all about comfort and intuitive packability.
Our favorite messenger bag is the Timbuk2 Especial Stash, which we love for its water resistance and electronics-carrying capabilities. If you want to spend a little less, we also like the Timbuk2 Classic, which has a simple but functional organizational system and is also weather-resistant. Those on a stricter budget should take a look at the Oiwas 15.6" Laptop, which is decently comfortable and a fraction of the price of the high-end bags, yet still carries a 15.6" laptop with ease.
Editor's Note: We updated our messenger bag review on November 18, 2025, to select some new award winners and share more photos of our tested products.
Tapered shape causes it to fall over easily when set down
Shoulder padding can bunch up
The Timbuk2 Especial Stash is the best messenger bag for folks seeking a water-resistant bag designed for biking with electronics. It's comfortable, lightweight, and highly functional, and its waterproof laptop compartment means you can forge ahead with confidence that your gear is protected even when the skies open up. “I loved how the brightly-colored interior makes it easy to find items, and the pockets are well-designed without being excessive,” our tester noted. An ambidextrous strap and magnetic buckles, which one can operate single-handed, make this bag user-friendly and efficient to carry. Thoughtful features like an external water bottle pocket and plentiful accessory loops mean your essentials are never hard to access.
SPECIFICATIONS
Sleeve For Laptop
Yes - 15"
Shoulder Preference
Either
Weight-to-Volume Ratio
3.07 oz/L
Measured Weight
2.28 lb
Measured Volume
15L
The Stash might not be the best pick if you like to carry your bag on one shoulder while walking (as opposed to cross-body). This bag is optimized for commuters who prefer a more traditional messenger design intended to hug the back snugly while zipping through town on a bike or a scooter. Also, the tapered shape isn't as conducive to sitting upright when set down on the ground. Since it lacks velcro, you must clip the magnetic buckles every time to secure the front flap (though you won't have to make a loud ripping sound every time you reach inside). Downsides aside, if you value durability and weather resistance in a bike-friendly design that provides some of the best protection for your electronics, this is the one for you.
Not everyone's commute is the same every single day. If you bike to work some days, walk others, and drive the rest of the time, the Timbuk2 Classic may be a brilliant choice. It's great for those who like the option of carrying their belongings on one shoulder for short distances or cinching everything up securely across the body for longer trips. The straps are easy to use, the pocket options are numerous, and the robust material is water-resistant. We particularly liked the internal water bottle pockets to help keep bottles and mugs upright. This bag is offered in four different sizes, all at very reasonable price points. Tried and true, it's been around for decades for a reason. As a bonus, it comes in lots of fun colors, and for a little extra cash, it is fully customizable.
SPECIFICATIONS
Sleeve For Laptop
Yes - 16"
Shoulder Preference
Either
Weight-to-Volume Ratio
1.80 oz/L
Measured Weight
2.02 lb
Measured Volume
18L
The serious bike commuter will notice that the Timbuk2 Classic isn't as ergonomic for cycling. Though still quite comfortable, it doesn't hug the body as tightly or aerodynamically as some other options we tested, like the Timbuk2 Especial Stash. The Classic lacks outside pockets, so accessing your gear requires getting under the main flap. The laptop compartment padding is extremely minimal, so some mindfulness is required when handling it. (If you don't need to carry a laptop frequently, the Chrome Kadet Sling is another affordable sling.) The Timbuk2 Classic is optimized for left-shoulder-only carry, so lefties might want to request a custom right-shoulder bag — which Timbuk2 can accommodate. If simple, straightforward, and affordable are critical points in your decision-making process, this is a solid contender.
The Oiwas 15.6" Laptop messenger bag is a great option if you're looking to spend a minimal amount on a bag or you're simply not sure if the messenger bag is the style you want. Side note — check out our recommendations for buying a messenger bag if that latter option sounds like you. This bag clocks in at a fraction of the price of other bags in our lineup and performs well above its price. It is reasonably comfortable for your morning commute and has some internal organization features like dual bottle pockets that we're quite fond of. It can also be worn on either side of your body.
SPECIFICATIONS
Sleeve For Laptop
Yes - 15.6"
Shoulder Preference
Either
Weight-to-Volume Ratio
2.13 oz/L
Measured Weight
2.00 lb
Measured Volume
15L
Opposite of other models we tested, if you like to carry your bag on your back, cross-body style, this bag isn't ideal. Bike commuters take note that carrying this bag over one shoulder by the side is much more comfortable. We liked most of the organization features, but some pockets didn't seem super useful. Moreover, this wasn't the easiest option to put on, take off, or adjust the strap size. Yet, given the price, this bag is a great option if you only need a messenger bag for occasional use. Other small options that are ideal for occasional use are the Kadet Sling and Matein 15.6" Laptop.
The Oiwas is an affordable option that covers all the basics of a messenger bag, but we'd only recommend it for those who don't need to carry their bag for extended periods of time.
Peak Design is a company that prides itself on designing user-friendly products for carrying camera equipment and electronics with ease, and that's exactly what the Everyday Messenger does. This feature-rich bag has ambidextrous carrying capacities and provides great organization for camera equipment and other electronics. It is weather-resistant (though not waterproof), mounts easily onto the trolley handle of wheeled luggage for travel, and sits upright for easy access to your gear. For the right person or photographer, this bag is an exceptional option.
SPECIFICATIONS
Sleeve For Laptop
Yes - 14"
Shoulder Preference
EIther
Weight-to-Volume Ratio
3.31 oz/L
Measured Weight
2.69 lb
Measured Volume
13L
Some of the features of the Everyday Messenger seem over-designed, and there is a learning curve to figuring out how to sort all your gear in the bag. For an average commuter — rather than a photographer — some of the storage features will be superfluous. The patented MagLatch closure system is a bit tricky to use, and while it is silent compared to Velcro, it takes some time to get used to it. This bag is not ideal for bike commuting and provides somewhat average comfort for regular use, but for someone who needs well-conceived features for carrying camera equipment or myriad electronic components, this beautiful bag is ideal.
The protection and organizational features of the Everyday Messenger will be especially appreciated by photographers or anyone who has a lot of tech to tote around.
Credit: GearLab Team
Compare Products
We tested these messenger bags side-by-side to compare their features.
Credit: Jared Ross
How We Tested
We started our review process with inquisitive conversations with our bike-commuting friends to determine the essential elements of a functional messenger bag. Then, we logged many hours of online research and made an initial cut down to 60 potential bags to test. We selected the most popular – and most promising – to test side-by-side for this review. We categorized the most important messenger bag performance features into a series of rating metrics and developed a specific testing protocol for each one. For example, we tested our Packing and Organization metric by subjecting each bag to an identical “test load.” With all our bags in hand, we loaded them to the gills and commuted all over – on electric bikes, on foot, and by public transit – to put these bags to the test.
To determine the best messenger bags, we used five performance metrics:
Comfort (30% of overall score weighting)
Packing & Organization (30% weighting)
Electronics (15% weighting)
Ease of Use (15% weighting)
Construction Quality (10% weighting)
Why Trust GearLab
The masterminds behind this review are Mary Witlacil, Penney Garrett, and Hale Milano. Mary is a lifelong bike commuter who has lived without a car for over a decade. She is working on her Ph.D. in Environmental Politics at Colorado State University, so she is no stranger to riding her bicycle in inclement weather while commuting to class. Outside of school, she spends the majority of her time climbing alpine granite and sandstone splitters in the desert. Penney is a certified nutritionist, clinical herbalist, and trained botanist, so she has spent many years commuting — both on a bike and by foot — with books, papers, electronics, and random plant specimens. She lives in Tahoe, where she rock climbs, hikes, bikes, practices yoga, and cooks a whole lot. Hale has traveled for work full-time, carrying the full suite of conference room necessities such as laptops, books, speakers, & snacks, and is well-versed in what type of travel gear can make a car or plane commute more comfortable.
We put each of the bags in our lineup through the paces, testing every flap, zipper, pocket, and strap to determine the best for your needs.
Analysis and Test Results
The modern messenger bag has evolved dramatically from the original 1950s design. Initially, powerline workers needed a durable bag to keep their heavy, bulky, and awkward tools easily accessible while climbing utility poles. This type of design later caught on among bicycle messengers and became a classic style that lives on in models from companies like Timbuk2 and Chrome.
To honor the history of the messenger, we decided it was appropriate to rank both Comfort and Packing and Organization as our two most important performance metrics. Electronics, Ease of Use, and Construction Quality comprise the rest of our testing criteria. We focused on ensuring that our testing process and subsequent review retained the spirit of the original messenger bag design while keeping a modern context in mind. The result is a diverse selection of options that are excellent — in different ways — for carrying your tools comfortably and safely around town and beyond.
Worse Value
Better Value
What's the Best Value?
If you're looking for an outstanding bag with a ton of features, perhaps you're okay with paying more for it. However, if funds are tight, you may be looking for a better balance of performance and affordability.
The Timbuk2 Classic strikes a great balance between quality and price. It scores high across our testing metrics but costs less than some of the high-end bags. Alternatively, if you don't need a bag with a large volume (read: no laptop), the Chrome Kadet Sling is a smaller bag that earns respectable overall scores and fetches a lower price than most.
The Oiwas bag is another great value option. Though its performance isn't as high as some other bags in our lineup, the price is exponentially less than others. If you're on a tight budget or simply have the occasional need for a messenger bag, this is a great option to consider.
The Oiwas works great for a quick trip into the office, packing the essentials with ease, but lacking any extra features.
The classic messenger bag design is a close-fitting shoulder bag that easily swings around to the front of the body and has a stabilizing strap to keep it secure while you're moving. This style is less popular than it once was, but most of the options that remain tend to be well-executed and thoughtfully designed.
To assess the comfort of each model in our review, we took each bag out for various trips, focusing on all manner of activities. Each bag has a setting in which it's most appropriate, and we made sure to use it in that application — including taking a bike ride with every bag, noting the carrying comfort of various load types and weights. We also made sure to max out every bag and report on its optimum load size and the tipping point when the bag became unwieldy or uncomfortable.
During testing, we asked a few essential questions: how does this bag feel on the back and shoulders? How is the padding? And most importantly, how does it handle various load types and weights? We assessed each model's design features and considered whether they helped or hindered overall comfort.
Companies are increasingly creative with improving the feel of shoulder straps, but comfy straps aren't necessarily the whole story. The way a bag rests on your back and how closely it sits to your body are also very important; the Chrome Kadet Sling is an excellent examples of this.
The Timbuk2 Especial Stash has an ergonomic fit, good padding, and lots of easy adjustment options. It is another bag optimized for bike commuting, as it sits vertically in the middle of the back rather than riding low along the waistline.
The Stash is comfortable on the move, owing to the more vertical orientation of the bag, which is optimized for bike commuting.
Credit: Jared Ross
If you prefer the comfort of a less bike-specific shape, then the Timbuk2 Classic or the Peak Design Everyday Messenger are both excellent options. These bags sit horizontally on your back and are more rectangular, with less tapering near the base of the bag. The shoulder strap is more conducive to a casual one-shoulder carry because it is not aggressively angled, and the padding can be centered on the strap for however you prefer to carry it. These bags can work great for cycling, too, but they do sit lower on the back, so they tend to be less comfortable on a bike. Much of this is a personal preference, but if you spend more time walking around than biking, ergonomic considerations such as these are essential to consider.
The Classic sits slightly more horizontally on the back than a bike-commuting-specific bag. This bag a great option for both cycling and walking around town.
Credit: Jared Ross
A sling bag can be great for those who prefer a smaller, tighter package on their back, and the Chrome Kadet Sling fills that role. The Kadet Sling delivers classic Chrome comfort across the shoulder and has their iconic seatbelt buckle for easily taking the bag on and off. Another compact bag is the Oiwas. Its small size makes it comfortable for walking, though it's more comfortable carried over one shoulder versus across the back, given its lack of padding.
The Kadet Sling has ample shoulder padding, and an ergonomic design, making for an impressively comfortable bag on or off the bike.
Credit: Jared Ross
Packing & Organization
A well-designed bag will enable straightforward organization without the user having to overthink anything. To be effective, a bag needs to address diverse circumstances that may change from one day to the next. A bag's storage design also needs to be efficient. No one wants to be weighed down or hindered by their gear or daily essentials; we all want a bag that allows us to feel free and nimble.
The Timbuk2 Especial Stash offers an assortment of great features for easy and intuitive packing, including a brightly colored interior for added visibility. A large zippered external pocket with a key clip is great for fast access to essentials, and the inside offers just the right amount of options for electronics and small items without going overboard. There's also a mesh water bottle pocket and multiple webbing options for bike lights or other small accessories on the outside of this highly weather-resistant bag.
The Especial Stash's pockets of various sizes offer more potential for organization, especially if you have a lot to carry. We also enjoy the bright color inside, which makes it easier to find what we're looking for.
Credit: Penney Garrett
The Peak Design Everyday Messenger has a plethora of pockets, slots, and storage options. There are internal dividers that velcro in place to separate your camera body from lenses or to organize your lunch and beverages. It has a key leash on a shock cord with a removable key fob, so you always know where to find your key, and large and small zippered pockets and slots of all varieties. It is an ace for organization if you prefer a bag with countless compartments to house all your essentials.
Among the many storage features in the Everyday Messenger, there is a zippered pocket with slots for camera batteries and memory cards. A well-organized photographer's dream come true.
Credit: Jared Ross
The Timbuk2 Classic and the Oiwas have very similar designs, even among the niche messenger bag lineup. Both of these bags fit our full test packing load with ease, though the Timbuk2 had a little extra room in the bag and extra room with the straps to cinch down over really large loads. The internal pocket layout is also similar, with dual bottle holders on the interior. These pockets are a little on the small side, but they work well for narrow bottles. We give the nod to the Timbuk2 as the material is more robust and less slippery, helping to keep things organized.
The Timbuk2 (left) and Oiwas (right) have very similar interior designs for packing up our laptop and coffee to head to the office.
Electronics
Back in the 80s, when these bags started to take off among bicycle messengers, no one was toting around notebook-sized computers, small space-age touchscreen gadgets, or tiny cell phones. Today, however, things have changed dramatically, and most manufacturers have evolved with the times to fit people's needs. The majority of models in this review have kept true to the spirit of the original messenger — that is, allow easy access to one's tools. Most of our top-scoring bags include padded laptop sleeves and pockets that are useful for cords and tablets because, let's face it, electronics are the tools of this era.
The Especial Stash takes top marks here again. This bag has a padded and fully waterproof laptop compartment. The sleeve is closed via a zipper covered by a thick protective flap and fits up to a 15" computer. If you don't need to use the waterproof sleeve, your laptop will also fit just in front of that in a second padded area, and there are useful pockets for cords and various accessories. Not only is the laptop area waterproof, but the entire bag is also highly impervious to water. We sprayed every bag with a garden hose, and the Stash stayed bone-dry inside.
The Especial Stash has a fully waterproof electronics pocket and another padded sleeve in front of it.
Some other great options include the Peak Design Everyday Messenger and the Oiwas. The Everyday Messenger has two sleeves for storing a tablet and your laptop, as well as countless features for safely storing and organizing your other electronics or camera equipment. While the Oiwas didn't have a dedicated tablet pouch, it was lightly padded and had plenty of room for chargers and accessories, like a mouse and headphones.
Peak Design includes zippered pockets that are great for small items like memory cards or extra batteries, and we love that there are zippered compartments on the sides for easy access to your phone or wallet.
Ease of Use
We assessed how logical, intuitive, and easy each bag was to pack, as well as how quickly we could access its contents. Our attention to these details spanned humdrum daily errands, urban adventures, airport travel, and even a hike or two.
We love it when a bag performs the basics easily and efficiently without going overboard. Some designs try to do too much, and you end up with a product that looks good on paper but can be a pain to use in real life. Chrome's iconic seatbelt buckle makes it easy to put on and take off.
Chrome bags feature a seatbelt buckle as a strap closure.
Credit: Whitney Clark
We love the Especial Stash for its user-friendlieness. It's fully ambidextrous, and it is easy to switch between left and right shoulder carry. The shoulder strap is easy to adjust, though you do have to lift this bag over your head to take it off. Our only complaint is that the velcro strap minder is not ideal for stashing excess strap if you have to fully tighten everything down. The magnetic closures can be undone with one hand, though there is a minor learning curve to figure them out, and the neon interior makes it easy to find your gear inside the pack.
The strap on the Stash is simple to tighten and loosen. There is a velcro strap minder for keeping the strap out of your way while biking.
Credit: Jared Ross
The affordable standout, the Timbuk2 Classic, is pretty user-friendly as well. The pockets and compartments are conveniently placed and straightforward. The Classic is simple with male/female buckles; it has velcro on the front and a “cinch” buckle on the shoulder strap that adjusts easily and quickly — just make sure to close the cinching mechanism, or it might accidentally loosen. After a nice firm tug on the strap, we had no issues with this strap, and some of our testers preferred this quick adjust system over other, potentially more secure, adjusting styles.
The Timbuk2 Classic has useful compartments (we love the water bottle holsters on either side of the interior compartment). We also like its buckle and locking mechanism.
Construction Quality
What good is a well-designed bag without longevity? We examined the quality of construction, materials, and weather resistance of each model we tested. We also meticulously examined each bag for any noticeable signs of wear and tear at the end of our multi-month testing period.
The Especial Stash is a high-quality bag with excellent craftsmanship that still remains relatively lightweight. The material is both weather-resistant and durable, while the interior laptop compartment is fully waterproof. Even after all our rounds of rigorous testing, the Stash looked practically unused.
Water just slides off the impervious Stash. No matter what adventures we got into, this bag could weather it in style without showing a scratch.
Credit: Penney Garrett
The Timbuk2 Classic is another high performer in this category. The Classic is made from a TPU-lined Cordura fabric makes it weather-resistant and very durable. Add to that a sensible design without any flimsy components or materials, and you have a bag that is not only affordable but will last a long time.
The Classic is made from a durable Cordura material that's made to last.
Credit: Hale Milano
What About Style?
Style is not a metric in this review because it's so subjective. However, there is a strong argument to be made for the statement you make with your bag. Over-the-shoulder bags have been around for a long time, at first adapted from military map bags for the broader public. The messenger, as we tend to think of it, has its roots firmly planted in powerline workers' bags from the 1950s. In the 80s, this style was updated, adjusted, and appropriated for bicycle messengers, and the category has since exploded. These bags have an urban flair and a toughness that tends to mirror their hard-working owners.
The utilitarian nature of messenger bags doesn't mean that you need to sacrifice your style; many are available in a variety of materials and colors.
Credit: Jared Ross
Conclusion
The bags tested here fill the needs of the modern urban commuter very well, offering a balanced blend of function and fashion depending on your needs and preferences. We hope this review has helped direct you to the best bag for your daily gear. In the end, the spirit of the traditional messenger bag holds steady: a durable bag that allows freedom of movement in a variety of urban environments and easy access to your toolkit. Whether you're carrying wrenches and hammers up a powerline or tablets and gadgets up the elevator, there's likely a modern messenger bag made just for you.
