Lezyne Messenger Caddy bag

This burly courier bag from Lezyne is full of neat touches and is well put together to boot. You can fit a decent load in it and your kit will stay dry too. It's not at its best when overpacked but for medium sized loads and the daily commute it's a hard-wearing workhorse.

The Messenger Caddy is constructed from a shell of tough cordura nylon and vinyl coated ripstop fabric. The shoulder strap features a nicely engineered Aluminium buckle that makes the bag easy to adjust and in line with Lezyne law there's a bottle opener slot in it too. The stabilising strap can be fitted on either side of the bag and the shoulder strap (with neoprene phone pouch) slides so you can wear the bag over either shoulder.

Two buckles close everything up at the front. Along the front of the bag there's pockets for all your bits and bobs, inside there's a padded laptop sleeve big enough for a 17-incher, a document flap and lots of space. There's a mesh bottle holder on the side too. The whole bag is padded and lined and feels like a good quality bit of kit - it's heavy too, mind. There's plenty of reflective detailing – including, bizarrely, a nice big reflective logo on the inside. You get an LED loop too. On the outside.

The Messenger Caddy's first test was an inadvertant one - I forgot to bring it indoors, and left it by the shed on a really foul night when we had about an inch of rain. Come the morning my phone hadn't fared to well in the exposed pouch – not really the bag's fault – but everything inside was bone dry, so top marks there. My phone dried out eventually too, and stopped bleeping at me in a wounded kind of a way.

On the bike the Messenger Caddy is fairly well behaved for a big bag. the seven raised pads on the back are presumably there to promote a bit of airflow, but a bag this big (and heavy) is always going to keep you warm. It's not the ideal bag for a long, quick commute but for knocking round town it's tough and visible after dark.

Given the quality of the bag and the fact that it's well padded it's a good mobile home for a laptop, and when it's full of the usual stuff (clothes, shopping, old inner tubes, etc) it wraps round your back well and the stabilising strap does a good job of keeping it in place. Overload it, or put something inflexible in it, and it's a bit more unwieldy. On the plus side though, if you do get caught having to shift a bunch more stuff than usual, the bag will swallow it, even if it's not the most comfortable ride. If you do have to over-fill the bag, it's worth being careful not to lose anything from the front organiser pockets, as the flap won't cover them.

My only other minor gripe was that the lining is a bit loose, and filling the bag can pull it down so that the flap is hard to close. A quick yank sorts that out though, and there's been no damage to the lining.

Verdict

Solid, weatherproof bag for heavy duty town use