Chrome Welterweight Citizen Messenger Bag

Chrome's Welterweight Citizen is a capacious courier bag that's comfortable to carry and very well made, while being a bit lighter and therefore easier to live with than typical high-end courier bags. It's a pro-quality bag with a lot of well-thought-out details but by the time it's crossed the Atlantic, it's wallet-clenchingly expensive.

• Pros: Plenty of room, comfy to carry, lots of reflectives
• Cons: Price

Chuck a bunch of stuff in the Chrome Welterweight Citizen, sling it over your shoulder and cinch up the straps and it feels just right. Its wide, padded shoulder strap sits smack-dab in the dip of your shoulder, so it's both stable and comfortable, and its quick-release/quick-loosen buckle makes it easy to get it off or swing it round to get at the contents.

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It fends off the wet too, because it's made in two layers. There's the visible nylon outer shell and inside that there's a layer of tarpaulin. They're only stitched together at the edges so there's no path for water to get inside. This isn't unique to Chrome, it's a standard way of building a high-end courier bag, well executed here. The tarp liner extends into the flap too, and the front panel extends up the sides of the flap for extra protection against the weather.

The Welterweight Citizen is held shut by large Velcro panels and two straps with snaplock buckles. This is super-convenient and, again, fairly standard, though it's a design some bag makers inexplicably forgo.

Chrome has provided plenty of reflective material on the Welterweight Citizen, including a large slab on the flap, and reflective webbing for the buckle straps and the under-arm stabilising strap. It's plenty visible in car headlights, though of course the driver has to be actually looking where they're going, and that's too often not the case.

The single, large main compartment is accompanied by two flat outer pockets – one with a zip closure – and three small pockets for pens, wallet, phone and so on. There are also two larger pockets the right size and shape for bottles: cycling water bottles, wine bottles, even a litre whisky bottle will fit. We don't suggest the latter as on-bike refreshment.

When you need to unload it, the Welterweight Citizen is easy to take off, thanks to its seatbelt-style buckle. Chrome says it was the first courier bag maker to incorporate a seatbelt buckle into its main strap, and it's now a widely used idea that saves you the hassle of lifting a heavy bag over your head to put it on or take it off.

The Welterweight Citizen is very easy to live with, then, and its beefy construction suggests it'll carry on that way for years to come. The stitching is tidy, and there are dense rows of tack-stitching at load points like strap connections. It's become my go-to bag for nipping into town even though I'm usually an avowed pannierite.

You can hear that there's a 'but' coming, can't you?

Money

The big issue here is the price. It feels like reviews on road.cc complain about price a bit too often, especially when we're dealing with the kind of high-end gear where you can surely make your own mind up about value for money. But it can't be avoided here.

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In the US, the Welterweight Citizen costs USD140, which is about £110, and if you lived in the US you could get it delivered for free. That makes the £160 UK price look a bit steep, even when you take into account 20 per cent VAT. Comparable bags like the Timbuk2 Classic, will cost you about £100, while long-standing courier favourite the Bagaboo Standard M is about £120.

To drop this much on a courier bag you either have to be using it professionally or to really, really like courier bags. For a casual user or a short-distance commuter, the price means it's probably overkill, excellent though it is.

Conclusion

This is an excellent, easy-to-use bag that's beefy enough you could use it for genuine, paid courier work. But by the time it's crossed the Atlantic, it ends up prohibitively expensive.

Verdict

Comfortable, top-quality courier bag with lots of thoughtful detail, but way too pricey