Ortlieb Small Sling It bag

The Sling It is the second-smallest of Ortlieb's range of shoulder bags, but it's still surprisingly large and comfortable to carry.

In style and shape this is a scaled-down courier bag, with a main strap for your dominant shoulder and a secondary strap across your body for stability. There are two anchor points on the bag so you can swap the secondary strap over if you're left-handed, and a pad on the main strap helps keep it comfy.

The bag's made from Ortlieb's waterproof fabric that's also renowned for resisting most impacts and scrapes short of direct nuclear attack. You know how they say cockroaches will survive World War III? They'll be wearing Ortlieb shoulder bags.

When you fold the top flap, the top couple of inches of the bag fold too, giving a waterproof seal to protect your cargo. Inside there's a zipped pocket for valuables, a large main compartment and a sleeve for a tablet or small laptop.

The main compartment is surprisingly roomy. It just swallowed my SLR, a flashgun and a couple of spare lenses, and it'll easily take a pair of shoes and a change of clothes for the office run.

One thing it won't quite take though, is a 13in laptop, and that's annoying as Ortlieb offer notebook sleeves in 10in and 13in that are supposed to fit. You can slip in a 10in tablet, but try as I might I couldn't get a 13in laptop into the Small Sling-It.

The problem is that the 11in x 11in compartment just isn't big enough. Typical 13in laptops are 12-13in wide. Bottom line: if you want to carry anything bigger than a small netbook, get the Medium or Large Sling-It.

I'm forever rummaging in the bottom of bags and rucksacks for my keys so I really appreciated the Sling-It's key carrier. It attaches to the inside of the bag by a snap-lock buckle so it's easy to find and remove, and it's orange, so you can't really miss it against the bag's light grey interior.

Speaking of features that assist the inveterate rummager, there's an organiser with slots for pens and phones too, and that grey lining prevents black-cat-in-coal-cellar search frustration.

On the bike, it's stable and comfortable to carry, it keeps out the wet and its size means it doesn't look silly off the bike.

At £75 it's in the middle of the price range for decent quality on-bike shoulder bags. Go cheaper and you don't get Ortlieb's water resistance and durability. Go more expensive and you get larger bags with more bells and whistles like the quick-release buckles favoured by real messengers for super-quick access, side entry for pulling out small packages on delivery, reflectives and loops for blinky lights.

They're all nice to have, but unless you're delivering packages hour-in, hour-out, you can live without them. That puts the Sling-It in the Goldilocks zone for features and price.

Verdict

Durable, waterproof and comfy shoulder bag; pity it won't take a laptop.