Pacsafe Review: The Citysafe Anti-Theft Travel Purse, Tested

The Pacsafe Citysafe 100 GII is a small anti-theft travel purse with a locking zip, a cut-resistant strap, steel mesh in the body panels and an RFID blocking pocket, and it carried everything two of us needed for 4 days in Barcelona. Pacsafe has retired the GII generation, and the bag that now does the same job is the Citysafe CX, from $89.95 (about €85, £67).

I went looking for it because none of the bags I owned worked for a day of sightseeing. My comfortable handbags could not be worn across the body, my shoulder bags were either too small for a camera, a notebook, a phone and a bottle of water or too loud to combine with anything, and a rucksack means taking the thing off every time you want something out of it. Pacsafe agreed to send me a Citysafe 100 GII to review. Below is what it holds, how it behaved in one of Europe’s worst cities for pickpocketing, and what to buy now.

Pacsafe Citysafe 100 GII specifications

The Citysafe 100 GII measures 25 x 19 x 9 cm (9.8 x 7.5 x 3.7 in) and weighs 278 g (9.8 oz) empty, which puts it at the small end of Pacsafe’s handbag range. Its full specification is in the table below.

I chose black. A black bag goes with everything, and it draws no attention to the fact that the fabric is not ordinary handbag fabric, which is half of what you are buying.

First outing: a car-free day in Leuven

The Citysafe 100 GII passed its first test with room to spare, and the test was deliberately easy. I took it to the car-free day in Leuven, where the streets fill with market stalls, street performers and sports demonstrations, and I carried only the essentials: tissues, lip balm, my wallet, my phone, sunglasses and a small bottle of water. The bag swallowed all of that and still had space left.

The look surprised me most. You can feel by the fabric that this is not a normal handbag, but you cannot see it, and nobody who saw me carrying it would have read it as a security product.

The locking zip, and how it works

The zip locks to a hook on the shoulder strap, and a sliding mechanism then blocks the hook. Opening it means knowing the system exists and then getting a close enough look at it to work it out, neither of which a hand in a crowd has time for. This is the one feature that changes behaviour rather than reassuring you, because you either clip it or you do not.

4 days in Barcelona

The Citysafe 100 GII held everything 2 travellers needed for 4 days in Barcelona, which is a harder test than Leuven by some distance. Barcelona has a long-standing reputation as one of the pickpocketing capitals of Europe and is well known for street scams, so it is where a bag like this either earns its money or does not.

We travelled with a small carry-on case, a rucksack for food and this one purse between us, which meant the purse carried far more than it had in Leuven. On the day we left it held my wallet, a tablet, a camera, sunglasses, a notebook and a paper city guide in the zipped main compartment.

What went where

My passport and hair clips went into the inner zipped compartment, which also has a hook for keys. I clipped our hostel keys to it as soon as we checked in, which is the small habit that stops a set of keys ending up loose at the bottom of a bag.

The 2 open inner side pockets took my phone, tissues, lip balm and a pen. One of those pockets is RFIDsafe, so it blocks the scanners used to read contactless cards and passport chips through a bag.

The 2 outer side pockets, below where the strap runs, are small. They hold tissues, lip balm or a folded city map, which is what I used them for. They are open, but the opening is narrower than the pocket behind it, so they are awkward to get into by feel, and they are clearly designed for the things you want quickly rather than for anything worth stealing.

The strap

The strap adjusts over its whole length with a sliding mechanism, and it carries a turn and lock security hook. Opening the hook lets you pass the strap around a table leg or a chair back and close it again, so a bag on the floor of a café cannot be lifted as somebody walks past.

The strap is also slashproof. Stainless steel wire runs through it, and the same eXomesh reinforcement sits in the body panels, so a blade cannot open the bag in one pass or cut the strap and take it.

Rain

The purse is water repellent, and genuinely so. I walked around with it through an entire day of rain in Barcelona and nothing inside it got wet, which is more than the specification promises and the only time I have been able to test water repellency properly by accident.

The verdict

The Citysafe 100 GII is the bag I would take again, and it became my default day bag for trips after Barcelona. It is small enough not to tempt you into carrying a day’s worth of things you do not need, big enough for a camera and a tablet, and the security features work without asking anything of you beyond clipping a zip.

Two things are worth knowing before you buy one. The bag is genuinely small, so if you regularly carry a laptop or a full-size water bottle you want the next size up, and the outer pockets are too tight for anything thicker than a folded map.

What replaced the Citysafe 100 GII

The Citysafe CX range replaced the GII generation, and it is what to buy now that the older bags have left Pacsafe’s catalogue. Pacsafe carries the same security ideas across: smart zipper security, cut-resistant materials, an anchor strap that locks the bag to a fixed object, and RFID blocking pockets.

Two models sit closest to the bag reviewed here, and the difference between them is space. The Citysafe CX Square Crossbody holds 2.4 litres at 21 x 15.5 x 6.6 cm (8.3 x 6.1 x 2.6 in) and weighs 250 g, so it is smaller than the 100 GII and suits a phone, a wallet and a passport. The Citysafe CX Convertible Crossbody expands from 3 to 5 litres at 28 x 26 x 8 cm (11 x 10.2 x 3.2 in), weighs 295 g and takes a tablet, which makes it the closer match to what I carried in Barcelona. Both are built from ECONYL regenerated nylon rather than plain nylon.

Pacsafe lists the square crossbody at $89.95 (about €85, £67) and the convertible at $99.95 (about €94, £75). Amazon has been running the Pacsafe Citysafe CX Convertible Crossbody below that list price, while the Citysafe CX Square Crossbody sells there at the same $89.95 Pacsafe charges directly.

The rest of the gear I travel with sits in the same category of small, reusable kit. It is listed in the Wonderful Wanderings travel shop, next to the other travel gear reviews. Barcelona and the rest of the country are covered in the Spain archive.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

The 4 tips below come from carrying this purse through Leuven and Barcelona, most useful first.

1. Clip your accommodation keys to the hook in the inner zipped pocket the moment you check in. That hook is there for exactly this, and a set of hostel keys loose in a bag is the thing you will be hunting for in a doorway in the rain.
2. Buy the black one if you want the fabric to go unnoticed. The GII came in 5 colours and the black version is the only one that reads as an ordinary handbag rather than as technical fabric.
3. Use the outer side pockets for the map and the tissues, never for a phone. They are open, and although the narrow opening makes them awkward to reach into, they are the one part of this bag with no security at all.
4. Trust the water repellency more than you expect to. A full day of Barcelona rain left everything inside dry, which is the one performance claim on this bag I have tested to destruction.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the first-hand notes in this post come from carrying the Pacsafe Citysafe 100 GII on a car-free day in Leuven and then through 4 days in Barcelona. The team covers anti-theft travel gear for independent travellers, including the handbags, backpacks and wallets worth buying, and updates this page when models, prices and specifications change.