Pacsafe Metrosafe X 20L Review

Who it’s for

The Metrosafe X 20L is a day bag for cities where theft is a genuine consideration— the crowded metro, the busy tourist square, the outdoor café table. It’s for the traveler who has decided that the twenty minutes a day spent thinking about their bag is worth designing away, and who is carrying enough value — a laptop, a camera, documents — that losing the bag would genuinely hurt.

It is not a travel main-bag. At 20L it holds a day, not a trip. Plan it as the small half of a two-bag setup alongside a carry-on backpack.

What the security features actually do

The word “anti-theft” is applied to bags whose only feature is a rear-facing zip. This one is at the other end of the spectrum, and it’s worth being specific about which threat each feature addresses.

eXomesh slashguard

A wire mesh laminated into the fabric panels. This addresses bag slashing— a thief cutting the bag open rather than trying to unzip it, which is a real technique in some markets and which no zipper design prevents. This is the feature that genuinely separates Pacsafe from the mid-tier, and it’s the reason for most of the price.

Locking zippers

Zip pulls that clip and lock together. The mechanism is time: a pickpocket in a crowd has a two-second window, and a locking zip turns that into a ten-second operation with visible fumbling. That is more than enough to prevent nearly all opportunistic theft. Note the friction is aimed at you too — you will open your own bag more slowly, all trip, and that’s the honest cost.

RFID-blocking pockets

The least valuable feature, and we’d rather say so. Proximity skimming of contactless cards is rare compared to ordinary theft and online fraud, and chip-and-PIN limits what a skimmed read is worth. Treat it as a free bonus, never a reason to buy.

What none of it does

None of this stops someone picking up an unattended bag and walking off. The slashguard-reinforced straps do let you secure it to a fixed object, which is the real answer to the café-chair problem — but the bag has to actually be secured, not just present.

The specs, and why they’re unusually complete

Pacsafe publishes what most brands in this space don’t: capacity (20L), external dimensions (17.7 x 11.8 x 5.1 in), empty weight (1.87 lb), fabric (750D recycled polyester with the eXomesh slashguard), laptop sleeve (16 in) and warranty (5-year limited). Every one of those figures is on our spec table above because the manufacturer stated it, not because we estimated it.

That matters practically as well as for trust. The 17.7 x 11.8 x 5.1 inch footprint means you can check it against a personal-item allowance in advance rather than at a gate — it sits comfortably inside the typical under-seat envelope on US majors. Our personal item guide covers how those allowances actually work.

The weight and convenience costs, honestly

At 1.87 lb this is not a heavy bag in absolute terms — it’s lighter than most laptops it carries. But it is heavier than an equivalent plain 20L daypack, because wire mesh and reinforced straps weigh something. You carry that difference on every trip, including the ones with no theft risk at all.

The convenience cost is larger than the weight cost and less discussed. Locking zips slow you down every single time you open the bag. That is the entire mechanism by which they work, so it can’t be engineered away — but if you’re someone who reaches into their bag constantly, it’s a daily friction you should factor in before buying.

Is 20L the right size?

For a day bag, yes — 20L is the classic daypack volume: a water bottle, a layer, a laptop, a camera, lunch. It also happens to be a good personal-item size, which is why this bag works as the under-seat half of a flight.

If you want anti-theft construction on a bag that can carry a whole trip, that exists — the 35L Venturesafe in our anti-theft roundupis the same idea scaled to a carry-on. But we’d push most people toward securing the smallbag rather than the large one, because the small bag is the one that’s open in crowds while the main pack sits in your accommodation.

When you should not buy this

If your travel is rural, road-trip based, or to destinations where street theft isn’t a meaningful concern, this is money and weight spent on a problem you don’t have. A normal daypack carried with basic sense — nothing valuable in outer pockets, bag on your front in crowds, never left on a chair — covers the realistic risk for most trips. Buying security hardware is not a substitute for those habits; it’s an addition to them, and it only pays off where the underlying risk is real.

The verdict

The Metrosafe X 20L is the genuine article in a category full of stickers. Slash-resistant panels, locking zippers and a fully published spec sheet make it one of very few bags where “anti-theft” describes engineering rather than marketing, and Pacsafe backs it with a 5-year warranty.

Buy it if you’re spending real time in crowded cities with valuable kit, and buy it as your day bag rather than your main one. If your trips are quieter than that, take the money to our main travel backpack roundup instead and carry a normal daypack carefully — that’s a completely defensible choice, and cheaper.