This is a detailed review of the Bellroy Card Sleeve wallet, one of the simplest leather wallets ever made.
Bellroy Card Sleeve Wallet Review
The Bellroy Card Sleeve is a thin, minimalist, leather wallet designed as a simple cardholder. It has one main pocket with a pull-tab for quick access, as well as two side pockets for frequently used cards. It has a capacity for 2-8 cards, 5 cash bills, and is made from eco-friendly leather stitched with thread. It’s one of the thinnest and lightest wallets ever made.
Should you buy the Bellroy Card Sleeve wallet?
If you are looking for a new, slim, leather wallet that will hold all your most important cards and give you easy access to them, then the Card Sleeve is what you are after.
This simple pull-tab model from Bellroy’s store is the perfect standalone or even a sidekick wallet for people that like to always dress nice and keep things organized. It has one of the most elegant designs, quick access to the pockets, and just enough storage so that it provides an effortless transition from your old wallet.
The Card Sleeve is arguably one of the best valued budget-friendly minimalist wallets, coming with great eye-soothing aesthetics.
Buying
The Card Sleeve wallet at the moment can only be bought from the official Bellroy online store.
Other popular wallet sites, such as Amazon, sometimes offer this product as well. If you’ve so far preferred one of them, make sure to check out if they have the wallet in stock.
I would still recommend the Bellroy web store as the best way to buy the card sleeve as they often offer great discounts, and have the best buyer’s policies compared to all other sites.
Price
The Bellroy Card Sleeve wallet will typically cost you around $55.
It’s a budget-priced product, and one of the cheapest from the Bellroy assortment as well. But don’t let the price fool you, this is one of the best leather wallets you’ll find, and its low cost just makes it great value overall.
Shipping details
Bellroy offers free shipping for all orders from the USA, no matter how much the product costs. The wallet will be delivered in 3 to 7 business days.
They also ship internationally, to almost every country in the world. These orders, however, will come with additional costs ranging from $5 to $15, depending on the country’s fees and taxes.
Customer support
If you have any questions before your purchase or concerns about the product after it’s delivered, you can contact Bellroy at any time. Their customer support team is available 24/7 and can be reached via e-mail at the [email protected] address.
They also have various social media channels on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, which you can follow for more updates and new releases.
Warranty and return policies
The Bellroy Card Sleeve wallet comes with a 3-year warranty which covers defects in the materials and workmanship, excluding any damage done by the users themselves.
The brand also has a 30-days free return policy, activated on the day of the purchase. During this period you can return the wallet back if you’ve changed your mind about it and get the full refund for it. You can read the details on Bellroy’s warranty page.
Bellroy brand
Bellroy is an accessories brand hailing from Australia. It was founded in 2010 and has produced various tech, travel, or day-to-day accessories in a creative and minimalist style.
Their goal is to help us minimize the space we use for all the necessary things we carry in our pockets while maintaining style and elegance. You’ll find all their products offered in multiple colors, each with a different stylish appearance, accommodating to a large customer base.
Bellroy is also one of the most eco-friendly companies in this industry, certified as a B Corp with high environmental conduct during the manufacturing process. They always use natural, non-polluting materials with high quality and endurance.
Basics
The Bellroy Card Sleeve wallet is a simple, single-pocket wallet made solely from leather and thread. It has one main pocket with a pull-tab for quicker access, and two smaller pockets on each side of it.
How to use the Bellroy Card Sleeve wallet?
This might be one of the simplest minimalist wallets ever created. The whole point of it is to act as a classic cardholder, storing all contents in the three pockets it has.
The pockets are all uncovered, and you just place your cards or cash bills inside. When you want to take one out, you have the help of a pull-tab attached to the main pocket. Pulling this piece will lift all cards and you can pick the one you need.
As Bellroy has suggested, the Card Sleeve is best used as a sidekick to your wallet, when you need to carry a few cards and don’t need the clutter of a big, chunky wallet in your pocket. It’s small, slim, and almost unnoticeable no matter which pocket you keep it in.
Build quality
Although it has a fairly cheap price compared to most minimalist wallets, the Card Sleeve has one of the highest-quality leathers used in its design.
Materials
As we previously mentioned, this wallet is made completely from leather and thread, which connects all the fabric pieces together.
Bellroy has used environmentally certified leather, one of the best eco-friendly materials you will find on such products. It’s a premium quality leather, tanned under the best protocols, and dyed in a way to keep it fresh for ages.
Aesthetics
The Bellroy Card Sleeve has a pretty non-conventional aesthetics when it comes to wallets. It looks a lot like a vintage phone holster and even has some features inspired by the designs of those items.
Design
The design of the Card Sleeve wallet is fairly simple. A single pocket, with a size of a credit card, along with two smaller one-card pockets on each side of it.
The surface of the wallet is smooth, designed in a modern and elegant minimalist approach. The edges are covered with sleek thread stitches, while on the bottom right corner you’ll find the Bellroy logo engraved in the leather.
The wallet comes in 6 different colors:
- black
- charcoal
- grey
- navy blue
- green
- citrus
All of them have a similar matte finish, except for the citrus option which has somewhat of a rugged surface.
Fit to clothing style
The Card Sleeve wallet’s minimalist design goes great on most outfits, but it will definitely fit best with the type of clothes you wear in a professional office environment.
The smooth leather and sleek shape make this item a perfect accessory to any suit, shirt, skirt, and similar formal attire. It can be carried in the back pocket in your pants, or in the front pocket of your shirt.
It’s so slim and elegant, it will blend effortlessly into any outfit, even those with small and restrictive pockets.
Features
Even when working with such a simple and strict design, Bellroy still managed to put the most features they could on the Card Sleeve wallet.
Weight, size, dimensions
With its paper-thin leather design, this is easily one of the lightest and slimmest wallets ever made. Its dimensions are:
- hight: 2.8 in / 7.1 cm
- width: 4.05 in / 10.3 cm
- depth: 0.2 in / 0.5 cm (when empty)
The depth of the wallet is expandable, thanks to the elastic leather. It will widen enough to fit your cards when they’re inside, and then narrow back again to its natural form when you empty it out.
Pull Tab
The most useful feature found on wallets with deep pockets, such as this one, is a pull tab.
This allows you to easily take out any card you need by slightly picking it up from inside the pocket. Taking any card out without this feature will be a troublesome experience. The pull tab makes this process a lot easier.
External Quick Access Slots
Aside from the main pocket, the Card Sleeve holds two additional pockets on each side of the wallet. These slots are smaller, fit one or two cards at the most, and are designed to offer quick access to the cards you use most often.
The slots have a slightly sloped opening that makes it easier to pick out the card inside.
How many cards can the Bellroy Card Sleeve wallet hold?
Officially, Bellroy recommends putting around 8 cards in the main pocket in order for it to hold its form and functionality.
However, many users have managed to put up to 10 cards while keeping the pocket fully functional. Add to this the two smaller slots which can hold 2 cards each, and you got yourself a pretty spacious wallet that can comfortably hold up to 14 cards.
How much cash can the Bellroy Card Sleeve wallet hold?
If you don’t need a lot of storage space for cards, you can always use one of the smaller slots for cash instead.
In this slot, you could easily fit 5-10 notes from various currencies, sacrificing the space of just 2 cards.
Is the Bellroy Card Sleeve water-resistant?
Unfortunately, the all-leather open-pocket design of the Card Sleeve makes it a non-waterproof wallet. Both the material and the contents inside will be damaged if the wallet is submerged into a pool of water, or even sprayed with bigger splashes.
Reviews and customer satisfaction
The Card Sleeve has great feedback from its user base and is one of the best-rated Bellroy wallets. It has gathered an impressive 4.7/5 stars rating on Amazon, which only further shows how satisfied the buyers have been with this product.
The biggest upsides users like in this wallet is that it holds as many cards as advertised, without getting too bulky. Most of them assure that the wallet keeps its slim figure and is so compact that at times you won’t even feel it in your pocket.
Known issues and problems
With such high-quality materials and simple design, there really isn’t a lot of room for issues and problems with the Card Sleeve wallet. I’ve only managed to identify a couple of problems.
The most notable one was that sometimes the leather can get too stretched out, causing the cards to fall out. This seems to be a manufacturer’s issue found in some series of this model. Most likely, this issue is now solved with the latest releases, and it will be covered by the warranty of the product if it appears.
Furthermore, some users have complained about the way this wallet was intended to be used. It’s more efficient when combined with another, more spacious wallet. Using a sidekick wallet is clever, and even useful on many occasions. But paying $55 for such an item, not as much.
And finally, one major downside of the Card Sleeve is its low warranty period. There’s no mechanism or any breakable parts on the wallet, yet you only get a 3-year warranty for it. Although you probably won’t even need it, it’s still a bit inconvenient when brands offer such weak assurances of their products, given how many modern minimalist wallets come with a lifetime warranty.
Bellroy Card Sleeve vs Bellroy Flip Case
One of the best-selling counterparts of this wallet is Bellroy’s Flip Case. It’s an enclosed, polymer-and-leather wallet, with a capacity of around 8 cards stored inside two pockets covered by magnetic trapdoors.
The Flip Case will typically cost a bit more than the Card Sleeve wallet, with its price ranging from $69 up to $89. However, for this price, it offers an important extra feature – two completely sealed pockets.
Although the capacity of the Flip Case is slightly lower, the cards stored inside of it will be much more protected. The issue here is that you’ll always have to spend a few extra seconds to open up the wallet and take out the cards, contrary to the Card Sleeve where this process is much quicker.
Who should not buy the Bellroy Card Sleeve wallet?
The Card Sleeve doesn’t offer any RFID protection to the cards inside. If security from wireless theft is one of your main concerns, then you should look at some other, safer alternatives. There are lots of other leather and metal wallets that will offer much stronger security to your cards. See my guide on the best RFID-blocking wallets for some excellent picks.
Additionally, the wallet doesn’t have any covers on top of the pocket and there is a risk of the cards falling out. If this is something that concerns you, I suggest you look for some sort of enclosed wallet which keeps the contents sealed inside.
And finally, the Card Sleeve is an all-leather wallet. Many people lately, especially younger and more modern crowds, have gotten tired of this old vintage approach, and want to try out the new metal wallets which emerged in the past few years. If you are such a person, then this is not the right wallet for you.
Who should buy the Bellroy Card Sleeve wallet?
If you want a second, sidekick wallet, slimmer than the traditional one you may already have, then Bellroy has the perfect product for you here. The Card Sleeve stores just enough cards to take with you on a night out, a short trip during working hours, or any occasion where you don’t need to carry every single item in your main, bulky wallet.
It’s also a great option for anyone looking to replace their old wallet with a new, simpler one.
Drivers that spend most of the day in their car seats are the perfect owner of this wallet. The Card Sleeve is so slim and light, you can easily carry it in whichever pocket you want without it causing any issues.
And lastly, I would recommend this wallet to tasteful people that always dress in an elegant manner, or adhere to a formal dress code. The smooth, matte-colored leather on the surface of the Card Sleeve is perfect for those who pay close attention to their outfits.
Where to buy the Bellroy Slim Sleeve from?
Bellroy Card Sleeve Specifications
| Type | minimalist |
| Max n. of cards | 8-14 |
| RFID blocking? | no |
| TSA compliant? | yes |
| Materials used | leather, thread |
| Height | 2.8 in / 7.1 cm |
| Width | 4.05 in / 10.3 cm |
| Depth | 0.2 in / 0.5 cm |
| Features | pull-tab, quick access slots |
| Water resistance | none |
| Warranty | 3 years |
| Return period | 30 days |
