I hate fat wallets, and I cannot lie. And I don’t want to end up like this guy:
This is why, a few years ago, I started using a Jimi wallet. A slim, hard plastic card wallet billed as ‘The wallet for people who hate wallets’, the Jimi wallet won’t be to everyone’s taste. What you gain in svelteness of wallet, you lose in… well, it’s hard plastic. If you’re used to leather, the Jimi wallet could feel a bit tacky. You also lose the compartment where you store your money. That’s not a big deal to me as I tend to carry it loose, but I appreciate that for others this is the raison d’etre for having a wallet.
Anyway, my Jimi boy has been on its last legs for a few months now. The plastic fold that acts as a hinge has half-torn, and I managed to snap off half of a piece of its innards, which means I have a jagged piece of plastic about to slice my fingers every time I open it up.
I got some good usage out of my Jimi wallet, and I was quite prepared to buy another one (albeit perhaps in a snazzier colour than the original, which was black). However, it seems they’re a bit harder to get hold of in the UK these days, and I wasn’t inclined to pay for international shipping. So I started researching alternatives, which is how I encountered the Secrid range – and after one look at the Secrid Miniwallet’s whizzy card release mechanism, I was pretty much sold. At the time of writing I’ve owned it for about three weeks, and am thus far very happy with it.
Secrid is a Dutch brand whose wallets all contain an aluminium RFID card protector (one of the wallets even contains two of them). They call this feature, enigmatically, the Cardprotector. The Cardprotector is intended to prevent your RFID cards – that is, travel passes, chipped debit/credit cards, etc – from being read when they shouldn’t be. The card release mechanism means you can eject your cards and select the one you want to use at any particular time.
For anyone else wondering about the pros and cons of a Secrid Miniwallet versus a Jimi wallet, here are my findlings. I’ve compared them on price, size, style, bouncebackability, durability and capacity.