Chums Surfshorts Review

Hi this is Trevor with LeatherWallets.org. In this series of videos we're looking at water resistant wallets and in this particular video we're looking at this Chum's Surfshorts wallet. I got this off of Amazon. So the cheapest wallet that we're looking at in this series. Let me clip the little nylon. This wallet is made out of a nylon rip stop material. It's got two zippered pockets and an ID window. The top zippered pocket has the ID and it comes with this card here with a divider. The bottom has just a large open pocket. It has this key ring here that slides all the way down into that pocket. It's pretty basic. There's not a lot to it. Let's go ahead and see how much we can fit in there. So I've got a stack of cards here. I just want to mention, so we're going to be testing this wallet's ability to resist water getting on the contents. One of the ways we're going to do that is I've got these little stickers here that are used inside electronics. They change color when water hits them. So we're going to stick those on cards. Put them in the wallet and then get them wet and see what happens. This wallet is going to hold quite a bit of normal cards and bills. Let's throw ten bills in. Put it in this back divider area. It fits OK. That's as deep is it will go.

We've got a few cards up there. Let's try this back a bunch more. Can even fit a whole stack. The construction looks OK. It's cotton threading. Let me have a look and see if there are any major issues. These don't look like they're very watertight zippers. So we'll test that. Threading doesn't look like there's any problems. When I bought this off Amazon the listing states Made in USA. I noticed when I was looking at the packaging that you see right there. It says Made in China. So I'm a little bit concerned on where that disconnect is. I don't want to say they're doing anything to mislead the public on purpose. There's a good possibility that someone entered it in wrong. This is a American based company. In fact they're based out of Utah. So it could have been a mistake, could be someone else selling Chums that modified the listing to state the incorrect facts. It's a little worrisome that the two don't mesh. We've got it filled up. We've got ten bills held fine and in the other pocket a whole stack of cards. 14 cards 10 bills. This wallet handled it just fine. All right let's go ahead and test this wallet to see if it has any RFID protection. This is the 13.56 Megahertz tester and the card. So the wallet doesn't state that it has any protection. Make sure everything still works.

Throw it in there and it scans just fine and let's do it on the back side. Scans just fine, so no RFID protection, no NFC 13.56. This is the first time we're going to test out 125 kilohertz with this little apparatus I built here. I'm excited to try this out. We've got a card here that will scan. Throw it in this big pocket and it scans just fine. In this other pocket, scans just fine. All right. So definitively, no RFID protection with the 125 kilohertz or the 13.56 Megahertz.

I don't see any major issues with the build. The threading is cotton. The zippers don't look like they are waterproof or water resistant so we'll test that. For something that you'll use occasionally, this isn't a bad option. We'll know more once we test it with water.

We are outside in my backyard. I have the wallets all set up. We're going to do the water test. Each of them have a card like this in it that has these little dots that turn colors. They turn red when water hits it. On the backside I have some tissue paper taped to it so we can use that as an indicator as well. So let's get started. All right. Test one, light spritz, that should be good for a first test.

All right we're back from the rain. Let's check out how the Chums Surfshorts wallet did. We can already see the cards I put in. Let's pull it out here.

You can see that definitely got wet. So let's pull it out. I put tissue paper on one side and then these stickers here, you can see definitely a couple of these turned red. I set them out to dry them a little bit before I took it apart but you can see the tissue paper definitely got wet. So the Chums failed the first part. Yeah you can feel that it's wet in here. Oh and I put another card and that one didn't make it either. Some of those are barely red but they have a little bit of redness to them. All right. That's it.

So to wrap up on the Chums Surfshorts wallet, it's not going to be waterproof or water resistant. Maybe I gave it a little bit too much to handle. You saw the video so you can judge. It's very inexpensive. It's something that when you need a wallet that will handle being wet and dry and wet and dry. This will do a great job being as it's rip stop nylon but it will not keep your contents dry. All right. Thanks. Make sure to check the website. It's LeatherWallets.org. Watch the other videos see how the other wallets did. Thanks so much. Goodbye.