Tom Bihn Daylight Briefcase Review

We’ve reviewed many Tom Bihn bags over the years, including backpacks, tote bags, slings, and messenger bags / briefcases. Each time, we find robustly built bags with great functionality. This time, we’re reviewing the Daylight Briefcase, and we see the same great craftsmanship but toned-down function.

Disclaimer: Our Daylight Briefcase was provided to us by Tom Bihn. We are hugely grateful for the chance to try it, but we also caveat that we provide our honest opinions in the reviews, both the positives and the negatives. This review may also contain affiliate links.

Overview

The Daylight Briefcase is a small, light, and minimal EDC briefcase. With a basic U-shaped zipper for the main compartment plus a few external flat pockets, it’s designed for those who just carry the basics. As Lone Starr emphasized:

At 8 L in volume, I can bring my laptop and charger, a notebook, headphones, wireless mouse, glasses, and some small items like pens. I could toss a small water bottle in there too, but there is no interior sleeve for the water bottle, so best make sure your bottle doesn’t leak. Since the bag’s panels aren’t firm it’s pretty easy to overpack the bag so on top of all that, I can also throw in a small umbrella. That will just about fully pack the bag. Anything more, and you can’t really close the zippers. But for an 8L bag, that’s pretty good bang for your buck.

The bag has two carry options — a pair of minimal grab handles (briefcase mode), and a shoulder strap (messenger mode). The straps for both options are just a layer of webbing with zero padding. So even how you carry the bag is designed to be minimalist.

With a ballistic nylon exterior and ripstop nylon interior lining, it still boasts the durability that Tom Bihn is known for, though it’s a relatively lightweight ballistic nylon. So, if minimal EDC is what you’re looking for, this one would be a solid choice.

Pros

• Light weight but still robust materials
• Manages to fit 3 external compartments to help provide a little bit of organization

Cons

• No padding anywhere in the bag
• All compartments aside from the main compartment are flat and don’t have their own volume
• No water bottle pocket or sleeve

Organization

• Main compartment — The main compartment has all the volume of the bag, though it is a very basic pocket. There is an elastic half-sleeve on the front wall. Aside from that, there are some O-rings for attachments and webbing loops for attachments that use gated clips like Tom Bihn’s laptop sleeve. I do not have TB’s Cache (their laptop sleeve), so I just put my laptop directly into the main compartment. There is no padding on any side of the bag, so it’s a big risk. I could also use a separate laptop sleeve and just slide it into the main compartment too, bypassing the attachment loops. But that will take away a good amount of volume from the main compartment. If you’re just putting the laptop directly into the bag, you can fit a 15" laptop.

• Back compartment — On the back panel is a large flat compartment that is roughly 13 x 10 inches (W x H). It’s a good place for documents or a notebook, but since it has no separate volume, it’s use it still relatively limited. I could see it being used as an additional organizational pocket for cables just for the sake of keeping things orderly. There are two O-rings at the top of this compartment as well for additional attachments you want to add. Just keep in mind that this compartment is flat and against your back when wearing the bag.
• Front horizontal-zip compartment — This is the main place for organizing small items in the Daylight Briefcase. But it’s also a bit of an odd design. There is a partition that splits the compartment into halves. And you would typically expect sleeves or dump pockets that are separate from the rest of the compartment. But instead, the entire compartment is just split into two partitions. They took the whole compartment and just stitched the front and back panel together down the middle. This gives you two pockets that are about 6.5 x 5.5 (W x H), through the whole compartment is 10 inches in height. There are a couple O-rings at the top of the compartment. One of them comes with a non-extendable key leash attached, but you can move that to other O-rings throughout the bag. I’ve been using this compartment for all the small items in my EDC — pens, hand sanitizer, lip balm, pack of tissues, etc.
• Front vertical-zip compartment — On the very front of the front panel is a vertically zipped pocket that is 7 x 13 inches (H x W) and also does not have its own volume. Though the pocket is as wide as the whole bag, the zipper is a couple inches off from the side of the bag. I kept some snacks in this compartment but didn’t have much additional use for it.

Additional Features

The only additional features in the Daylight Briefcase, beyond the O-rings already mentioned above, are the carry features (the grab handles and shoulder strap).

• Grab handles — A pair of grab handles at the top of the bag; made from 1-inch webbings and has no padding. But at 8L, it doesn’t get so heavy that I felt the need for more padding. The webbing is very smooth; feels like seatbelt grade.
• Shoulder strap — Same material as the grab handles, but 1.5-inch webbing. The strap is adjustable to different lengths and removable. It attaches to the bag via gated snaphooks. The snaphooks are not locked in position and can rotate, which helps keep the shoulder strap from getting twisted. I do notice that with how smooth the webbing is, it slides off my shoulder very easily unless I wear it cross-body style, especially if I’m wearing my waterproof jacket.

With such minimalist straps, there isn’t really any intentional design to make the bag more comfortable to carry. But I guess it’s not UNcomfortable at least.

Construction

The Daylight Briefcase is 8L and listed at 14.2" (w) x 10.2" (h) x 3.9" (d). It comes in at 12.7 ounces (359 grams), which is very light for an EDC bag. The version I am using for this review is a high-tenacity 630D ballistic nylon exterior with a 210D cerylon 6,6 ripstop nylon lining. Both the interior and exterior fabrics are bluesign certified. Personally, I feel like 630D is good enough for a small EDC bag. If it were a larger backpack that I knew I was going to use for carrying a larger load or use as a travel bag, then I may want something a bit more robust.

The zippers are YKK #5 coil zippers, and like all TB bags, they come with unattached zipper pulls so you can attach them yourself at the length that you prefer. The rest of the hardware is Duraflex, Nexus and Woojin buckles, which feel good enough for an 8L bag. Unfortunately, the zippers are not sealed, and the exterior fabric is not coated, so don’t stay out in the rain too long.

TB is known for great craftsmanship, and the Daylight Briefcase, even though it’s minimalist by design, still boasts that same level of quality. There is no loose threading; the stitching is neat and well-done. There is reinforced stitching (bartack) at the load points of the handles and straps. So, no concerns with the construction and I would expect this bag to be able to last years.

Additional Notes

Funnily, even though the Daylight Briefcase is relatively thin, it manages to stand on its own better than I expected. Of course, this depends on what you’re carrying and how you pack the bag, but even with my normal carry described above, it will stand.

Conclusion

The Daylight Briefcase carries Tom Bihn’s excellent craftsmanship into a small minimal EDC work bag. This bag would be good for someone who doesn’t carry a ton of gadgets and doesn’t expect to heavily abuse their bag. But if you just carry your laptop, a notebook, headsets, mouse, and a few small things for work, and you primarily commute by driving, the Daylight Briefcase can be a perfect choice.

As always, thanks for reading. Drop a note in the comments if you have any questions about the Tom Bihn Daylight Briefcase and follow us on Facebook and Instagram to stay up to date on what bags we’re trying out.