A slim wallet can help you avoid the attention of pickpockets but what if the wallet itself is worth stealing? The titanium-encased Ridge Wallet presents this conundrum in a sleek, RFID-blocking package.
You can watch my full review in the video above or read on.
What’s The Ridge Wallet?
The Ridge Wallet is more of a money clip than a wallet, measuring 12.5 x 8.9 x 2.5 centimeters (4.9 x 3.5 x 1 inches) in a slick design of matted black, silver, blue or pink metal. There’s a solid feel in the 141 gram (5 ounce) Ridge Wallet, which blocks RFID – but more on that in a bit.
Although it doesn’t look like it, the Ridge Wallet fits about 12 cards in its main compartment with an additional side clip to hold even more cards or a bit of cash. Personally, I found the clip to be cumbersome, getting caught on my pocket each time I took it in or out, so the optional money strap seems the better purchase choice.
Otherwise the Ridge Wallet is fairly simple in build, though it comes with a small screwdriver you can use to adjust the tightness or change out the side money clip if you want.
Premium Problems
The Ridge Wallet is really good at what it does. Being thin, looking nice, and blocking RFID, which brings me to the central thought I have about the Ridge Wallet: what’s in the price? For most passports around the world, there isn’t a lot of sensitive information on the RFID chip. There are certainly other RFID-enabled cards you may be carrying (e.g. metro card) but probably none with critical data on it.
RFID scanning has limited range but what’s much more practical and likely, is someone targeting the wallet itself. In other words, someone getting close enough to attempt an RFID scan would be in range to snag the Ridge Wallet. And the Ridge Wallet might be nice enough that you wouldn’t want to take it out in some places.
Bigger Threat
I’ve talked about uglifying your travel gear to deter thieves, something you need to do in some parts of the world. Decoy wallets, carrying only a few cards across pockets are two good strategies to setup your own personal security system. Money clips are often a good tool to implement, the problem being the Ridge Wallet becoming the target. (Not to mention all of the cards attached to it.)
The Ridge Wallet runs around $80 for a premium design with a lifetime warranty. The loss of the wallet itself is going to set you back at a minimum that much. I’m not saying don’t have nice things but in parts of South America for example, valuables stay out of sight or might get stolen… and the Ridge Wallet looks valuable.
In short, if you’re looking for a money clip as an alternative wallet to slim down your pocket profile for pickpocket deterrence, the Ridge Wallet might not be ideal depending on where you’re traveling. But if you’re looking a premium, futuristic, minimalist wallet without those considerations, the titanium Ridge Wallet won’t look bad on anyone.