Dango D01 Wallet: Worth It? (1-Year Review)

Описание: If you’ve watched any of my EDC update videos, then you’ve probably seen this wallet. I’ve had a lot of questions asked about it, and it has been in my EDC carry for almost two years, so I thought I should finally make a review. As always, I’ll be sharing both my pros and cons and whether I think this wallet is ultimately worth it.

For starters, I like the concept that this wallet is predicated on. It’s a front-pocket wallet, and it’s been totally overbuilt. You can see that there is no less than ten bolts to secure the leather to the aluminum frame, so this thing isn’t falling apart. They’ve used decent quality leather, and the wallet is relatively lightweight. Dango nailed the build here, and I can find no fault in terms of quality.

An accessory that I’m fond of is this paracord beaver tail that they included when I bought mine. Funnily enough, it’s super useful when you’re going through a restaurant drive-thru. Accessing a front pocket wallet when you’re seated is difficult, and I love how the beaver tail makes the wallet more accessible. Not to mention, it’s a really great fiddle piece for when you’re bored.

Unfortunately, this is where I run out of good things to say about this wallet. When I bought this wallet, it came with a multitool card - this is the only distinction between the D01 and T01 tactical wallets that Dango sells. Now to put it nicely, the multitool is hot garbage. It’s poorly designed, and it will poke you if you aren’t careful. For this reason alone, I cannot recommend purchasing the T01 wallet. The other issue you run into with the multitool card is that it sucks up precious space.

Dango says that the wallet has a capacity of 12 cards; however, realistically the capacity is much closer to seven cards, and that’s not even including the multitool. The leather compartment in front will hold three cards max and the back holds about four. As you add more cards to the wallet though, you’ll notice that the RFID plate starts to “float” and it just doesn’t look pretty. This is a direct consequence of the way they’ve used the rubber band to hold everything in place. And here-in lies another design flaw: The entire functionality of the wallet is predicated on the rubber band. To Dango’s credit, this seems to be a high-quality band and I’ve never had an issue - yet. Luckily, replacement bands can be bought for like five bucks.

Let’s talk conclusions - is the Dango wallet worth it? I’m sure you can see where this is going, and the answer is a flat NO especially not at $70. The build quality is good, the aesthetics are godly, but the design execution is simply poor. The only reason why I still carry it to this day is because it works for my small collection of cards. If you carry more than seven cards and aren’t willing to skimp on cash, then this probably isn’t the wallet for you. In short, despite what anyone else might say, to me this is an overpriced, niche wallet. And if I ranked wallets like I did my flashlights, this would probably be a solid C-minus.