Peak Design Tech Pouch Review: My Essential Travel Tech Bag

The Peak Design Tech Pouch, when you zoom out, is a place to put all of your small accessories that would otherwise float around in your bag on in various pockets of your backpack.

It solves a problem for me, because I have tons of batteries, cables, adapters, random photography accessories and chargers. Until I got my tech pouch from Peak Design, I had no place to put them.

When the Kickstarter came out in 2018, I instantly jumped on getting the first version of the PD Tech Pouch. After using it since 2018, I’m happy to share my thoughts about this travel accessory that has become default in my packing setup for travel, or being out for the day.

Let’s dive in.

What is the Peak Design Tech Pouch?

The PD Tech Pouch is small well-designed tech bag that you can use to help keep your accessories organized. Sounds pretty simple, right?

But when you think about it, the last thing that you want to be doing is digging around in the depths of your backpack to find your headphones, or a single charger. It would be even worse if you were to take a sweatshirt or jacket out of your bag, and everything loose came out with it.

Like all products from the Peak Design brand, the Tech Pouch is extremely high in quality, very practical and incredibly functional. All of the materials are nice and durable, and you know it’ll last a while — years, in fact.

Peak Design came out with a second version of the Tech Pouch. I mentioned that I backed the first version in 2018; I got the updated version of the pouch in 2023.

This review will talk about the second version (v2). Most of my experience comes from the first version of this tech bag. It shouldn’t make much difference, because they are nearly identical, as I found from my use of both.

Practical uses of the Peak Design Tech Pouch

The Tech Pouch is for you if you want to contain a bunch of loose items. It’s going to be good to keep a phone cable or two, a camera and some headphones.

I’ve found that it’s the best if you have many (more than five or six) small things that you want to regularly access. The most practical uses of this tech bag are for photographers, remote workers who are traveling with a laptop setup/work accessories or someone who brings a set of electronics that require charging, on a trip.

For travelers

When you travel, it’s easy to accumulate many things that you need at the ready. I’ll sometimes stash away entry documents or visa papers, my passport, a spare cell phone, my headphones, a portable battery and various charging cables. Wow, that’s a lot of stuff I need on a travel day.

You can easily keep your Tech Pouch in your travel bag, and quickly access these things when you need them by unzipping the pouch and having them neatly organized in the pockets.

For photographers

If I’ll be going somewhere and I’m bringing a lot of my photography gear, the Tech Pouch is a great accessory for my filters, cleaning cloths, memory cards, portable hard drives, computer charging cables and camera straps.

With photography, I always like to stay super organized because I don’t want to damage my camera gear. I also want to know where everything is located within my travel pack.

Losing a memory card is the worst feeling for a photographer, and frankly, they’re easy to misplace. If you run out of space and can’t find your empty cards, you can get yourself into trouble!

For everyone else

For every hobby, profession and everything in between, the Tech Pouch can be helpful. If I were commuting into an office every day, I would want to use the tech pouch to organize my work bag.

If I were big on sewing or knitting, I would want to organize all of my supplies. If I were a student, having a place to keep my pens, pencils and other note taking supplies might be nice.

If I were traveling with a family of kids who all had iPads and electronic gadgets, I’d want to have all our chargers neatly tied up in one spot, not flowing throughout our luggage.

Inspired by the Peak Design Tech Pouch product video on the product page, I realized you could also make use of it as a baby organizer if you’re taking a flight with a baby. The Tech Pouch comfortably fits several diapers, pacifiers, wipes, bibs, booties, baby spoons and a slim toy or teething ring.

Material overview

To make things simple in discussing the build of the PD Tech Pouch, here it goes: the materials are some of the best in the industry. In this section, I’ll go into a little more detail.

If you look at Peak Design’s mission statement, their first value is to make the best things. It the promise that Peak Design makes to you when you buy their gear.

You know, I never actually realized the brand’s name is like, “Peak” (Top) “Design” (function). This makes sense now.

Back to the PD Tech Pouch, it’s made from 100% recycled weatherproof 400D nylon canvas shell. 400D is very strong, and the second you touch it, you’ll realize that it’s not light or flimsy.

The zippers are #8, which is a number that refers to the gauge of the zipper teeth. You’ll find number 8-10 gauge zippers in most backpacks. So, the tech pouch might even have better zippers than some backpacks on the market. It’s impressive.

Size and specs

I’ll walk through some of the features of the Peak Design Tech Pouch that might not be as obvious to the naked eye.

The size

The size of the Tech Pouch is 6” x 9.5” x 4”. If you’re like me and have no idea what that means, I’ll show you.

It’s 6” tall. If it’s standing up on its own, it’s 6” off the ground. It’s 9” long, and it’s 4” deep on all sides.

Capacity

The Tech Pouch capacity is 2L in volume. Because it has a lot of compartments, the space utilization is a little different than what you might have seen from other tech pouches that have a similar capacity, like the ones in my list of the best tech bags for travel.

Weight

The Peak Design Tech Pouch comes in at 288g or 10.2 oz. It’s not very heavy.

Arranging the inside

The main reason that you’ll want the Peak Design Tech Pouch is for the ability to carry stuff neatly. Let’s spend some time on the inside to check out all of the features.

Once you unzip the tech pouch, you’ll see an “accordion” of compartments. Starting from the top, you have a spot for a pen (or Apple Pencil).

Around the sides, there are three stretchy compartments. I like to use those for cables or memory cards.

For the actual compartments, you have the center area which has a zipper. I keep my most valuable items in there.

The pouch is fairly symmetrical, so you have the same types of divider storage on each side. Check out some of the different ways in which I arranged a selection of items below!

Is the Peak Design Tech Pouch worth it when compared to competitors?

The Peak Design Tech Pouch is fairly expensive when you look at the wide variety of tech organizers on the market. I wrote a review of my favorite picks for tech pouches so that you can see the competition.

At the low end of the list, something like this tech organizer is almost a third of the price. Why is that? Well, the best way that I can describe it is, “we have zippers at home”.

What I mean by this is that there are a lot of similar components, but the quality and intent of them are widely different.

Take the EVERGOODS CIVIC Access Pouch, for example. It’s similar in quality level, but different in intent. The CIVIC Access Pouch has a different layout for compartments and opens “hamburger style,” so you can use the space differently.

Ultimately, the choice is yours if you want to buy a tech bag that will last you many years. Some of my cheaper cable organizer bags haven’t even made it to a year because the quality falls apart.

I had one of those bags with nylon straps to hold cables and it broke after a few months. The Peak Design Tech Pouch has barely shown and signs of wear after several years and lots of international trips.

When I was pulling both of my Peak Design Tech Pouches, I couldn’t even tell the difference of the the one from 2018 (v1) and the newer one from 2023 (v2).

Things I don’t like about the PD Tech Pouch

As I mentioned above, I think the price is high. For the average consumer, it can be a little hard to justify spending the money on it.

If I had to nit-pick, I don’t see a use for the loops at the top. You’re supposed to be able to attach Peak Design anchors to them and carry the tech pouch using their camera straps. Truth is, you can do that. I just don’t think I ever will.

There’s also a little strap on the bottom that appears to be for looping your hand through. I guess you can use it to pick up the pouch. I don’t think that’s very necessary and it carries the risk of getting caught on other things in your bag.

Where have I used it?

I’ve taken the PD Tech Pouch all over the world. A few years back, Becca and I traveled full-time and worked remotely, and the Tech Pouch was how I was able to pack away my chargers and cables.

I never lost anything, nor left anything behind, because I always had a place to put my gear.

When we relocated back to NYC, I did a lot of working from laptop-friendly cafes in Brooklyn, as well as a coworking space here and there. I would use my Peak Design Tech Pouch to bring a mouse, iPhone cable, smaller headphones and a couple of other things to help me work remotely.

Other the last few years, we’ve done a lot more travel and I haven’t had such a big focus on photography. Nevertheless, the PD Tech Pouch comes with me on all of our road trips and shorter trips.

Do I recommend the Peak Design Tech Pouch?

The biggest takeaway, for me, is that I always have a place to put everything tech and electronics-related when I use my PD Tech Pouch. It goes two ways: for starters, when I’m packing to leave, I have a sense of organization in being able to see the same types of accessories all in one place.

And when I need quick access to them, I have it covered.

When I’m out and about, and I unpack, with random things going everywhere, having the Peak Design Tech Pouch as a place to store things is invaluable.

That’s how I’ve learned to use the Peak Design Tech Pouch and how it has helped me travel over the years. It’s no surprise that I recommend it as a durable, high-quality and functional travel must-have, without hesitation.

Where to buy the Peak Design Tech Pouch

For buying, you have a few options. You can buy the Tech Pouch directly on Peak Design’s website. On the website, you’ll often see many links to their “Pre-Owned Products Store.” That’s a good option if you want to save money. This marketplace has verified Peak Design products in great shape.

You can also buy the bag on Amazon (although only v1 is available), B&H Photo and Adorama.

More about Peak Design

Peak Design makes some of my favorite products for photography and travel, and everyday lifestyle. If the PD Tech Pouch interests you, I recommend checking out my Peak Design Travel Backpack review for a backpack that matches the design.

Some other products from Peak Design that I can’t live and travel without are the PD Field Pouch, PD Camera Cuff Strap, Peak Design Phone Case and Peak Design Wireless Charging Stand.