If you were looking at buying a new full set of protective equipment from Supfen you’ve most likely saw that a bag is also thrown in for your transport convenience and, as they say
This fencing bag offers ample space to house your complete historical fencing gear ensemble. Easily accommodate one person’s complete equipment and other essential accessories without the hassle of cramped storage.
SUpfen
The question is, is this bag just something they added just to sweeten a deal or is it really an indispensable travel companion for your journeys? Dragos Matache has been kind enough to share his experience with this bag with us, so here is his review.
For the past 2 moths I’ve driven this bag around and I can tell you that it was a mixed experience. The bag itself has a shape resembling a guitar cover with a wider bootom and narrow top. From a structural standpoint, it is solid and made out of some kind of plastic fiber which makes me hopeful that it can sustain the abuse of shoving the gear inside it. Speaking of things that will be abused on it, the zipper is solid but I don’t think it was made to last as I have already seen it “missclosing” on several spots.
The space inside the bag is rather generous at the bottom but you will quickly learn that thanks to the width narrowing towards the top, packing stuff will probably require you to sit on the bag in order to close it. Despite all this, you can easily fit in everything that Supfen will ship you in the bundle so, in that regard, the bag is perfect to accomodate all the equipment sold by them togheter with one or two swords (although I would advie against it, as sweaty gear and steel swords shouldn’t be nowhere close to one another).
If you know your stuff around packing and don’t mind craming some things into others you will be able to also squeeze your mask, a spare pair of shoes together with a change of clothes and a water bottle.
The ergonomics of the bag aren’t great but they are not terrible either. The top can be folded to accomodate the rare case where you haven’t stuffed it like a Thanksgiving turkey. In this regard, a few extra centimeters on the top would have been great. Continuing in the ergonomics department, one has to keep in mind that this bag is meant to be carried like a backpack, which isn’t too fun if you have any kind of back injury or if you have to go up and down stairs (when I weighed my bag with everything inside it clocked in at 13 Kg).
In conclusion I would rate this bag a solid 7/10. It’s a nice addon thrown into an already sweet deal for a full gear set but I wouldn’t get out of my way to buy it as a separte 40$ purchase.
The producer also has another variant of bag with wheels that we haven’t had the chance to test (yet).