Pioneer Co-Pilot Travel Wallet Review

Travel wallets can be hit or miss—sometimes they’re slim and streamlined but lack real-world functionality, while other times they’re so overbuilt they feel more like a pouch than a wallet. Pioneer’s Co-Pilot lands firmly in the latter camp, with burly fabrics and features that wouldn’t feel out of place on a full-sized travel backpack. From the 840D Baby Ballistic Nylon exterior to the 3XD liner (or 10XD, if you spring for the Black colorway), the build feels almost comically overkill for something designed to carry passports and cash. Add in YKK zippers—including a nifty self-locking one up front—and the Co-Pilot makes a strong first impression on the durability front.

Of course, a wallet is only as good as how it carries, and that’s where things get interesting. The Co-Pilot packs in a dedicated passport slot, RFID-protected card storage, and a cash pocket roomy enough to swallow nearly any currency you throw at it. There’s even a front coin pouch—something most travel wallets skip—which is a blessing if you’re headed somewhere coins are still king. However, the wallet’s bulk, tricky zipper, and underutilized interior space make it harder to justify if you’re after a slimmer, more packable option.

The Rundown

Pioneer is one of those brands we simply don’t catch skimping on build quality. Starting with the materials, the main fabric is an 840D Baby Ballistic Nylon coated with a DWR coating for weather protection. Meanwhile, the interior has a Slate 3XD fabric, a 3-ply nylon with its own DWR coating. Take note that the Black colorway features a 10XD liner fabric. We can tell you about that fabric, too, but the bottom line is that all the ingredients Pioneer’s cooking with are pretty overkill for a travel wallet; we’ve seen travel backpacks built with lesser materials.

Meanwhile, the zippers are from YKK. The one at the front is particularly interesting because it’s self-locking. This means that once you fold down the metal pull, it won’t move until you fold it back up again. This keeps whatever’s inside the front pocket secure without resorting to overly complicated locks or fasteners.

While the Co-Pilot’s build quality is indisputably solid, there’s an argument to be made that it’s a bit too beefy for its own good. We’re not exactly blaming the choice of materials, but the amount used makes the entire wallet feel hefty and large. For example, the piping around the edges is very thick but feels more vestigial than structural.

Opening the wallet, you’ll see a clear divide between the two halves: one side is for travel, and the other is more for everyday use. For the former, there’s a slot for your passport, and a slip pocket for your boarding passes. Interestingly, Pioneer specifies that the slip pocket can fit full-length boarding passes without issue. However, at the time of writing, we’ve yet to find boarding passes that actually fit; we have to fold them in half each time.

The wallet’s other side is entirely occupied by a cash slot, with three built-in RFID-safe slots for your cards. Each of the card slots can fit up to two credit cards, and we advise you to leave one of those six spaces for a smart tracker (they’re worth the investment, we’re telling you). The cash slot is surprisingly roomy, which was pretty handy considering that we were traveling to parts of the world where cashless payments aren’t widespread yet. We’ve no issues inserting most foreign currencies in this cash slot, whether U.S. dollars, British pounds, Japanese yen, Euros, or Thai baht, so we’re 99% sure all banknotes will fit just fine.

So far, so functional, but we have a few gripes about the Co-Pilot’s interior. Firstly, the zipper tends to tuck away very deeply into the wallet’s spine when you fully open it. This makes closing the wallet tricky, as you then have to fish it out, and we had to do this pretty much all the time. Second, there’s simply a ton of space left inside that could be better utilized. In fact, the entire wallet can feel more like a very slim pouch than a travel wallet at times, making us wish there were one or two extra liner pockets inside for storing a few accessories, too.

A large chunk of the Co-Pilot’s size is due to the front coin pouch. Admittedly, this is useful as coins are often heavily utilized in many of our travel destinations. Unfortunately, there are no dividers inside, so everything you put inside gets jumbled and mixed. So, the same gripe we have with the main compartment applies: we wish there were more organization.

Packability

Packability is where we really struggle with the Co-Pilot. Sure, all travel wallets are going to be chunkier than their everyday wallet counterparts. However, the Co-Pilot just takes it a bit too far, occupying too much space in a sling, for example. In fact, we resigned ourselves to keeping the Co-Pilot in our travel backpack for most of the trips we took it on.

If there’s any consolation, it’s for those travelers who need to bring a lot of coins and cash. There’s simply a lot of room for both, whether we’re talking about the cash slot or the front coin pouch. So, if physical currency is still the primary mode of payment where you’re going, then this is a good wallet for that.

Quick Comparison

Many zippered travel wallets we’ve tested have a much smaller footprint than the Co-Pilot. ALPAKA’s travel wallets aren’t that small, but even their Zip Travel Wallet undercuts the Co-Pilot’s size by a visible margin. Inside the Zip Travel Wallet are three passport pockets and two dedicated slots for credit and debit cards. The same goes for the Zero Grid Passport Wallet, which has room for six cards, a passport, cash, and a pen since you’ll be filling out forms as you travel. If you want to go all in on slimness, then the SlimFold Passport Wallet undercuts all of these wallets, while still being able to store two passports, eight cards, and plenty of cash.

All of that said, the Co-Pilot stands above the rest in terms of coin storage since the rest have no zippered pockets. So, the point still stands: the Co-Pilot is a solid choice where cash is still king.