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At this point, I have reviewed a lot of minimalist wallets over the years! This includes many of the larger brands on the market today. However, I always enjoy finding the more niche wallet brands.
One of those niche brands I have been testing out over the past couple of weeks is the Aviator by Evermade. This by no means is a cheap wallet, with it being well over $100 after adding the carbon fiber cash clip.
So, is it worth it to get this competitor to larger brands like Ridge and Ekster? That’s what we are going to talk about in today’s article.
Tl;DR: The Aviator is a fantastic wallet that maintains the compact sizing factor of other popular sandwich-style wallets but makes it a bit easier to access the cards by utilizing a pull strap. While you can fully customize this high-quality wallet to hold anything from one to twenty cards, its biggest drawback is that the pull strap likes to get hung up behind the cards if you aren’t paying attention.
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What is the Aviator by Evermade?
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- Extremely high quality
- Great card capacity
- Easy access to card with pull strap
- Comes with coin tray
- Fabric pull strap is loud in your pocket
- Dimensions: 0.41" by 2.12" by 3.37"
- RFID Blocking: Yes
- Card Capacity: Up to 20 Cards (Chosen at Purchase)
- Cash Organization: Cash Strap
- Coin Storage: Yes
- Weight: 42.4 grams
The Wallet that the brand gifted me is their all-new Graphite Blue Aluminum wallet. It’s optioned with the carbon fiber cash clip and the base acrylic inner rail!
The Aviator stands out from the pack, by offering the two-plate and an elastic strap (like what a Ridge is), but instead of pushing the cards out of the Wallet via a thumb notch, you pull them out through the top with a pull strap. You can also push one card out of the top of your stack by pushing upwards with your thumb through a little window.
At the moment, a money clip is not available. However, the cash strap has a cash clip (much like what competitors offer) that is made of carbon fiber (and looks awesome).
What do I like about the Wallet?
1. A pull strap is better than a notch.
It’s hard not to compare this Wallet directly to the biggest name in the industry, which is the Ridge Wallet (you can read my whole review here). They both share the familiar sandwich design. However, I have found that pulling the cards out of the top of the Wallet via the pull strap is a much easier experience than pushing them out horizontally with your thumb.
The top of the strap is capped off with a metal clip, which is easy to pull out on when not looking at it and is easily found. This pull strap is adjusted in the interior of the wallet if you decide to change how many cards you are carrying, which is a nice feature.
2. Choose how many cards you use.
This thing has a 20-card capacity, which is impressive! I don’t think I have seen any other wallets like this one on the market that offer such a large capacity. Now, when you purchase the wallet, you decide for yourself how many cards you expect to store in your Wallet (ranging from 1-3 cards to 18-20 cards), and the brand adjusts it for you at the factory. I chose the 9-12 card capacity, just to be safe.
If, down the road, you start using more or fewer cards in the Wallet, you are fully able to change the capacity yourself, but it requires you to tear the Wallet down and adjust the internal straps. Regardless, this is a very nice experience, which allows you to have such a wide range of card amounts without having to worry.
3. The carbon fiber cash strap looks awesome.
While the brand does, in fact, offer a full carbon fiber version of this wallet, I have the aluminum with the carbon fiber cash clip. This is a weaved pattern clip, and it looks extremely high-quality. While I personally prefer the look of forged carbon fiber, weaved carbon fiber looks less like fingerprints (as we found with this wallet here) and more impressive in the long run.
I did find that it was a bit difficult to fit cash behind it, but I’ll be honest, I don’t use cash all that often anyways. Aesthetically speaking, they hit it out of the park with that one.
4. The included coin tray
While I live in the USA (where coins aren’t used often), I am fully aware that many countries still utilize coins extensively (including Germany, where this brand is based). Because of that, the Aviator includes a built-in coin tray! It’s still a toss-up on if I fully like coin trays in general, but it is a welcome addition here.
I will say, coin trays all have the same issue, the coins like to jingle around in the tray, and it can be quite loud. Because of that, I mainly use the coin tray for my guitar picks, rather than coins themselves (you never know when you need one). One trick I have seen to negate the rattling of coins, is to keep a bill behind the coins, which gives enough pressure on the coins to keep them from moving around, and stop the annoying sound.
5. Extremely high-quality build
This Wallet is built, and even ships from Germany, and the quality is everything that it should be. The metal plates feel great; the carbon fiber is top-notch, and everything fits together extremely well. No complaints in this department whatsoever.
What do I not like about it?
1. The strap can get tangled up.
Hands down, this is one of the most annoying things about this Wallet. While the pull strap is such an ingenious way to remove cards from the Wallet, it can also be a pain.
If you aren’t paying attention when pulling your cards out, it can get twisted, pushed down behind the cards, or fall out of the channel that it is meant to stay in. Then, you have to spend a few moments diagnosing what is wrong, and then fix the issue.
2. The thumb notch doesn’t work super well.
While the pull strap is the main upsell on this wallet (and it really is great), I have struggled with the little window that allows you to push a single card out the top of the wallet without having to use the pull strap. While it seems like a great solution in theory, I have yet to successfully get a single card to come out of my wallet.
Rather than a single card being ejected, it tends to push multiple cards up, or it ends up pushing one of the outer plates up instead.
Who is the Aviator for?
Now, the Aviator by Evermade is for that person that REALLY wants to make the Ridge Wallet work, but just wishes you didn’t have to push the cards out horizontally, and finagle the cards. You still get the compact design of the Ridge in this Wallet, but it is considerably easier to get the cards out of the Wallet in this case.
It does have a comparable price to the Ridge, so you can’t go wrong if you do decide to go in this direction.
Where can you get it?
As of right now, the only place you can purchase the Aviator is directly on their website (Paid Link)! Thankfully, this also means you can regularly find good deals in your Wallet.
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