Ekster’s Parliament Wallet and Laptop Sleeve Carry It For You

Smartphones are fine for making calls, looking at the internet and apps and playing games. What they’re not designed for is holding onto the various daily needs that a man has. For that you need a wallet, but in this day of high-tech that wallet needs to be a bit more than two pieces of material slapped together that you can throw stuff in. No, a wallet needs to be a high-tech container for that which can’t just be tossed into a pocket and hope will be there later. Bulky no, ugly no, useful in ways that Grandpa never conceived or considered about, yes. So that’s why your pocket will thank you for having Ekster’s Parliament Wallet in it.

The Parliament wallet looks like a well, it looks like a wallet because it is that first and foremost. Color wise it’s up to the one whose belt is holding up the pants as to whether it should match said belt or not — because colors are not limited to the expected Nappa black and classic brown but expand outward to juniper green, steel blue, Roma cognac, Merlot red and Blush beige. So right there no staid wallet, this.

So that’s how it appears when taken out or handled, but it’s also important to add that it’s not a bulgy type of wallet. That’s even though it’s made from a premium leather and not cloth or nylon or (gasp) duct tape. So what else is built into the design? Try RFID blockage — to get beyond the fancy tech talk, and foreshadowing that there’s going to be credit cards inside this wallet, there are methods and ways for the unscrupulous (read that as thieves/criminals/hackers) to wirelessly “pull” the data that is being contained in a credit card and so made available for their use, not yours. RFID shielding stops the radio waves from penetrating the wallet and accessing the cards. It’s all passive and no lead shielding underwear is ever going to be needed, so you can relax on all counts.

Now built inside the wallet is what colloquially is called a quick card access mechanism. Being more sensible about it says that you can place a number of your credit cards and other types (such as a driver’s license) into the slots and when you press a bottom tab in up pops the cards, take out what you need, return it and push the whole lot back in. Of course the wallet opens up for holding paper money and other needed bits.

But the additional thing the wallet can have is a tracker card (optional). This card has GPS tech built into it and looks pretty much like a weirded out credit card, albeit with what looks like a solar panel embedded on it (it is just that). The card is able to do number of things: first off it’s worth noting that a 3 hour sun recharge of the card results in 2 -3 months of power. Back to the card’s functionality, you can use its ringtone to tell you where the wallet has been mislaid (doing this from your iOS/Android phone obviously using a 200 foot Bluetooth range), or track the wallet worldwide using crowdsourcing. There’s other stuff it can do, like having a selfie mode (which sounds really odd) but having this tracker gives so much peace of mind that it will probably end ever losing the wallet again. Oh and it’s compatible with Google Assistant, Alexa and Siri.

So it might seem odd that you’d ever need something bigger than a pocket to carry what our ever-pocket computers now are, but should you have a laptop or a tablet, a pocket won’t cut it. What will is one of Ekster’s Laptop Sleeves — handling these larger electronics as well as all those eminently losable accessories like cables and pens, a mouse, etc. that accompany them. The Sleeve (which comes in nappa black, classic brown and juniper green) handles laptops up to 13” and uses a microfiber padding to soothe what’s been placed inside. Elastic storage and hidden pockets dot the Sleeve, with it holding itself closed with a magnet that makes for easy opening and secure closing. And yes you can place a Tracker card in it too (optional).

Both the Parliament Wallet and the Laptop Sleeve are available now, with more information found at https://ekster.com