Gura Gear Kiboko City Sling 6L Review: Modern and Rugged but Limiting

Gura Gear announced a brand-new, $180 sling bag at the Bild Expo last month called the Kiboko City Sling 6L, and from what the company tells me, the idea was so popular that it sold 1,500 of them in just those two days. There is something about this bag that caught people’s eyes, so I decided I needed to see what that was.

The Gura Gear Kiboko City Sling 6L, which I’ll just be referring to as the Sling 6L from this point forward, is deceptively simple in what it promises to deliver: it is a small sling bag that can hold a mirrorless camera and a few essentials, it weighs next to nothing when empty, is super durable and weather resistant, comes in five colors, and has lots of pockets. I admit, on paper, those promises sound really enticing. In the past year, I’ve found myself wandering city streets around the world, and I absolutely hate feeling weighed down by a heavy bag. I travel with a backpack, but these days I wander with a sling.

There is a fine balance between a sling that’s small and light, but therefore can’t fit enough in it, and one that is big enough to fit the supplies you need for a day trip, but isn’t too big and bulky to the point that your shoulder hurts after a couple of hours. Very few sling bags can find the sweet spot between these two disparate desires, and I needed to actually make a day trip to see if this bag could. So, I took two: one day out at Oregon’s coast and another inland near Hood River.

Gura Gear Kiboko City Sling 6L Review: Design and Build Quality

Gura Gear describes the Sling 6L as “refined” and “stylish,” and I think that’s mostly true. It’s a fine-looking bag, but I wouldn’t say it oozes style or charm necessarily. I think, more than anything, it doesn’t draw the eye much at all, which can either be a positive or a negative depending on your perspective. Do you want a bag to look nice next to your hip and get compliments from strangers, or do you want someone to completely ignore your bag so as to limit its chance of theft?

Gura Gear makes bags out of X-Pac material, which is a sailcloth that is exceptionally durable and resists water very well. The zippers on the bag are lined to prevent ingress, too, meaning that you probably won’t have any issue with dust getting in the bag without opening it, and even rain will have a tough time. It’s not “proof” by any means, but my experience with this material has been very good from a “keep your stuff from getting the outside on it” perspective.

But as good as X-Pac is at protecting, I don’t think it looks or feels very nice. Touching the bag reminds me of the sound snow pants make when you walk, and I’ve never associated that with pleasantness. The Forest Green bag that Gura Gear sent for this review would probably be my second choice of color behind plain black. The company also offers it in red, mulberry (which is a purple-pink), and a Sahara tan as well. Even though red is my favorite color, I don’t think I would rock any of those options as they seem kind of garish.

The Sling 6L strap is another good idea. It’s a cam buckle system that can be tightened and loosened with one hand, which is great since you’ll want to have it pretty tight when you’re walking around, but you also want to be able to immediately loosen it and access your camera on a whim. The strap is also reversible, which means it can be worn on the right or left shoulder, should you choose.

The camera insert is removable (it just slides right out) and joins multiple interior and exterior pockets for a rather robust amount of storage options. There is a small padded sleeve that can fit an iPad mini, multiple color-coded SD card holders, a body-facing RFID shielded hidden pocket, and an AirTag pocket. The front pouch has two pen sleeves and a lanyard.

Overall, it measures 13 x 7.5 x 6 inches and weighs 1.6 pounds empty.

Gura Gear Kiboko City Sling 6L Review: In Use

So now that we know what the Sling 6L offers, we can talk about how well it delivers. Before I get into my nitpicks, I do want to say that I think this is a perfectly serviceable sling bag. I like how light it is, I appreciate the number of pockets, and it is pretty comfortable to wear. It is also very easy to access your camera as Gura Gear balanced it to always want to be parallel with your waist, which means that when I loosen it and sling it to my side, my cameras are always at a great angle to quickly grab and shoot.

The thing is, to say it’s meant to fit a mirrorless camera and one to two lenses is a bit misleading because this bag is small. It’s designed to work in tandem with the Kiboko backpacks and will just slot in them as if it were a cube. That’s probably going to be the best use case since, on its own, it’s a bit awkward as far as space is concerned.

Yes, you absolutely can fit a mirrorless camera in this bag, but beyond that will greatly depend on which camera and which lens. None of us loads a camera in a sling bag without a lens on it (or at least you shouldn’t), because that would defeat the purpose of a fast-access bag like this. I’m not going to use a small sling if I also need to take 15 seconds to remove the body cap and lens cap, click the system together, then raise it to my eye, and then repeat that process in reverse when I’m ready to walk to the next location. That’s silly.

So with that in mind, it’s important to think about the size differences of cameras on the market today. If you’re a Fujifilm shooter, you’re probably in the best boat because the X-T5 with a small lens, the X-M5 with a small lens, the X100VI, and even the GFX100RF will all comfortably fit somewhere between a third and a half of this bag’s maximum camera capacity. That does leave you room to fit in one more lens. But if you shoot Sony, Nikon, Canon, or Lumix, you’re going to run into issues, especially if you like zoom lenses or some of the high-end primes. While I was out testing this bag, my friend brought his Nikon Z8 and a 24-120mm f/4 lens. That is a much bigger setup, and it wouldn’t comfortably fit in this bag as a single unit. Yes, it could cram in if I separated the lens from the body, but I just finished explaining why that’s not reasonable.

Since I shoot half analog and half digital, I got an X100VI and my Nikon FE2 with a 135mm f/2.8 lens in there pretty snugly, although, lens-down, the FE2 was pushing right up against what I would say is nearing the height limit of this bag. By modern standards, the FE2 is a small camera, so you can see what I mean about Gura Gear’s claim of a mirrorless camera and two lenses feeling a bit out there. The other test day, I was using the X100VI and my Voigtländer Bessa R2a, and that was a much nicer overall fit. So, Epson R-D1 users rejoice!

The other issue is that this bag is just so tight with its space that putting cameras in it blocks you from easily accessing the other pockets of the main compartment. The camera bodies I used, which are quite small, mind you, pushed the camera insert right up against the sides of the bag, meaning it was hard for me to squeeze my fingers in front to access those pockets or behind to access that zippered pocket. It’s just such a tight squeeze that I don’t think it’s very easy to get to anything in the bag unless you take the cameras out.

Gratefully, this doesn’t apply to the front pouch, but that brings up another point that’s important to note about the X-Pac material Gura Gear uses: it doesn’t stretch particularly well. I — and I’m sure I’m not alone in this — regularly slightly overpack my bags. That’s not from a weight perspective, but from a bulk perspective. Maybe I bring just one too many things, and I like my bag to be able to squeeze those in. X-Pac limits how much this bag can flex, so it’s difficult to over-pack the Sling 6L. Again, that’s either a good or bad thing, depending on your perspective.

Earlier, I mentioned that the strap design is really smart, and it is — on paper. Unfortunately, the sling pad is just slightly wider than that pull tab, which means that combined with the nice silicon strips that keep that pad on my shoulder, results in the pull tab sliding up and inside the pad, preventing me from accessing it. When I first wore the Sling 6L, I didn’t register how I was supposed to adjust the strap at all before realizing that it had slipped up and inside the pad during shipping.

This is a minor annoyance, but it does undermine the quick-adjusting feature a lot. I ended up not adjusting it much simply because I didn’t want to bother with trying to find that little hook.

I like the zippers on this bag and the pull tabs are robust, but when the bag is sitting at my hip and I’ve pulled a camera out, the way it rests means that I can’t quickly pull the zipper closed with one hand because there isn’t enough stiffness to the backing to give me something to pull against. The bag kind of slightly bends and sends the zipper sides bowing outward. I have to hold the zipper with one hand and pull it closed with the other, which, again, is probably a minor annoyance, but it’s not a problem I have with bags that just have a lid and single buckle design.

A Rugged and Light Bag Slowed by Minor Inconveniences

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s “death by a thousand cuts,” but I will say that the number of small quibbles I have with this bag resulted in me feeling like it overall didn’t quite do it for me. It’s just a hair too small, and the good design decisions are undone by just small issues.

I think there is a type of photographer that will enjoy this bag — obviously, it was a hit at Bild — but it’s not going to unseat my favorite sling bag from around my shoulder.

Are There Alternatives?

I mentioned having a favorite sling bag and that is the Wotancraft Pilot. I was turned on to this company by Chris Niccolls, who also loves them. Wotancraft makes a series of Pilot bags and the one that would be a direct competitor to the Gura Gear Kiboko City Sling 6L is either the 3.5L or the 7L option. The reason a 3.5L bag can compete with a 6L bag is due to Wotancraft’s use of what it calls Armor pouches. The interior of the Pilot can hold one camera and a lens, while you are free to attach other modular add-ons that fit your specific needs. It uses that smaller interior well, though, by being taller than it is wide. I think the 7L is even better, because that can fit one body and two lenses (legitimately), and more thanks to additional points to attach an Armor pack. Additionally, the shoulder strap can easily be adjusted with one hand, and it has its own array of handy pockets.

Another more direct competitor would be the PGYTECH OneGo Solo V2, which shares a form factor with the Sling 6L. It makes a lot of the same promises as the Sling 6L but doesn’t have the rugged durability and is slightly smaller in its total capacity. Between these two, I think Gura Gear is the smarter choice.

Should You Buy It?

Maybe. The Gura Gear Kiboko City Sling 6L is a well-made bag with excellent design touches, but its limited size means that the larger your camera, the worse the overall experience gets. Analog shooters and Fujifilm fans will probably get the most out of this bag, with that falling off steeply as the size of your camera system grows.