Bellroy Toiletry Kit Plus Review

Your travel bag may change sizes depending on how many days you’ll be traveling, but we find that a toiletry kit doesn’t always shrink or grow in conjunction with the length of your trip. Sure, you could bring a smaller bottle of shampoo, but you’re still going to need shampoo. The same applies to lip balm, face lotion, hair brushes, toothbrushes, etc. So, while some travelers may find the Bellroy Toiletry Kit a good fit for them, others may need a little more space.

Enter the Bellroy Toiletry Kit Plus. As the name suggests, it has a little more space for the grooming supplies you bring on your next trip, wrapped up in the same durable materials. But is there enough space for the supplies you use regularly? We took it on a weeklong trip to a Florida Airbnb to find out how it compares to the more than 40 other toiletry bags and Dopp kits we’ve tested since launching Pack Hacker in 2017, so let’s find out.

External Components

The Bellroy Toiletry Kit Plus looks a lot like its smaller predecessor but taller. The primary material on the outside is still polyester. However, it now comes from recycled plastic water bottles, and the liner is made from industrial nylon offcuts. Both fabrics are water-resistant, though the matte finish of the exterior feels premium, not super crinkly like a tarp. The interior liner has a shinier finish for easy cleaning.

If you’re vegan, you’ll want to know that, like many Bellroy products, it includes a leather tab with the brand name at the top and on the zipper pull. It’s eco-tanned leather, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s an animal product.

We’re testing the Bronze colorway, but you can also get it in Black, Slate, and Navy at the time of this review if the burnt orange isn’t your thing. We like it because it stands out in a darkened room or at the bottom of your travel backpack while remaining rather muted and aesthetically pleasing.

Bellroy uses YKK zippers for the kit, and we find the internal zipper super easy to open and close. The exterior zipper was a little more challenging to zip closed, especially when we accidentally overstuffed the bag, but we’re not faulting YKK here. They make some of our favorite zippers. However, the one used here runs on an angle and has to go around tighter corners close to seams, so it takes a little more effort.

There are super soft loops at the bottom of both sides of the bag that you can hold when opening or closing it or if you need to carry it to the bathroom when sharing minimal counter space with friends. Luckily, we had enough room in the bathroom of our Airbnb, so we left it packed throughout our vacation. Its wide base allows it to stand easily throughout a trip, so you can get what you need without it toppling over. That’s why the zipper is on an angle; it allows you to leave your gear inside throughout a trip, pulling out and putting away what you’re using as you need it. We prefer living out of our toiletry bag on vacation, so we appreciate this feature.

The vaguely rectangular shape of the kit also makes it easy to fit into your backpack or rolling carry on luggage. Since it’s somewhat curved at the top and slightly curved inward, it fits nicely into the corner of a suitcase or at the top of a travel backpack. We prefer to put the top toward the edge of our luggage, leaving the bottom facing outward to create a straight edge to pack a shoe pouch or packing cube up against, but you can just as easily stand it up or on its side if that works better for your pack-out.

Inside The Toiletry Kit

All of that is applicable whether you get the smaller Bellroy Toiletry Kit or the Toiletry Kit Plus, which we’re testing here. However, you start spotting the difference when you open the pouch.

The organization reverses from the layout of the smaller bag. We’ll start at the back, where you’ll find two stretchy mesh pockets with good elasticity to hold gear in place. Bellroy shows them in use to contain smaller bottles and pills, but we thought they were a better way to contain larger gear. However, there’s only so much space between the back of the pouch and the center divider, so we had to wedge gear creatively into the open spaces to make the most use of the capacity.

With the Michel Mercier Travel Hair Brush and Vasarii nakd. Thai Crystal Deodorant Stone from our Vacation Packing List in the pockets, for example, we were able to slot a tiny humangear GoTubb holding our earrings, a sleep scrunchie, ponytail holder, shower cap, and a Matador Waterproof Travel Canister in the remaining space in front of the pockets. Something we discovered with the smaller Toiletry Kit holds true here: you can fit a lot of items inside as long as you make sure to put everything back in its place when you’re through.

Four more stretchy pockets are on the front of that divider—which you don’t get in the smaller bag. On the left side is a medium-width pocket, and on the right are two skinnier pockets. They frame a larger center pocket that easily fits a razor or tweezers. If you are going to slide a razor in here, just beware of the possibility that the blades could catch on the stretchy material when you pull it out. We speak from experience here (whoops!).

We frankly couldn’t find a good use for the skinnier pockets. One is good for a tube of lip balm, but they’re too slim for a travel tube of toothpaste, so there’s a fine line of what works. It’s okay if you don’t have gear that fits inside, though, since they lay flat against the divider if you don’t use them.

You’ll see a little tab when you flip around to the front of the kit; pull it, and you’ll release a magnetic shelf for your toothbrush. This is honestly one of our favorite parts of the toiletry kit since it holds a travel or full-size brush in place without it getting tangled in your toothbrush and other grooming gear. We did get a toothpaste stain on this shelf after locking it away, but it’s easy enough to wipe off the water-resistant interior, and both ends are open to allow airflow to pass through and dry the brush.

Below this shelf is a large pocket that’s the same mesh as the stretch pockets. We locked down smaller gear here, like cotton swabs, personal care products, and earplugs. Filling it and the stretchy pocket on the divider takes up all the space between the two, so even though it looks like there’s extra capacity when the kit is empty, it won’t be there once you start packing it out.

While we could fit a lot of gear inside, we still had to pair it with a separate 3-1-1 bag for a trip to a warm weather destination that required us to pack sunscreen and face lotion in addition to soap and shampoo. It’s definitely bigger than the original size, and we didn’t need to unpack at our destination to use our gear, but that’s because we packed four bottles elsewhere instead of stashing them here. However, we find that a viable solution since you may have to pull your liquids out as you make your way through TSA anyway.

Depending on the height of your bottles and gear, you may also find unused space at the top of the kit that’s hard to fill, or it will fit, but you won’t be able to zip the bag closed. We find it easy to overpack this bag, and we wonder if more would fit without the additional divider and pockets. If you like sliding most of your gear into individual pockets, you’ll appreciate all the ways to segment your gear in the Toiletry Kit Plus, but it may not be for you if you prefer more open space. Check out this waterproof toiletry case and this Dopp kit instead if that’s more your style, or choose from more than a dozen other toiletry bags featured in our round-up.