Greenroom136 Metromonger: Review

The Metromonger is a 9L sling bag made by Greenroom136, an independently owned bag company based in Malaysia. Patrick Lim, the founder, designs a series of urban carry focused bags including messenger style and backpack style bags, as well as matching accessories. Some of the bags are also offered as a full customizable product. I find their products, like this Metromonger sling bag, are very well designed with practical use in mind, especially in urban everyday use. Purchasing the bags on their website and shipping them to the US is surprisingly quick and painless. Their bags are offered in a large selection of colors. I was very pleased with this dark brown color; together with the styling of the bag, it has that waxed canvas look to it.

Tech Specs

	Metric	Imperial
Length	32 cm	12.6 in
Width	14 cm	5.5 in
Height	22 cm	8.7 in
Capacity	9L	550 cu. in
Weight	0.9 kg	2.0 lbs

Primary Materials

1000D Cordura, 420D ripstop

Quality and Comfort

The metromonger is very well made. Stitches are tight and straight. Internal seams are covered. The bag is made with 1000D Cordura and 420D ripstop lining inside. They offer two different versions of the shoulder strap. The quick release version has an asymmetric design and a very beefy padded shoulder strap. It is designed to be carried messenger style, high on one’s back. 

If you like to carry the bag lower or more on the side, use the cam buckle version. That version has a thiner shoulder pad with the strap free floating through it so that you can adjust the position of the bag easily. The bag in the review has the quick release strap. There is also a cross body stabilization strap that I removed as I do not really need it.

Design and Organization

The Metromonger has three compartments. The main compartment is rectangular in shape which makes for no wasted space. My Sony noise cancelling headphone case fits in there along with a couple of pouches. There is a small pocket in the back that is design for a notebook or a small tablet. The front wall of the main compartment is divided into two pockets, useful for keeping smaller items separate.

The front admin compartment has a depth of about an inch and is slightly smaller than the main compartment. The back wall has a series of divided pockets. There is also a D ring for attaching keys and other items. I much prefer a D ring where I can attach a S-Biner to attach other items, instead of a key lash that is always either too short or too long.

Both compartments have double zipper openings, and the openings are slightly covered. While this makes access to the compartments slightly harder, it does keep rain away. I attached my own paracord zipper pulls to the zippers which helped with opening and closing the bag.

The back compartment is padded and corduroy lined. While the Greenroom136 website did not say, my 2018 13 inch Retina MacBook Pro just fit inside. My 11 inch iPad Pro fits into it easily. This is a game changer for me. I can use this bag to take my laptop to work while I am traveling, as well as using the bag as a personal carry on luggage on flights.

There is a small grab handle in the very back of the bag. I have added their optional GrabPad to make that handle more comfortable. They can also color match the pad with the bag.

Being a 9L bag, it’s not quite large enough to stuff anything but the smallest jacket inside if the main compartment is already carrying headphones and pouches. However the bottom of the bag has two pieces of webbing, as well as D rings. I can strap my jacket, or a tripod there. The webbing comes with strap keeper loops to keep loose webbing ends in check.

I try to carry a water bottle with me most of the time. A small 16L bottle fits inside the bag easily. With webbing on both side of the bag, I can attach various pouches on the sides. Greenroom136 sells matching pouches that mount onto those panels perfectly. Because of the short height of the bag, the SidePouch II is a good fit, standing at 20cm tall, and can fit a typical tumbler type mug or bottle.

What’s Perfect

• The design and organization of this bag is spot on. Just enough compartments and pockets inside to help me carry my everyday carry item either at home, or while traveling
• The webbings, D rings around the bag, while not over done, are useful for lashing on items, bike locks, and more
• The material and color choices allow me to find a good style match

What’s Not

• Because the strap system is designed to be easily adjusted in length, there is a lot of loose end webbing on the main strap. I find myself having to tug the loose end back onto the strap keeper frequently
• This has nothing to do with their product, but their website is not easy to navigate. Often I have to look in multiple places to locate some of the accessory items

Wrap Up

I held on for a long time not wanting to order a bag all the way from Malaysia, and I was wrong to do so. This bag is well designed, well executed, and the shipping was fast. They are also very responsive on Facebook when I had questions. With the quality construction, if you are looking for a medium size sling like this Metromonger, or even larger messenger bags or backpacks, take a look at Greenroom136. The Metromonger is available from Greenroom136 in an array of colors and starts at MYR$350 ($85 USD).