The Cambridge Satchel Company - Mini 8.5" Satchel Magnetic Branded Nickle Leather Bag

This is a really top quality product. The leather is beautiful dark burgundy-brown and it is the ideal size to carry my purse, phone, keys, a small notebook and pen, with a smaller pocket in the front. Very handy to have the clips for the strap so that it can be removed and I can just use the handle on the top sometimes, and the strap is long enough to wear as an across the body bag. The satchel came in its own protective cloth bag which was wrapped in the Cambridge Satchel Co. tissue paper which was wrapped with wide black ribbon and tied with a bow - it felt like unwrapping a present, even though it was a self-purchase!The leather is quite stiff as you would expect from a brand new bag but it is such good quality that I know it will last for many years and as the leather softens it will age gracefully (unlike its owner!). The magnetic closure will be handy but it's a nice design touch to still have the buckles at the front.

Gorgeous little bag. Actually bigger than I thought it would be. Very stiff leather but will soften. The shoulder strap could do with an extra loop to tuck the excess in. I did get red bits over my top from the strap but I am hoping that will stop with further use.

I love it !!!!Beautiful

Undoubtedly a quality product, and the attention to aesthetic detail is appreciable. However, I wish they'd extended the same attention to functional design.First, the good: the bag is extremely sturdy, water resistant, looks luxurious with the cleanest of lines, and the leather and hardware have maintained a like-new sheen through several months of hard use (I bought this in December, and it's now May - I've been using it as my everyday purse). The magnetic closures snap in fairly easily and are reasonably secure.Next, the annoying-but-not-deal-breakers - a lot of them come down to the leather being very stiff, which isn't a big deal except that it exacerbates several other problems:1. At a crossbody length, the strap leaves quite a long tail free (see photos). There's no additional loop to secure the tail, so it flaps around and gets in the way, and sticks out because of how stiff it is.2. When sitting down while wearing the bag, the stiffness of the strap causes it to lift and fall off my shoulder, rather than draping along the body.3. The strap is uncomfortable to sit with. There's a hard diagonal line across your back which refuses to lay flat, and you have a choice of the buckle and tail end digging into your back, or getting in your way in the front.4. Because the leather is so hard, it's like wearing a box, not a bag. The contents rattle around inside loudly when jostled.Finally, the deal breakers:1. The straps are attached too far down on the body of the bag. This means the bag is top heavy, and overbalances very easily. You can particularly see in the sitting photo how it's tilting away from my body. Even in the photo where it's hanging in the air, you can see that it tilts forward - and that's with the bag about half full. This bag turns over and dumps out its entire contents on me about once every couple of weeks, especially if one of the magnets failed to snap closed.2. There is a gap between the top flap and the body of the purse, which you can see in the side photo. That's with both snaps engaged and the snap buckles on their tightest settings. This, paired with the bag's tendency to overbalance, means that smaller items like pens and lip balms tend to slide out even when fully closed. I have lost a couple of items out of the purse this way.These issues probably don't apply to Cambridge Satchel Co's larger bags - I think the additional weight/size of a larger bag would make these design elements features instead of flaws. Because of the high price and quality of construction, I gave this bag a much longer run than I otherwise might have, but in the end the deal breakers mean I'm retiring this bag and will not re-purchase.Conclusion: this is a fine bag if you intend to only carry a few light, flat items (think phone, small notepad, wallet), and if you always take off your purse before sitting down.I do NOT recommend this bag if you carry lots of small items like pens, chapstick, pins, change, etc., and/or if you tend to keep your purse on while sitting down.