(if you want to see all the features and how many cards and cash it can hold, please watch the video)
This review is on the Ansix Designs Fantom wallet. With Fantom, they sell the money clips as an add-on, so I did get a money clip. It’s the titanium color. You can get many colors. Through their options you can choose the size you want.
What’s nice about the box is that based off of what you choose through the wizard process, it actually tells you on the box what you end up getting. I ordered the red color with a card capacity of 8 to 13. It also has an option that you can get a coin carry in this as well, but I did not get that. On the back it tells you all the different capabilities it can have, whether you ordered it or not. The box does have a nice magnetic clip design to it. As we get into the wallet, I can see there is a nice foam insert to protect it, and we have some instructions on whether it’s the coin holder you’re using, and how to organize the cards in the wallet, and how to extract and use them.
Here is the feature review of the Fantom 13. I’m going to call it a box wallet. With this wallet, there is one entry point. All the cards go in here on the side, and once they’re in there, a trigger mechanism actually flails them out, and you have access to them that way. Outside of that, the other option is this money clip which I added. It allows you to put cash in there, fold it over once, depending on the currency, twice, for sure, all currency, foreign or domestic, but you can get up to 13 cards in this particular model. They have three different models that you can use, based on how many cards you typically carry. And, of course, this is the widest model they have because of the number of cards.
As for the cash and card insertion test, it indicated it could hold 8 to 13 cards. I really had to cram that last 13th card in there. I think 12 is really the most you can get in there. The money clip works very well with US currency, yen, and euro.
The quality of this comes down to the aluminum. There’s aluminum on both sides, and it has rubber or plastic that goes all the way around. The wallet has a simple sweep mechanism, but unlike some of the box wallets, it works off the hinge from where you’re actually pulling the tab, and it just moves the sweep directly up. From there, it really does make this a more simplistic sweep mechanism to eject cards, and I think would last longer, from a mechanical perspective, but again, it is a sweep that helps really fan the cards out for you. Now, of course, it has the same problem with all mechanical things. It can break. However, this simpler mechanism really helps prevent it breaking any sooner than you would expect.
From a usability perspective, this is pretty tall for a minimalist wallet, and accessibility of the cards was not as easy, even after flaring them out with the trigger. I didn’t really find it easy to use compared to other box or band-type wallets. It measures 4.6 x 2.8 x .5”.
Overall, their website is full of great information, including a calculator, which helps recommend the size of wallet that you should get, based on how many smooth versus embossed cards you want to carry. They actually understand the difference and take it into consideration. It’s very smart, because the major complaint with box wallets is the fact that it can’t handle mixed and matched embossed versus smooth cards very well.
Here is the final score. For quality, a 4. For price, a 3, (but the additional $18 for that small money clip is a little high in my mind). For features, a 3, usability a 3, and perception a 3. That gives us a final score of 3.3 out of 5.
Made of aluminum including the trigger, it's durability stands out, albeit a little tall in its presentation.
