About Select Gear
Select Gear does one thing: per category, one shortlist. Usually three bags, never fifteen. Owen Brandt reads owner reviews and builds the complaint-frequency tables; Mira Salcedo checks the numbers, including whether a listed weight matches the manufacturer's own spec page. That's the whole operation — two analysts.
We work from published material only: owner reviews and manufacturer specs. We do not handle the bags, we run no physical tests, and we don't pretend that reading four hundred reviews is the same as carrying something through an airport. It's a different kind of evidence, and it's better than one person's week with one bag for exactly one question: what goes wrong, and how often.
Where the sample is too thin to say anything, we say the sample is too thin.
The two of us
- Owen Brandt — Lead Analyst
Reads owner reviews for a living. Builds the complaint-frequency tables that drive every shortlist on this site. Does not handle the bags. - Mira Salcedo — Data Editor
Scores, spec tables, and the boring work of checking that a listed weight matches the manufacturer's own page.
How this site pays for itself
Nothing on this site is sponsored, and there are currently no affiliate links — we pay for the hosting bill out of pocket. If that changes, the disclosure page changes first and every affected page carries a notice at the top.
What we will not do
- Accept payment for a placement, a ranking, or a kind word.
- Publish a guest post, a "sponsored review", or a link exchange.
- Take a free sample and review it as if we had bought it.
- Describe handling, carrying or testing a bag. We do not touch them.
- Present an aggregated owner-review score as a laboratory measurement.
Method: How we score · Contact: desk@theselectgear.com