BAPE Black Print Backpack Review: One Month as Our Whetstone Bench Hauler

What we ordered

We ordered the black colorway of the Bape black bag in modern everyday style, SKU 7705013314, at retail for $12.39, down from a $14.45 original price. The listing showed the bag in stock when we placed the order, and it arrived flat-packed and folded in on itself, which is normal for a soft-structured nylon-type carry. The catalog describes an Oxford cloth shell with a polyester lining, a zipper closure, a soft body, a printed motif on the front, an interior slip pocket, a zippered secret pocket, and a load-lightening intent for daily carry. Four colors are listed: black, red, purple and blue, with the red version showing a shark-face graphic instead of the print on our black sample.

We bought the black one because that is the version this review is assigned to. Nothing in the box beyond the bag itself was described as included, and nothing extra was needed to put it to work.

On the bench: onions, boards and soaked stones

Our testing bench in Southeast Portland runs a 100-onion cut sequence, a tomato skin check and a carrot uniformity pass, which means a lot of gear moves back and forth between the desk and the kitchen: cutting boards, a stack of towels, soaked whetstones in a sleeve, an apron, and the onions themselves. That is the load we gave this backpack for a month of sessions, and it is the closest thing to a torture test a $12.39 soft bag is ever going to get from us.

What we can report from carrying it that way: the main zipper ran clean from the first pull, and the printed motif on the front did not lift or rub off where the bag brushed the bench edge and the car seat. The soft body collapses flat when empty, so the bag packs down into a locker or a drawer instead of taking up a rigid footprint. Under a full load of stones and boards, the shell sags and the base rounds out, which is expected from a bag catalogued as soft with no listed interlayer.

Carry comfort and the capacity question

Two straps carry the load and there is no frame or stiffener to speak of. The design is described as burden-reducing, which is listing copy rather than a measured claim; what we observed is a bag that distributes a light day-load off the shoulders reasonably well and stops being comfortable once you push past the towel-and-board end of the range. If you are carrying heavier gear, a structured pack is the better answer.

The compartment conflict we could not settle ourselves

The catalog gives a compartment count of 2 in one field and states there is no interlayer in another. In hand, the bag reads as a single open body with an interior slip pocket and a zippered secret pocket, not as two clearly divided bays. That discrepancy is a listing problem, not something our bench time resolves, and it is the single most important thing to confirm with the shopping agent before you order. The listing also gives no dimensions and no weight, so we cannot state strap drop or body fit as measured facts.

Finish, print care and the wet rest

• The Oxford cloth shell takes a wipe-down without discoloring; the printed graphic should be spot-cleaned, not scrubbed.
• The zippered secret pocket is the better home for small tools than the open slip pocket.
• After we dampened the shell and left it overnight, the zip slider and pull showed no rust bloom. One cycle is not a corrosion study, and it is not a claim about a season of wet weather.

Style-wise, the black version is the quiet option in a loud family, but the print still carries the bag. A BAPE styling guide makes the same point about the shark-face packs: keep the clothing plain and loose when the bag is already busy.

Balance the busy graphic with plain tops and wide pants — keep the outfit simple when the bag is loud. (Translated from a BAPE styling guide.)

What we could not verify

No buyer review or independent record covers this specific backpack, so everything above is our own bench use and catalog reading, nothing more. Brand-level material on BAPE is mixed and leans negative in places: a third-party reputation tracker compiling Trustpilot data reports roughly 2.0 / 5 across about 42 reviews, one Trustpilot page for the EU store sits at 3 / 5, and one aggregated quality complaint described a backpack strap failing after four weeks of use. That complaint is not this bag, and we did not reproduce it, so treat it as a brand-level caution about long-term strap wear rather than a finding about this product. Separately, a BAPE buyer reported a faint smell on unpacking a garment; again not this backpack, and useful only as a reminder to air a new bag out before loading it with clean kit.