Review: Koyono iPod T-shirts

My grade five teacher once told me, loudly and in front of the whole class, that pants pockets are meant to put money and food in, not hands. Well, building on that early educational experience, I can also say that pants pockets are not really meant for iPod either.

The average bit of personal electronics, like an iPod say, popped into the average pants pocket, does not do so well when sharing space with all the bric-a-brac of day-to-day living. Too often and too quickly small devices get scratched or dinged, and that’s something you definitely do not want to have happen to your favourite bit of $500 technology.

Some folks seem to solve this wear and tear and portage issue by putting their gadgets on their belts, but I’m not a fan of the whole phenomena of belt geekage. I don’t want to look like Batman or Bob the Builder.

So, I’ve been looking for ways to carry my electronics with me, but not on my belt, and definitely not in my pants pockets, sharing space with my money and food.

Koyono has come up with a fascinating array of clothing in which they’ve designed pockets specifically for iPod and other electronics. Their signature BlackCoat come first to mind, both those with iPod controls built into them and those without. Koyono, however, also has a line of t-shirts with truly innovative pocketing and it is these that we will look at here.

The Koyono approach to iPod shirt pockets is unique. Acknowledging that there are right-handed people and left-handed people, or perhaps that there are people who might want to carry two electronic items with them, or maybe just for simple symmetry, they have built two pockets into their shirts, one under each upper arm, sharing a common mid-chest access zipper.

Words don’t describe this well enough, though. Check out their extensive image gallery.

Here’s a model break down. These all have the two pocket system with chest zippers.

BlackCoat T: Short sleeves, black or white brushed cotton with red or matching-color zippers.
BlackCoat T LS: Long sleeves, black or white brushed cotton with red or matching-color zippers.
BlackCoat Tx: Activewear short sleeves or tank, black PowerDry® performance fabric with red or black zippers.

The mid-chest zipper seems a bit odd at first. The various colours the zippers are available in implies that you aren’t meant to hide the fact that you’ve got an innovative shirt on. If you’ve got a Koyono shirt on, you probably want other people to know just how hip and avant-garde you are I guess. If you’re a bit shyer that that, or would just rather not draw attention to yourself, they do have a more discrete matching black zipper option. Mind you, discrete is relative. With a headphone cables snaking out of the middle of your chest, or when you start digging around for your cell phone, discrete is hard to define.

Sizing is important. Their sports and active lifestyle shirts are meant for people with active lifestyle physiques. If you wear an XL t-shirt normally, the form fitting exercise shirts are likely to point out to yourself and everyone else that you’ve got an XL physique. You might want to order a size larger then. When you’re flinging yourself around on the bike paths or running trails, having stuff in your pockets flopping around is not a good idea, so I can see exactly why these active shirts are tighter. Just something to be aware of when buying one. The long sleeved, brushed cotton T-shirt is sized so that an XL is an XL and it’s more appropriate for just wearing around, which is what I use it for. It’s pretty darned comfortable.

Conclusions? I’d give them an 85% rating. Koyono has innovatively ‘solved’ the pocketing issue with some really amazing products that just might be a tad cooler than this particular reviewer. Definitely worth anyone’s consideration.