Lunch bags are compared on capacity, colour and price. None of the four questions below is about any of those.

How does the liner meet the shell?

Welded means no stitch line and no absorbent seam allowance behind it.

Stitched means a permanent damp seam you can never reach. That is the smell.

How wide is the base, in centimetres?

Measure your box first. Litres tell you volume, not whether the box lies flat.

For a mixed group, size to the largest common footprint, never an average.

What is the closure made of?

Zip gauge, slider type and pull size. Or buckle type and the webbing behind it.

It is cycled about five hundred times a year, which is why it fails first.

Where does the name go?

An external light panel that takes a laundry marker, not a label sewn in a seam.

A cloakroom of thirty identical bags is a sorting problem, not a branding one.

And one thing it is not

A lunch bag is not a cooler. If temperature matters, buy an insulated cooler.