Fold-N-Pack Smart Hanger™ Review: Pricey Folding Hanger That Saves Wrinkles in Time

Fold-N-Pack Smart Hanger™ Review

The $19.99 Fold-N-Pack Smart Hanger™ isn’t smart in the way most items on a Serious Insights review are smart. The Fold-N-Pack Smart Hanger doesn’t require a charge, it doesn’t pair with a smartphone, it contains no CPU, and it offers no information about its state that can’t be communicated by simply looking at it. The Fold-N-Pack Smart Hanger, when unfolded, looks like a clothes hanger, albeit with slightly more angles than a typical wire hanger from the cleaners. The Hanger’s innovation and smartness come from reimaging the clothes hanger for travel.

As the accompanying video shows, the Fold-N-Pack Smart Hanger facilitates the folding and unfolding of clothing, mostly shirts and blouses, for travel. It folds using three hinges, two on the side and one for the hanger. When in use, in luggage, it won’t be noticed folded up among the cloth of the checkered tunic or understated black turtleneck.

Upon arrival at a destination, unfold the hanger, and it unfurls pullovers and blouses, polos and sarks, providing them with an instant hanger to fit among the well-used wooden, wire or plastic hangers that already occupy the hotel’s closet.

Those hangers raise the question travelers must ask themselves when making an investment in the Fold-N-Pack Smart Hanger™: Do I need to spend twenty dollars to reduce the time it takes me to unpack my shirts and hang them on hotel guest hangers?

The answer to that question depends on the traveler’s need for neatness, propensity for patience, and pocketbook.

While the company’s site includes a bulk purchase page, it doesn’t offer any information about quantity pricing beyond four units. The only discount comes from purchasing a 4-pack, which sells for $64.99, a significant discount, but I routinely travel with more than four shirts. Basic hangers, of course, cost much less. Amazon Basics run $29.57 for 50 hangers. The Amazon hangers don’t include the R&D costs clearly visible in the Fold-N-Pack Smart Hanger’s design, but that cost trade-off must be considered.

Also, keep in mind that each hanger adds about 2.4 ounces to the packing weight, which can add up on a long trip.

Those who do choose to invest in the Fold-N-Pack Smart Hangers will find them a great companion for packing cubes. Neatness upon neatness. TSA agents inspecting bags packed with such care will appreciate the attention to detail.

Fold-N-Pack Smart Hangers come in Jet Black, Gun Metal Grey and Rose Gold.

What could be improved

The Fold-N-Pack Smart Hangers arrive in a glossy plastic box that includes a recycle symbol on it. That’s OK, but I think the company could go with more minimalist packaging without detracting from the hanger’s perceived upscale value (note the Prada bag that sits on the shelf in the demo closet). And while the hangers look like they could easily be manufactured out of recycled plastic, there is no indication that they are.

Over time I would like to see the hangers produced in a thinner, recycled material and sold in sets of tens and twenties rather than fours, arriving in a nice cardboard box without a lot of extra packing material. The company can also be more inventive with its single-unit retail box. Packaging engineering needs to be as important an element to entrepreneurs as the details of the item they invent.

Fold-N-Pack Smart Hanger™: The bottom line

The Fold-N-Pack Smart Hanger offers a well-designed alternative to folding and packing shirts and blouses just to arrive at a destination and unpack them, unbutton them, and remount them on borrowed hangers from the hotel or an Airbnb. They are, however, expensive alternatives at $20 a piece. Buyers must ask themselves if that price is worth slightly longer unpacking times and the environmental value of reusing shared hangers.

I like the Fold-N-Pack Smart Hanger idea. I wish they were less expensive and made of recycled material. Addressing those two factors would make the hangers a more amenable travel companion.

Fold-N-Pack provided the Fold-N-Pack Smart Hanger™ for review. Images courtesy of Fold-N-Pack unless otherwise noted.

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