Skooba Design Checkthrough, Airport Checkpoint-Friendly Laptop Bag, holds all 15" - 15.4" Laptops & Some 16" & 17"

2010-03-25T21:00:00

This laptop brief is pretty nearly perfect. I do have some criticisms but not enough to dock it a point. Skooba seems to have anticipated a lot of the needs of the technology / business traveller with this bag. Getting at your laptop is quick and easy. The two front pockets allow you to put some medicine or personal items in one, and pens/business things in the other. Quick and easy access to tickets and passports is taken care of in the top compartment. The inside has plenty of room for storage as well as various zippered and meshed compartments for things like a bluetooth mouse and so on. On a recent trip, I put a 17" Macbook Pro, Canon EOS 5D mk II camera, 580EX II flash, three reference books, power adapter, flash card reader, as well as the assorted general stuff (pens, passport, tylenol, etc) in this bag and had no problem at all with it. I like the flexibility of being able to stick my camera in here if I don't want to bring a separate camera case. That is really great for me. The various metal parts for zippers and connecting the strap are all high quality steel, overall the fit and finish of this bag is pretty nice, has a good feeling to it unlike some other chinese garbage out there. This is over and above the checkthrough feature which is handy and straight forward to use. My complaints are small: first, I am not a fan of the strap, though it will be fine for a lot of people. I would suggest if you have the option to get the bungee strap sold separately or sometimes as an option on this bag, get it. I find that it is wider, more comfortable, and has some guaranteed stick-in-placeness which is a big deal if you are juggling a lot of luggage. Secondly, the zippers have a funky "ergonomic" shape to them that is I think a failure, it makes the zippers a bit more difficult to grab a hold of and they don't align very easily when trying to unzip the bag. I'd suggest dropping the futuristic zipper pulls and going with something basic. A design still in use after 100 years usually means it was done right the first time. Overall I can recommend the bag. It may be a bit big for some people, as there is some depth to it (it is a brief after all), in which case the Skooba checkthrough Messenger Bag will be pretty good for you as it has less depth.

dbro