Laptop bags don’t have to be simple, black and boring. Today, the carrying cases range from hip backpacks to tiny leather suitcases. To see how practical some of the latest designs are, we enlisted volunteers to carry six bags models from Axio, Burberry, Hedgren, Longchamp, Samsonite and Tumi for a week, rating each on comfort, style, capacity and durability. And since we live in Brussels, where it rains a lot, we felt it important to find out how the bags held up in a simulated downpour.
When it came to comfort, the Samsonite Laptop Messenger Pro-DLX, 125 euros, was our favorite, although it’s a bit heavy, even empty. Made of a high denier armored nylon, with Napa leather finishing, it looks like a typical black messenger bag. Two of its best features are the seven centimeter, gel padded shoulder strap and a back pocket that unzips on the top and bottom, letting travelers mount it over the handle of a rolling suitcase.
The least comfortable were the Hedgren HEP 02 backpack, 101 euros, and the Axio Fuse Hardpack, 144.95 euros. Hedgren’s backpack-made with polyurethane coating, an additional polyester layer that makes the bag extra strong and wrinkle free-looks a bit like a red-and-black lady bug. The Hedgren is both heavy and bulky, perhaps designed for a male user. Our female tester, who took it on the road to London, said the backpack straps were too wide apart for her and would work only on someone with a wider torso.
“The bag is unisex,” says Jonathan Tassin, account executive for Hedgren’s public relations agency C&C Advertising. “Normally the straps are adjustable, so it would be a fit for every size.” Mr. Tassin added that a collection of laptop bags specifically aimed at women is currently available through stores.
Axio’s orange and black backpack, which has an outer casing nearly as hard as a tortoise shell, is also uncomfortable. Our male tester complained that the strap bit into his shoulder although he liked the strap’s convenient front facing mobile phone case and joked that “the bag was heavier than a full golf bag.”
Rob Vogel, founder of Wings Europe, the distributors of the Axio bags, said he was surprised to hear this. “Our backpacks are the lightest in the market,” he says. “The Axio Fuse weighs 1.7 kilograms when empty, and is made from polyethylene material, used to make bulletproof vests.” Mr. Vogel said the padding, which may be the reason the bag feels heavier, is important to protect an investment such as a laptop.
But comfort and style were two different matters. Burberry’s lightweight grey and black Brit Check, 470 euros, which will launch in Europe in January, was the most fashionable. The company, which mostly designs clothes and accessories for women, is targeting men with these new bags. The small rectangular bag with its classic Burberry pattern reminded us of the briefcases British men walked around with in the 1970s. “The bag looks different from your usual black laptop bag,” said another of our male testers. “I got compliments from my girlfriend.”
The brightly colored backpacks by Hedgren and Axio are the most eye catching, but more appropriate for college campuses than for business meetings, our testers found.
The 560 euros posh Longchamp Veau Foulonne, with its soft tumbled calfskin leather, would match some people perfectly. But it didn’t make a big impression on our female tester, who wasn’t a fan of the matronly gold buckles and clasps. And while it has a nice beige color, our tester feared its delicate shade could easily stain. As to its size? The main compartment is “big enough to carry a lap dog,” she says, let alone a laptop.
Spaciousness, however, was often appreciated, given the number of cables, batteries, CDs, documents and other items business travelers need while on the road. The Hedgren backpack scored the highest, because of its large amount of space and useful compartments. “Besides a laptop, cords, and a mouse, I could fit in a paperback book, a jacket and a small purse,” our tester said.
Some even have too much space. The Tumi Expandable Computer Brief, 395 euros, has 16 compartments, including a pocket for mounting the bag on luggage handles. “I lost my keys in the bag, there is so much room,” a tester said.
In other bags, however, space is lacking or compartments aren’t easily accessible. Samsonite’s black bag has numerous compartments, but they are often too small (we had to squeeze in the cables to get them to fit). In a hurry, it was also time consuming to open the many snaps and zippers to find what we were looking for. This could be a headache when going through airport security checkpoints.
Although the Axio is large, the configuration isn’t very practical, lacking dedicated space for documents. The bag, however, has compartments that attach with Velcro that can be adjusted to fit various sized items.
For all its charm, the Burberry is simply too small, with one outside pocket, and room for little more than the basics. Convenience was another problem. “It is hard to access stuff inside the bag without opening it completely,” the tester said.
Four of the six bags all but the Hedgren and Burberry come with mobile-phone compartments, some more accessible than others. With holders located outside the bags, the Axio and Tumi were the easiest to get to. The Samsonite and Longchamp require that a user reach inside.
Toting around all this expensive equipment, the laptop bags need to be durable. The Axio appeared to be the strongest, with the Hedgren a close second. “The backpack seems made to be abused. It has a rigid front, and the laptop seems enveloped in protection,” our tester said.
The Tumi has extra soft protective cushioning in its laptop compartment, as does the Samsonite.
The Burberry and Longchamp fared the worst. The Burberry, though it has a stiff surface and a strap to hold the laptop in place, lacks padding on its sides. The Longchamp is little more than a big handbag, with no protection of any sort and no way to secure the laptop.
At the end of the trial, we asked our six testers to rate their bag on a scale of 1 to 5 (with 5 being the best) for comfort, style, capacity and durability, and overall. Our testers were a critical crew, with not one bag receiving a score of 5 overall.
We then took the test one step further, holding each bag under a shower for 30 seconds. In each bag, we had placed a plastic folder with a single-page document inside. None of the bags was 100% waterproof. The Samsonite bag proved the most water-resistant. While the outside back pocket got a little damp, no water made it inside the main compartment and our folder was dry. In all the other bags, however, water penetrated from the bottom of the bag to the inside compartments. The Tumi bag performed the worst, with the pockets, the mobile-phone compartment and the plastic folder (as well as the paper inside it) all getting wet.
Tumi said it was shocked by the results. “Tumi does conduct an exacting Water Repellency Test of the fabric, which does not permit penetration, spotting or permanent staining,” says Michael Donovan, a Tumi spokesman. He added that a bag not being waterproof has never come up as a consumer issue before.
