Made-Up Bits

a personal blog, by Sven Seebeck -

The One with the Case of Bag-Fever

I want a new bag but I don’t necessarily need one. The storage room in the cellar is filled with bags that I don’t use anymore, because my needs have changes (I’m looking in this case at oversized camera-bags), or which are flawed in one way or the other.

The bags that I considered my favourites on the other hand, those which I used a lot, all broke. Most of the time it were the zippers, and in one case even the shoulder strap cut in half while throwing the bag over my shoulder.

I currently use the Anvanda bag, which fits all my stuff, but I’m kind of missing a few more organizational features. Also I would like to keep the laptop/tablet away from other stuff in the bag, like, say my lunch, should I ever remember to pack it, or a water bottle. But, despite that I like that bag and it’s quite different from what I usually used.

But, a few weeks ago, I, per accident, noticed a nice bag in a store: the Arc’teryx Blade 20. I looks good and has nice features. I was intrigued, interested even, but didn’t spent much time exploring it and forgot about it. Shortly thereafter, a slew of bag-reviews (related to-bags at least) entered my feed. First Matt Mullenweg’s “What’s In My Bag“, then Gabe Weatherhead’s, followed by Tim Nahumuck’s. All featuring different bags, talking about temptation.

One thing led to another and I found myself checking bags, reading reviews, watching bag-porn, ie. video-reviews on You Tube, and now I’m badly in-the-want for a new bag.

After somewhat thorough evaluation I boiled it down to these bags:

  • Evergoods – CPL 24
  • Black Ember – Citadel Pack
  • Tom Bihn – Synapse 24

At the moment the Evergoods CPL 24 is by far my favourite from the above. The Synapse has a lot of things to organize stuff in, what I like, but is missing dedicated laptop department, which kind of can be built-in, but costs extra. The Black Ember is nice, but maybe a bit too Batman for me.

What I’m especially looking for is a bag that I can use for a looong time, can have multiple use-cases, is weather resistant (driving bike a lot), and is most likely to not fall apart.

I’m routinely hovering over the “Add To Cart” button, but will try to think about that a bit and look at some more bags possibly. That can’t hurt, though I have a hunch that I might have ordered one, minutes after the post goes live.

Related: this classic XCKD – Backpack Decisions

2 years later update: I went with the Evergoods CPL-24 and still use it every day. It had become a trusted companion.

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