Bag for the sunny days only!||Opps - Amazon forgot to say for Laptops up to 16 inches...||Good, except for shoulder strap and zipper||My wife and I are in Europe studying abroad for a year. Before we left, we decided to purchase new backpacks. I've always had Samsonite so I purchased the Large Samsonite Tectonic and my wife likes Swiss Gear, so she got their Maxxum one.Maxxum Swiss Gear by Wenger Notebook Backpack - BlueWe've had them now for about 3 months of light/medium traveling, and I wish I would have gone with the Maxxum. This Samsonite backpack is just not the quality I expected.The first problem is that the shoulder strap threading has unraveled, thus leaving about a 4-inch hole where you can see the two foam pads in it. After three months of not even continuous use, I was surprised by this rip. The Maxxum's shoulder pads aren't as padded but they are staying together.The other problem is that the zippers do not stay together well (especially to the main compartment). The teeth are large and I'd guess that about 4 or 5 times now, my main compartment has fallen open while I am walking and some of my stuff spills out.

The fix for this is to make sure the zippers are together on one of the sides, where they seem to not want to pull apart. The Maxxum has tighter teeth, and feel more stable.I give this backpack 3 starts because it is a good fit with my 13-inch laptop and I like the overall padding comfort, pocket layout, and design. Yet, there are just a couple of small annoying things (like having to sew a shoulder pad and zip up on the side) that prevent it from scoring better. The Samsonite website says "This bag can take it. Samsonite tough." and I was hoping for a little more durable backpack.11/20/2014 UPDATE: Both backpacks are still holding together after almost 3 years. They both are being used on a daily school basis, and I have not had to resew the Samsonite one again. I would still recommend the Maxxum backpack because of the aforementioned teeth-size issue, but overall they are both good backpacks. I would upgrade this backpack to 3.5 stars.bottom side of laptop compartment is very thin.One of the most important parts of your travel kit, next to your phone and/or your laptop, is the bag that holds and protects them.

A sturdy bag that cushions its contents could be the only thing keeping your digital gear from becoming a useless pile of plastic, metal and glass.For example, several years ago while my plane was rumbling down the runway, the overhead compartment door popped open and my notebook bag crashed to the cabin floor. After we were airborne and the seatbelt light was turned off, I cautiously opened the bag to find that my notebook's screen was shattered, the CD drive had come loose and there were several pieces of broken plastic at the bag's bottom. rog shuttle backpack priceLuckily, the hard drive with all my data survived, but my $1,500 computer was junk. w5070 backpackIt was clear I needed a better bag.c2 backpack hudCurrently, most travelers use soft cases made of a variety of fabrics to carry their technology from place to place.

Bag-makers tend to use three techniques -- or a combination of them -- to lessen the force of impact: To see which bags best protect their precious cargo, I gathered six soft laptop cases for testing. I looked for bags that advertised themselves as paying attention to the safety of their contents and that represented three popular styles of bags: two backpacks (Airbac AirTech Backpack and Brenthaven Expandable Trek), two messenger bags (Booq Cobra case and Timbuk2 Ram) and two soft briefcases (Samsonite's Viz Air Laptop Slimbrief and Tom Bihn's Brain Cell Horizontal). I also tested a hard case (the Pelican ProGear Laptop Case 1095CC) to find out whether it protected a laptop significantly better than its soft-sided cousins.Unsurprisingly, all the bags reduced the force of impact to at least some extent in my tests, but there was a lot of variation in the protection offered. The best bag reduced the force of impact by a little more than one-third, substantially reducing the potential for damage;

some reduced it by only about 6%.After measuring and weighing each bag, and examining the material it was made of, I looked at the ruggedness of the zippers, Velcro straps and snaps. I also appraised the comfort and adjustability of the shoulder strap and recorded the number and types of pockets.I then loaded each bag up with about 20 lb. of the typical accouterments of travel. In addition to files, magazines, books and a few pens and pencils, I put in a mid-sized laptop, a 10-in. Archos 101 tablet and an LG Nitro HD Android phone, along with their AC adapters. I then carried the bag around for a while to see how well it bore the load. Since I didn't want to risk losing another laptop, I tested the bags by hollowing out an old 15.6-in. laptop and installed an accelerometer to record the impact of a series of falls.The accelerometer was connected to a Vernier Labquest 2 device that interpreted the accelerometer's readings and presented the data on its small screen. While the accelerometer is rated to measure the force of acceleration to a maximum of 25 g (25 times the force of gravity), it can accurately record forces much higher.

Readings were taken at the rate of 200 samples per second for 10 seconds and the peak was recorded. Each bag was put through two tests. The first, meant to simulate a normal fall from a desktop onto a hard surface, involved dropping the bag with the test unit inside from a 30-in.-high shelf onto a concrete floor; it was dropped onto its flat end, so that the laptop landed on its bottom. The second, meant to simulate a fall from an airplane's overhead compartment, involved dropping it 60 in. onto a padded carpet; it was dropped so the laptop would hit on its front or rear edge. I also performed both tests with just the instrumented laptop and without any protective bag to use as a baseline. I oriented the accelerometer so its sensor was facing down regardless of which test was being performed.For each test, I executed three drops from each height and reported the average. The difference between the baseline results (from dropping the laptop without any protection) and the test results provided data as to how well each bag protected what was inside.