My primary use for this is as a school backpack for transporting my Dell XPS 17" laptop from class to class in college.This was, above all, meant to be a backpack for your Laptop. It's a very high quality product, but not quite perfect. Somehow (I'm sort of unsure about this, but it seems to have happened from placing the backpack on top of my wet umbrella) my books got wet. No water in the laptop pouch. Not enough to damage them, but it's still a bit unsettling to see water on this inside of this supposedly water resistant pack. I should also note that only the outside is water resistant, the inside pouches are separated from some synthetic slightly felty material that doesn't seem to absorb water but would definitely be permeable.
Well there are two main pouches on this, both supposedly water resistant. The pouch for your laptop is right on the top, so your laptop drops in and is right against your backwhich can be slightly uncomfortable, however it is very secure. Your laptop is very safe, it's suspended in its pouch about an inch from the bottom of your backpack so it's protected from drops straight down, the front (if you have books or anything in it), and the back (this has a lot of padding)not particularly protected from falling on the top or the sides, in fact I'd consider it very vulnerable in these areas especially for a 17" laptop.
Due to the separation, if your pack is standing straight up, even if your water bottle were to burst your laptop would be safe as it doesn't actually touch the bottom of the pack.
This is probably more suited for >17" laptops, as my Dell XPS (with upgraded battery pack, sticks out about an inch from the back) barely fits. It's so tight that the seal on the upper zipper stretches open around the corners. I haven't taken it out in the rain with my laptop inside, so I'm not sure if it would leak or not with the seal stretched.
On the positive side there's plenty of room for books. I can easily fit 2-3 large textbooks + my notebooks in this, along with various other electronics and pens. The side pouches are not seemingly suited for water bottles or anything of that sort, so unless you want to put it inside the bag there's no convenient way to carry them.
All of the straps and whatnot can be detached in a few minutes, but are secure enough to keep the pack on you while horizontal (possibly climbing, as this pack is more designed for outdoors than school). Overall it's pretty comfy, the pouch for your books isn't very convenient though as you have to completely open it to get anything large out. It's a very slim pack, not bulgy at all. Has plenty of space and specific compartments for pens/cellphones/small chargers/ect. There doesn't seem to be any specific pouch for large headphones or a large laptop charging cable, so those end up taking the place of books.
There's probably something cheaper out there that does the same thing. I paid $120 for my black Dakine Corridor, it's nice but a bit on the expensive side. I believe the red ones are something like $40 less, which makes no sense to me.
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I needed a new bag for my laptop and other uni stuff, and after much searching, I settled on this one. It was a bit more than I was willing to spend, but it's worth it.The pictures of the bag make it seem smaller than it actually is (I'll upload some of mine at some point), but it is quite roomy inside, especially the front pocket, which is deceptively large and takes up the bulk of the storage space in the bag.
The laptop compartment doesn't have a soft, fleece lined interior, but it does have a nice thick padding on the back side. It fits my Lenovo ThinkPad T530 in snugly, so if you have a 17" beast of a laptop it may not fit, contrary to what the specs state (then again, the T530 is thicker than the average laptop so this may contribute to this). The front pocket I imagined to be small, suitable for chucking in a tablet and maybe a couple of pens. You can certainly fit a tablet in there, but it might get a bit lost (my MOTOROLA XOOM Android Tablet (10.1-Inch, 32GB, Wi-Fi) certainly does), as well as a lot of other stuff... I've got a bag of lollies and small tub of potato chips in there for those extra long lectures when a snack is required, and have put a couple of extra bottles of drink in there as well. It can probably fit one or two textbooks as well. There's also a small pouch on the inside of the flap, which I use to store the power adaptor for my laptop, along with two pockets that would fit a phone or some kind of small portable music player (I have a Nokia Lumia 800 which just fits in them, so phones like the Lumia 900, Galaxy S III and so on won't fit owing to their width) and four slots for pens. There's a little pocket up the top for small things (a set of keys or something along those lines), and two side pockets for water bottles complete the package.
The shoulder straps are nice and easily adjustable I've adjusted them up while walking along and they stay put, which is always a bonus. They have a thick padding on them so they're nice and comfortable to wear for long periods of time as well. The back area as well has thick padding, which helps protect the laptop as well as provides a comfortable area for your back to be rest against.
The only thing I would really change about this backpack is the laptop compartment I'd love to have it padded with a fleecy lining. Although it has a nylon lining, the padded lining would probably be a bit more gentle on laptops, particularly those that might show up scratches easily (glossy and aluminium ones spring to mind easily). Worth a buy, especially if you do have a laptop and other "stuff" that you take to uni and etc. regularly.
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I really like this pack. I travel frequently for work and it is nice to have a slim pack that also has a lot of room available. My only complaint would be the awkwardness of the front flap. It is reversed from what you typically see on a zippered backpack, which means you have to lift the flap up and over the pack to access the contents. This makes it less than convenient for accessing anything from the main compartment if it is under an airplane seat or other confined location; you can't simply unzip, reach in, and root around for something.
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