Ebags Firewall Laptop Bag Review

[texasdiver]

My Ebags Firewall Laptop Bag arrived today, 2 days after ordering and I must say that I'm very impressed with this bag. It is replacing an aging Tumi Expandable Brief and from top to bottom I have to say that the $49 ebags bag is superior to the $250 Tumi.

The laptop sleeve is not removable, which is fine with me. I never took the sleeve out of my Tumi bag. Most importantly, it is a perfect fit for my 15" T42p with the extended battery. It is as if this bag was designed for my laptop. It is slightly snug with the extended battery but still a good fit. I suppose the padding on the laptop compartment is not equal to the most expensive sleeves on the market, but then this enire bag cost less than one of the popular Booq sleeves.

Since I am often working in conference rooms with dozens of other folks carring black laptop bags, I decided to add a litle color and went with the Saphire Blue bag. Then immediately after I placed the order I asked my wife what color she liked and she said gray or black only. I had instant buyer remorse and thought that I should have ordered the more professional-looking black model. But now that I have the blue one in my hand I am very happy. The blue trim is only on a limited part of the bag and it is darker and more muted than appears on the web site. The actual fabric is a tiny blue-black check pattern with black threads running vertically and blue threads running crosswise. So it sort of changes color from black to blue depending on the angle that you view it. Very nice and professional looking

The bottom and colored trim on the bag are heavy ballistic fabric while the sides and internal dividers are a somewhat lighter but still heavy nylon fabric. This makes the bag a bit lighter than the Tumi but still very durable looking. The bottom of the bag has plastic feet on it which allows it to stand upright with a laptop inside and the corners are reinforced with rubber, details that the Tumi lacks.

All the zippers are very heavy and nice with reflective zipper pulls on the smaller zippers and heavy polished metal pulls on the larger zippers. The interior of the bag is orange which will make it much easier to find small items.

The shoulder strap is a simple strap with a curved and padded insert on the top that is rubberized on one side to prevent slippage. It looks fine. The handles on the bag are designed to fall flat against the bag when it is standing up so they aren't in the way when you want to pull things out.

One additional feature that looks very nice is a zip-out bottle holder on the end. It should hold a liter size water bottle when zipped open but still lies flat and neat when not in use. I like to carry water bottles onto planes to this will be a nice feature and keeps the water out of the inside of the bag where it could spill and wet papers or the laptop.

Time will tell if this bag becomes a favorite, but I think it looks good so far. I have not seen a better bag for the money and frankly it beats many bags that cost 5-times more.

[Cneil]

Great review. Is the quality of the zippers, fabric, etc equal to Tumi's? I've been looking around and settled for a Booq sleeve that I can stuff in my mini Tumi roller. Aside from the Booq, which actually has a good ballistic nylon, so many of the bags made by Tumi's competitors are built out of this shiny plastic-looking material I really dislike, including Targus and Kensington, or seem really floppy, like the brenthaven models. I like bags with a little bit of structure to them since they seem to protect their contents better.

[texasdiver]

Cneil:

I would say the zippers are better than the Tumi. The large zippers on the main compartments are a gauge or two larger than on the Tumi and have very heavy zipper pulls. My Tumi zippers blew out and I had to have them replaced. The ebag zippers are also reversed or of a different design in that they have a small flap the covers the zipper when it is closed. I expect they did that to make them more waterproof and to keep dirt off the zipper teeth. Very nice.

As for the fabric. I don't know the exact definition of ballistic nylon. However the ebags looks like it has heavy gauge ballistic on the bottom and the colored inserts, It's a heavy nylon weave that is identical in appearance to the cloth on the Tumi. The rest of the upper parts of the bag are made out of what appears to be a lighter gauge of balistic fabric. It looks exactly the same except that the threads are a smaller gauge of nylon so the weave is tighter and the fabric is lighter. It is definitely not the cordura fabric that the Targus bags are made out of . I'm looking at my wife's Targus bag and the weave is different.

As for "structure" I would say that it has a medium amount of structure. There is a folding bottom. Basically a stiff padded flap that folds out inside the bag to provide a stiff bottom. And the fabric itself is fairly stiff. But then the bag is brand new. I expect that it will soften up with use. If you want a stiff structured bag then this would no be the one. But it's also not flimsy like the nylon briefs commonly sold by places like LL Bean and Lands End.

However, because the sleeve is no removable, this would not be the bag to use if you wanted a Booq sleeve inside. I suspect that a 14" Thinkpad with a standard battery wearing a Shinza Zeroshock would fit into the built-in sleeve to provide double-sleeve protection. But I doubt that would work with the larger 15" T42. However I don't have a ZeroShock to test with. But a larger sleeve like the Booq or Brain Cell will definitely no fit.

For me the clincher was the 100% guarantee and free shipping on returns. If you don't like it they provide a mailing label so you don't even need to pay return shipping.

[texasdiver]

One more thing. If you read the ebags reviews on their web site, and there are over 700 reviews of this bag, you see that a common complaint is that it is unbalanced and tips over with the laptop inside. Well, I can get mine to stand up with just the laptop inside but I see what they mean.

HOWEVER, the reason for this is the way the sleeve is constructed. The bottom of the sleeve is not squared off but is wedge shaped. So that if you looked at a cross section the bottom comes to a point. What this actally does is provide a cradle for the laptop so that it is suspended insisde the sleeve and not sitting on the bottom of the bag. I have to think that this design is intentional to provide greater impact protection if the bag is dropped. However the side effect of suspending the laptop inside the sleeve is to make it somewhat less stable when sitting on the ground. I think that's a good trade-off and I'd rather have my laptop suspended and cushioned inside the bag rather than sitting on the bottom of the bag.

[Cneil]

Thanks for all the great information. I think I'll end up staying with my Tumi roller + Powersleeve for longer airplane traveling. I'm leaning towards getting one of the new EZM bags (www.ezm.com) designed for Thinkpads as a second bag/briefcase. It has a shoulder strap, which my Tumi lacks, and comes with a folding set of wheels that you can completely remove to travel light. It also has lots of quick open pockets. Anyone have any experience with EZM?

[AlphaKilo470]

I looked at the eBags site and their bag looked really nice, especially the green one and the grey one. I can see why they would have done the sleeve the way they did, having the laptop at the bottom of the case is a bad thing, I bent the hinge (I eventually bent it back) and put a tiny crack in one of the back plastics on my 760E when the handle on my old Targus nylon case gave way from age. For my 380, I have a nice leather Targus case with more compartments than I know what to do with, I could probably fit both laptops in it if I tried, and I got it for free. The case is also still in mint condition, so I'm gonna keep using it, but for the 760 that lacks a case, that eBag is tempting, especially for 50 dollars.

[texasdiver]

Those EZM bags look interesting. I had not even heard of them until I saw your link and I thought I had looked at a lot of options. Personally I would not ever want a laptop bag with wheels because I travel with a regular rollaboard suitcase that already has wheels and my laptop bag rides on top of the suitcase. However, I work with a lot of attorneys and the rolling computer bags are very popular with them, especially the women, because they are carrying so many books and papers all the time. But for my own needs, the wheels are just in the way.

Since I currently work out of a home office and really only take the laptop out of the house when I'm on business travel going through airports, I wanted a full-size carry-on bag to carry the laptop, books, and other accessories on business trips. If I was still working in an office and commuting every day I would probably have chosen to use a simple sleeve and tucked it in a backpack when I had more to carry than just the computer

[SimonCC]

im looking into getting the Jansport 'Thinker' bag from ebags. Im worried that as the dimensions for the laptop compartment are slightly larger than my 14 inch t42, it will prove to be a problem. Does anyone have this bag and if so how well does the tp fit???

Thanks,

Simon.

[texasdiver]

FYI, ebags just dropped the price on this bag an additional $10 through a special email offer. I think you need to click through this link to get the offer which is actually a additional 20% off offer on all sale bags good through 1/16 only. Guess they are trying to padd their EOQ sales:

http://www.ebags.com/email/index.cfm?fu ... rwr3q|HTML

That makes the Firewall Laptop Bag a sweet $39.99

I noticed that they dropped the free shipping but the shipping on this bag only costs $4.99 so it's still a great deal.

I called ebags to tell them I was thinking of returning the bag I just ordered and ordering a different color bag at the new price and they offered to refund the price difference plus $5 so it ended up costing me $35. Can't complain. It's a great bag and a perfect fit for the T42p.