titleWhen I picked up an 18.4 inch laptop I knew that I would deal with problems while traveling due to its size. What I didn’t expect was to have as much trouble finding laptop bags. While at CES last year I was visiting a company we had seen the year before called Everki and noticed that they had a whole selection of 18.4 inch laptop bags. With CES coming up soon I finally set aside the time to get in touch and give one a try. Maybe their Advance Laptop Bag for 18.4 inch laptops would make traveling a little more convenient for me in the future.

Product Name: Everki 18.4” Advance Laptop Bag

Review Sample Provided by: Everki

Review by: Wes

Pictures by: Wes


Specifications

UPC

874933002017

Compartment Size

18.4in Notebooks

Colour

Charcoal

Outer Shell Material

Polyester

Inner Liner Material

Anti-shock foam

Length

49 cm (19.29 in)

Width

11 cm (4.33 in)

Height

36 cm (14.17 in)

Compartment Length

47 cm (18.5 in)

Compartment Width

7 cm (2.76 in)

Compartment Height

33.5 cm (13.19 in)

Bag Weight

0.95 kg (2.09 lbs)



Traveling with an 18.4 inch laptop

I mentioned before that I am looking for a way to improve on our traveling setup. We went with an 18.4 inch laptop to give us a mobile work area that also doubles as our mobile gaming rig. Our Toshiba Qosmio does a great job of both of those tasks. The size makes for a great mobile office, but when you’re lugging it from flight to flight it can be cumbersome. The biggest issue I have is on todays packed flights you sometimes end up having to check your carry on. With my current bag my laptop sits right on the front with little to no padding. I’m sure most of you have seen how bags get treated when getting pulled off of an airplane, with my laptop sitting right on the outside of the bag I have no doubt that it wouldn’t hold up to the abuse. Because of that I have decided to go with a smaller briefcase style bag to carry my laptop in that can be used as a personal item when flying, leaving out carryon bag to be used for other equipment and clothing.

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Performance

Judging the performance of a laptop bag like this one is divided up into three different categories. First what will the bag hold? Will it hold everything you need it to? The second thing you need to look at is how well it is going to protect your expensive equipment. Just because it can hold it all doesn’t mean it’s going to be very well protected. The last thing you need to look at is how well will the bag going to hold up to use. None of it matters if the bag falls apart and drops all of the equipment that you managed to pack into it all over the floor. With this bag from Everki we will look at each of these categories.

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What will it hold

Because I use the Qosmio for LANs and work there are a few things that I need to be able to carry with it to be ready to go. That list consists of our laptop, the giant charger, a gaming mouse, 1tb external, 25 foot Ethernet cable, and a mouse pad. As you can see in our photos everything from our list fit in the bag with lots of room to go. Everki packed this bag with pouches and pockets all over.

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There are three sections to the bag. On the front there is an area held closed by Velcro. The pouch covers the entire front of the bag with lots of room. The opening to the pouch isn’t as wide as the pouch itself but this is a great area to drop all of your goodies in. for us we put our network cable and mouse pad in here, but there is still room for anything else you might pick up while traveling or at a LAN.

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The second area is enclosed by a zipper and has a bright orange interior. Those who know me know how much I love the color orange so the color alone was a plus. Inside there are 5 different pouches along with two pen holders. Two of the pouches are made of a mesh and the rest is fabric. I used the two mesh areas to keep our power brick in place. In our photo if you didn’t know better, it almost looks like there isn’t much room here. But you have to remember that the power brick to the Qosmio is literally the size of an actual brick. Just being able to fit it into a pouch at all was impressive. This is where I packed all of my other goodies away. I could have packed more in here if I needed it just by packing the cords for the external and power brick with their respective devices. Our Razer Deathadder fit in the mouse pouch fine also. Even after all of the pouches are full this area could be a great place to store a notepad, papers, or even a book.

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The last area is the laptop compartment. Surprisingly our giant laptop fit in here with room to spare. This is the first time I have been able to put my laptop away without having to fit trying to zip it up. In fact there was almost too much room left over. Everki gave you extra flexibility in thickness also; you could almost pack a second laptop in here if you needed to.

 

How well will it protect

The key to protection on a laptop bag is padding around key components, strong materials, and keeping water out. The obvious place to start is the laptop compartment itself. It doesn’t matter if your mouse survives if your laptop is broken in two. For this bag you have ¾ inch of protective foam on each side of your laptop. Around the top and bottom the padding is around a ½ inch thick. The second compartment with our mouse, hard drive, and power brick shares the laptops protection on its back side and on the front side there is somewhere between a ½ inch and ¼ inch of padding. The font pouch is for items you don’t have to worry about being broken like our Ethernet cable and mouse pad.

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I mentioned before that strong materials and water protection are also important on top of padding. Each of the zippers on the Advance Laptop Bag are water resistant with a small piece of polyester from the outside of the bag running all the way under the zipper mechanism. Between that and the high quality polyester exterior you shouldn’t have to worry about water getting to your equipment as long as you keep it zipped up. Of course the front pouch is still the odd man out. Without a zipper up top to keep the elements out it can still get water in. It does have Velcro keeping it as closed as possible though.

 

How will it hold up

The difference between a quality product can be found in the material’s used and in how everything is manufactured. Ending up with a poor quality bag can be really disappointing, even more so if you really like the design. Everki did a good job with the Advance Laptop Bag. Starting at the inside of the main compartment you can see added support on the seam where the top and sides meet. They even went as far as covering it all with a black material after putting it all together, giving it the same fit and finish as you would see on the outside of your bag. Around every seam you have double stitching to keep everything together for years to come. Another feature I was impressed with and anyone who has been stuck in a coat after jamming up their zipper will appreciate this one. Everki included self-healing zippers just in case things get off track. Across the back the trolley handle pass through is thick and will keep your laptop attached to your roll around carry on when needed.  If you had any worries Everki also includes a lifetime warranty.

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Overall

This is our first experience dealing with Everki bags and as it turns out I was impressed. Not only did it do a good job of filling my needs, I was also impressed at how much extra room the Advance Bag had. I really couldn’t find any issues with the bag. Finding a bag that works with my 18.4 inch laptop is hard but not impossible; Everki has stepped up to the plate to help fill that void. I can’t wait to put it to the real test here in just a few weeks for CES.

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Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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garfi3ld replied the topic: #21643 16 Dec 2011 19:07
Finally a bag for those crazy enough to use an 18.4 inch laptop

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