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Jul
13
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The folks out at Saddleback Leather sent me a medium briefcase to review, and I’m still astonished by this thing. What’s got my jaw dropping? Let’s take a look.
Basically, it’s exactly what it says on the box–it’s a medium-sized briefcase in leather, but it’s one of the most impressive ones you’ll ever see. It boasts a hundred year warranty, nothing but buckle closures, and a set of nylon reinforcement straps. It also has side pockets suitable for water bottles or GPS or your MP3s, eight exterior D-rings for a quick conversion into a backpack, a newspaper pocket, marine grade industrial thread stitching, pigskin lining, and an adjustable shoulder strap.
I thought that I would never get an opportunity to use the word “sumptuous” in a review, but this is that opportunity, right here. This thing is absolutely unbelievable. Sumptuous almost isn’t sufficient in light of this bag. I didn’t know that pigskin is the second strongest hide in the world, just after kangaroo. There are no breakable parts in this. It’s a hundred percent boot leather. Not only is it a bag of incredible taste and sophistication, but it’s spectacularly well put together. The phrase “the last bag you’ll ever buy” gets thrown around a lot when it comes to handbags, but this one just might qualify. It’s just that durable and beautifully crafted. When I took this thing out of its box and plastic wrapping, it filled my entire back porch–a decent sized area too–with the smell of leather.
There are down sides here, however. Forget about this as a laptop case, first off–I tested this out with my laptop. Measures about a foot across, ten inches deep. Roughly a fifteen inch diagonal screen display. But it only just managed to slip into the laptop case. Getting it out was even more difficult, and only part of the main compartment (split in two) would allow me to get the laptop in in the first place. Now, for a netbook or something of comparable size, maybe. But a full size laptop might have some trouble here, like mine did.
There is one final issue here–the price tag. It’s not likely to surprise anyone to hear that Saddleback Leather wants fully $519.00 for their medium briefcase. This is an incredible bag, no mistake there, but will you want to pay that kind of cash for a bag that has a tough time accommodating your laptop? Now, to be fair, the briefcase comes in three different sizes, so larger sizes may fix that major problem. You may want to consider a larger size if you’ve got a full laptop.
But the key takeaway here is that this is an amazing bag. Not a perfect bag, but an amazing one nonetheless.
The Good
Incredible quality workmanship and materials
Tough and resilient
Versatile enough to go most anywhere
The Bad
Poor storage capacity
High price tag
Score 8 / 10
Popularity: unranked [?]
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