UH OH, WHAT I FEARED MIGHT HAPPEN DID INDEED HAPPEN:My original review expressed the fear that the tight fit of this bag for the late-2010 MacBook Air 13-inch might not provide enough protection should the bag happen to fall and hit its upper corner(s) on the floor. As you can read below, I thought about it and decided that this was very unlikely. Well...
it happened! The bag, with the Air inside it, was sitting on a chair, and tumbled onto the floor. It hit on an upper corner (due to rotation while falling). It damaged the nylon zipper at that corner, and it bent one of the thick corners of the Air inside. OUCH!
Luckily, the Air still works fine, and the zipper still works. If I have time I'll post a video review to show the details visually.
I don't think this is a terrible bag. I still like it. But its one defect did, indeed, help to damage my Air. Sigh.
***
HERE IS MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:
This case looks pretty good! The description of it is extremely accurate. It's a padded, soft-sided carrying case that does what it says it does. Almost.
There's only one criticism I'd make, which is that the best-padded interior pocket only just BARELY fits the late-2010 MacBook Air 13-inch model. (This is the pocket that is shown with the Acer sticking out of it in the product photographs.) As the Air slides in, it seems like a perfect fit, but then you see that the corners are iffy. You have to carefully work on the top left and top right corners to make sure they pop inside and the zipper can close around them; then you can fasten the velcro strap that is designed to hold the laptop secure in the most highly protected position. But then those two top corners are flush up against the zipper as it rounds the corners, and I worry that those corners are not really protected.
NOTE ADDED AFTER REVIEW WAS POSTED: I take it back. The fit is tight, but the chance that the bag would fall in precisely just such a way as to hit the low-protection upper corners, or that it would bang the wall in such a way, is basically zero. So the only deficit is that it takes a few seconds to pop the upper corner inside the zipper. An inconvenience, true, but nothing more, and I've raised the rating from 4 to 5 stars.
A good-quality laptop carrying bag has an interior pocket that is offset somewhat from the outside surface on all four sides, so that if the bag is dropped in any of a number of ways, it's always a padded surface with some empty "give" space that hits the ground first. The laptop is suspended inside the case with a margin all around, and that's true for this bag when it holds an Acer-sized item. But this bag makes the inner suspension compartment so small that the protection disappears along the top, especially the top corners, for the ever-so-slightly larger MacBook Air.
You can instead put the laptop into the main compartment, but then it's loose inside that larger compartment; it can't be held secure by the velcro strap that is designed to hold it away from the edges. And it loses a layer of padding on one face. True, the protective layer you "lose" is still there and protects the OTHER face of the laptop now, but that other face already has an excellent protective layer. So you go from:
well-padded / laptop / well-padded
to:
well-padded / well-padded / laptop
The less-protected face of the laptop now has only the outer shell for protection, which is not as well padded.
This is a bit of a quibble, I know, but I thought I should mention it. It's the sort of thing you can't tell from the otherwise excellent product photographs.
Finally, where's the warranty? The description says it comes with a warranty, but there is no tag on the bag, no piece of paper in the pockets or the packaging, that says anything about a warranty or a website. Another quibble, I know, but usually there's SOMETHING you can file away with your date of purchase in case something goes wrong. Unless there's a SECRET compartment I haven't found yet (grin)...
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