Crumpler Horseman Review
My main bag that I travel and work with is a Boblbee Megalopolis backpack. It is the bag I always come back to, but sometimes I don’t want to carry a backpack. So I was looking into other types of bags, and was almost ready to order a messenger bag from Chrome when I saw this one.
This bag is designed to accommodate 15” and 17” laptops, and I’m usually carrying either a 12” PowerBook or a 15” ThinkPad. But I’m also usually slinging around notebooks, index cards, a book or two, my iPod and/or a Sony PSP, a Wacom tablet (much easier to manipulate OmniGraffle or Visio documents when you’re not using a mouse!) and other assorted bits. Usually some sort of camera is included, so being able to carry one of those as well is critical.
Its quite easy to stuff this thing to gills, but even fully-loaded it is quite manageable. I should point out that this is the second-to-largest laptop bag in this series from Crumpler, and that I am 6’3” tall.
I love bags. Let us get started.
As you can see, the Horseman carries a lot of stuff. Clicking-through will take you to an annotated photo on Flickr, so you’ll be able to more easily judge what your needs are.
One of the problems with Messenger bags, in my opinion, is that they’re big empty pits of crap. There is no organization or division for most of them, and they have minimal pockets. This is great when you’re trucking blueprints and documents across town on two-wheels, but it kind of sucks when you carry index cards, pens and pencils, gadgets, gizmos, and other assorted nonsense that I find somehow necessary or at least comforting.
I could carry more in the Horseman, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I’ll probably move to a MacBook Pro in 15” or 17” flavor. If you carry a lot of camera gear, get one of Crumpler’s camera bags or get a divider set for one of their Messenger bags. They look like a very versatile option.
One thing I find odd is that pocket in the flap.
I use it for checkbooks and Big Wallet. My pocket wallet is a Jimi. I don’t know what else to put in there aside from magazines or something.
The inside of the bag is huge, and well padded. It is very well made in my opinion, and the strap is quite comfortable. But the interior storage areas are huge. The back section holds your notebook or tablet computer, and the center storage area can hold plenty as well. There are also pockets inside these sub-sections and the zipper-handles are quite large making it easy to navigate and get what you need.
Front pocket has writing instrument “tubes” like many bags, and I bought a “Thirsty Al” to slip onto the side strap, that’s the red pouch on the side of the bag. It holds my Nokia N90 but can also hold a full-size iPod or slim-model BlackBerry and Treo devices.
Keep in mind that front pocket can be completely zipped shut.
I haven’t quite figured out the optimal position and placement for things inside this bag. Sure, its obvious where the laptop and file-folders go, but other bits and pieces end up in various places while I experiment with what should go where.
Its pretty clear that if you’re carrying a larger camera that it needs to go in the main compartment. The internal compartment has two tall pockets that can be velcro’ed closed. I haven’t figured out what they’re best suited for but hold most paperbacks fine but my pencil case hangs out the top and it annoys me.
I didn’t have the flap down all the way, it has velcro and buckles, but I left it unbuckled. It has a knack for being pretty comfortable even stuffed full like this. There is an auxiliary stray to help displace some strain when you’ve really got a lot of cargo.
Yes, I need a shave. Yes I look frumpy. Its Saturday. Leave me alone.
I’ll probably have more thoughts on this bag in the near future the more I use it, but so far I find it a welcome change from the Boblbee without screwing me on cargo capacity or organization ability. It doesn’t feel as balanced as the Boblbee of course, but it also isn’t quite so ostentatious, either. My only issue is that I end up with a lot of slack in the strap, and I’m not sure how to best deal with it. There isn’t really a “user manual” for this thing, and I’m not suggesting that there needs to be one, but I’m kind of at a loss as to why the main strap is so frickin’ long.
Crumpler Bags USA for this and more baggage from the folks of Crumpler. If you want to know more about the Horseman, check it out and click on Technical Details for all the digits.
Keep in mind the green bag doesn’t look all that green in photographs, but more of an olive. I assure you, it is green. I was kind of bummed out about that since I was hoping it was more of an olive green. But I’m not anti-green by any stretch, so it wound up not breaking my spirit.