Swiss Gear SA1923 Black TSA Friendly ScanSmart Laptop Backpack - Fits Most 15 Inch Laptops and Tablets

This is my partners 2nd Swiss Gear backpack. His first one lasted him over 6yrs of daily use. And honestly was only a bit frayed along the handle at top. But he wanted a new one with different pocket options, so it was a no-brainer to get him another Swiss Gear. He loves this backpack and uses it daily.

This is an amazing book bag! Bought this for my boyfriend bc he went back to college to further his education ! First day he used it, he told me he was definitely glad that I bought it bc it has everything he needed far as space and pockets!

Used laptop backpacks since 1999, and I have gone through several brands. When I found SwissGear, I stopped changing brands. Pros: 1. Toms of pockets, slots and a HUGE main compartment. Place for mp3 player, batteries, Kindle and all the related electronic stuff you cant live without while on the road. 2. This backpack is significantly lighter than the previous two SwissGears packs Ive owned. 3. Airport security friendly. Leave the laptop in the bag, unzip the back, fold it flat and send it through the x-ray. 4. Comfortable on the back, and easy to hand carry when needed. Cons: 1. The light weight seems to translate into lower quality in a few places. One of the side grommets caught on a seat belt and was pulled out with no effort. 2. Zipper does not go down all the way on the bottom front pocket. 3. There is no divider in the huge center compartment, and small items tossed in there fall to the bottom and get lost. 4. The zipper sections in the main compartment are small. Given the room available, they could have been much bigger. The final comment is not really a Con, but the bag holds so much that you can actually make it too bulky to fit under the seat in front of you on the plane, and make it too heavy to comfortably carry on your back. Now you really can carry all the junk you want to carry with you!

After many types of messenger bags I decided to switch out to a backpack for a lot of my work. I did some research online, checked out the reviews and decided on this SwissGear SA 1923. Good bag. its a very well made back and so far has held up to a lot of my punishment. Its easy to sling over my shoulder and when I have to carry something large I can wear it proper and not worry about it slipping off. It has ample storage space and a lot of compartments to store the odd bits. In the main computer compartment I store my Lenovo 14 laptop. The only addition I did was put a piece of foam at the bottom of the compartment from a Targus bag to keep the bumps from hurting anything. The bag is made to TSA specs so the next set of zippers inwards will cleave the backpack in two. In normal mode it allows me to store my iPad or bluetooth keyboard in a webbed compartment. Oh, quick hint. At the top, where all these zippers meet, theres a loop where I put a carabiner. All these zippers have a hole at the end where theyll easily fit onto a small carabiner. Do this or the weight of the laptop will pull the zipper down. No problem unless youre wearing the backpack, driving down the road on your motorcycle. VERY close call. Side pockets allow me to separate out my AC adapter and small amount of tools. Theres a large central compartment for my notebook (paper) and iPad and a front pouch that gathers all of my other bits and pieces. Oh yeah, theres a top front pocket, by the handle, thats perfect to hold quick to get at items. Great for drink mixes or granola bars. The material seems tough, it stores a lot of my junk and is pretty easy to carry around. Exactly why I purchased it. Easy to carry by the handle as well as one or both shoulder straps. Plenty of pockets and carabiner attachment points. And, is TSA compliant. But why not 5 stars? I only had two problems with this bag, both relatively minor. First, it will fall FLAT ON ITS FACE! The way the bag is made causes the bag to flop over onto its face no matter how its loaded. Not really a problem but I like to put my bag down so I can get at the pockets and the first time I did this it took a header off a chair and crashed onto a concrete floor. Kind of a pain to always have to hide away the pockets when you put it down. Second complaint is the lack of storage for small items. I have a lot of cables, adapters, and other small do-dads. There really isnt a good small item dividers. Like I said, small complaint but important to me. Ive gotten around it by purchasing other small zippered storage bags that I can stuff into the larger compartments. All in all a good bag. Glad I purchased it and would recommend to others but with those two caveats.

This bag has much larger capacity than the other SwissGear backpack that I was unhappy with. I needed a bag that had a dedicated and padded area for a laptop, and large compartment to fit my work cloths and lunch for when I go to the gym, and this does the job. My other requirement was a side buckle so that I can attach wet flip flops to the outside, and this works adequately. I keep my lifting gloves in the mesh pockets and they stay put, even on motorcycle rides. I dont ever use the 2 side zippered pockets, but others may find a use for them. So far Im happy with the durability over the past 6 months of daily use. I dont expect problems so early considering my previous Outdoor backpack lasted 10 years before the shoulder straps began to tear.

I read many of the reviews and decided to buy it in the end when there was a great deal on it for over half off. ($59) I have actually seen the price on this fluctuate before so I just waited and hoped it would go back down... And to my luck it did after a few months. As many other owners of this bag have said, I agree that it is probably the nicest backpack that I have ever owned. The material that it is made out of is thick and seems very durable, it has metal pull tabs, and is well sewn for a sturdy product. It is also sturdy enough to stand upright on its own when I set it down, which is nice in my opinion. The handle at the top seems to be made of quality, hard rubber and is extra reinforced to ensure it can stand up to heavy loads. The material seems to be very water resistant. I tested this by making puddles of water on the fabric to see if it would absorb it. After a several minutes, the puddle remained and the inside was dry. I did this with the padded parts too which do absorb water, but even so, after minutes of letting the pool of water sit in the drenched fabric, the water still was unable to penetrate through to the inside. I went further and tested the inside lining and it seems even more water resistant than the outside material. I dont say that any of this is water proof because after wiping up the puddles, the fabric remains slightly damp (the inside lining was nearly dry) but the fact it is able of hold a puddle of water for a long period of time without getting through the other side proves it is difficult for water to penetrate all the way through. Therefore, I trust that it would hold up in rain just fine. I cant accurately test if water will easily seep through other parts of the bag (zippers, seams, etc... Just dont go swimming with it) but I know water wont be getting through the material itself. The only part of the bag Id be concerned of water getting through to the inside is the side pockets as there are ventilation holes, but other than that Id say this bag is weather resistant. Wearing this backpack is very comfortable, with ample padding for the back and well fitting straps, I can imagine I will rarely feel too uncomfortable wearing it for long periods of time. I can feel the gap that they leave open along my spine which allows me to assume it does actually let air flow through keeping my back cool, which I look forward to as my back tends to sweat a lot while wearing backpacks. The adjustment straps are also easy to pull because of the plastic loops they added to the end of them, making it easy to tighten and loosen while wearing it. The shoulder straps have a few extra loops for accessories as well. The one loop on the left shows that it is for sunglasses. There are two towards the top of each shoulder strap with an image of arrows pointing up and down... I dont know what these are made for. There seems to be a lot of discrepancy in the size of laptop this bag can hold so I would like to try and clear this up. The bag actually comes with a tag saying it is made for a 17 laptop. Laptops, televisions, and most other things with digital screens are typically measured diagonally. That being said, it holds my 17 (14.75 x 9.5 x 1.125) laptop just fine with quite a bit of room to spare (about 2 of extra space on both top and side). The padding is nice around the sides and top of the laptop, but just like some other reviews, I feel there isnt much padding on the bottom (most backpacks dont from my experience) but there is a little as the material the bag is made of in general is fairly thick. Because of the extra space though, I solved this minor issue by rolling up an old medium sized T-shirt and stuffing it on the bottom of this compartment. It makes my 17 laptop fit snugly and now I have no worries of damaging anything when I set the backpack down. This compartment also has fuzz along the sides for a padded velcro strap to securely strap the laptop in place as well. With everything Ive said so far about the laptop compartment, in theory, a 19 laptop might make a tight fit (youd be cutting it close if you tried). I cant guarantee that claim though because laptops can vary in style and size. The zippers next to the laptop compartment unzips all the way down so the back of the bag, where the laptop resides, can flap apart from the rest of the bag which is how the smart scan feature functions. There is a thin divider for a few papers here as well. There is ample space in the main compartment to hold plenty of things. There is a small pocket to hold your phone or music device and a well covered slit above it for headphones to be slipped through so you can listen to music from the device. There are built in file dividers to separate documents. There is also an interesting piece of padding sewn along the bottom, back end of the bag underneath the separators which allows it to flap up and down... I just push it down so it lines the entire bottom of the bag which also allows the bag to hold its shape and may protect anything in this compartment from impact (they shouldve had similar padding in the laptop compartment...). I guess if I had important papers along with clothes or books in the bag, I could also lift the flap up against the dividers and it would prevent the clothes, books, or anything I put in the main compartment from wrinkling my documents in the dividers. Other than that, I dont know why the bottom padding is allowed to flap around. There are two smaller compartments in the front of the bag. The one on the top is narrow and can fit a graphing calculator or a DVD box... or perhaps a sandwich (though it might flatten the sandwich out). The bottom is nice and spacious with multiple small dividers and pockets to hold various things like pens, pencils, post it notes, an ID card, and a bigger pocket in the back for a planner/organizer. There is also a detachable key ring as well. The side compartments are very spacious reaching up to almost 3/4 the length of the bag. A small umbrella, liter water bottle or a large rockstar energy drink could fit in either pocket. You might want to avoid putting water sensitive items in here because they are vented by two holes, but honestly, the holes are small enough that I wouldnt worry too much about water getting in unless its pouring (I put my laptops charging cable in here). Along these side pockets is an elastic pocket for a liter sized water bottle or canister. There is a clip strap to hold it in place. Note, if you do decide to put large water containers in these pockets, it makes it difficult to fit thicker items in the zipped compartments (and vice versa). This is a great backpack and I am very excited to use this for the years to come.

Im on my second of these backpacks, the first lasted 3 years before a zipper started to give out - see my only gripe below. The biggest attraction of these backpacks is the Scansmart feature. This allows you to leave your laptop in the dedicated compartment during TSA screening. The whole bag clam-shells open so that the laptop portion is by itself with the top portion being a see through mesh. There are plenty of compartments in this bag - plenty of room for just about anything you might need as carryon. I typically travel with a laptop and a netbook (the netbook has to come out, unfortunately), both power supplies (the laptop one is *huge*) a special control surface, cables, mice and all the typical kipple of a business traveler. It typically runs 30-35 pounds loaded, which is the main source of my single complaint. My laptop is 17.3 desktop replacement type and it barely fits. This ends up with a stress point on the zipper in the upper corner, which is only made worse by the excess weight. The zipper teeth finally developed a problem with letting loose in that area, so I replaced the bag. If you dont push the limits like this, this bag should last you indefinitely. Even if you do, its still a good choice - it took 3 solid years of abuse before it started to fail. I cant decide whether to order my next bag now and mothball it, or hope they come out with a slightly larger one in the next 3 years.

Ive used many computer bags in my 20+ years as an engineer that travels to customers, business partners, standards bodies, testing labs, etc. This is the first bag that I would consider to be truly well thought-out. I have owned the bag for about 3 months and I am still discovering the usefulness of little features of this bag as I come across the need for them. The ONLY thing that I would change on this bag would be to add a tight but strong horizontal strip of fabric on the strap-side of the bag so that I can slip the handle of my roller luggage through and keep the backpack anchored to the extended handle of my roller luggage. I have a connector and detachable strap of the roller luggage. I can link the strap through the handle of this backpack but then the backpack straps drag in the snow/slush/puddles in airport parking lots. I see this as a minor drawback and nowhere near enough of a reason to choose a different backpack. Perhaps SwissGear might add this feature to the next version?

I needed to replace my old laptop backpack and noticed many colleagues using the SwissGear line. The difficulty in ordering one of these on-line is that there are a number of variations and the differences are subtle. From everything I could learn an all websites, including Amazon, there were 2 models I was interested in. the SA1923 (this one) and the SA1900. The photos are misleading. They are not necessarily unique to those specific models. I had to order both packs and compare in-hand and send the one back that I didnt fit my needs. The only difference between these 2 models, besides the color, is this one has a full width pocket for a slim folder or notebook opposite the laptop compartment in the section that opens up to lie flat on the airports scanning conveyor. The SA1900 has a compartment for an iPad in that location. All other compartments and sections of the pack are identical. The pack is roomy and can old a lot. Probably more than I really want to carry. My only complaint is I wish it had just a couple of other small zippered sections inside for small miscellaneous items often needed on business trips (e.g. medications, snacks, sunglasses or reading glasses, etc.). Also, keep in mind access to the laptop compartment is one side only (right side while wearing the pack). The zipper goes from the top of the pack down the right side only. There are other models in this line that are smaller and more simple. If the features each offer is important, just dont rely on the pictures if they seem to be the same as other models.

The reason I bought this backpack is that I wanted something that could be useful to be for many future traveling trips. We will see about this. I took it on a trip recently. The back portion worked perfectly. I have laptop on one side, tablet on the other - zipped it open to run through x-ray security, zipped it back up and went on my way. It was great! My goal was to see if I could fit a weeks worth of clothes so I wouldnt have to take a carry on suitcase. I fit a pair of jeans, 7 shirts, bed clothes, and one set of workout shorts and pants. It was super tight but all of it fit. I wanted to see if this would really work for a 3 day trip or a week vacation where Id be wearing board shorts and t-shirts everyday. It worked. I even took a light jacket, rolled it up and strapped in onto one side, water bottle on the other side. Looks like its made to last. Thumbs up here!