It was around this time last year that I fell in love with the ECBC Hercules backpack a versatile laptop pack with more than enough room for all my stuff. Still, with its zip-apart, TSA-compliant laptop compartment and spacious interior, it sometimes felt like a little too much bag for my daily commute.
Enter the ECBC Poseidon messenger bag.
Though sporting the same sturdy Kondra nylon construction and water-resistant exterior zipper, the Poseidon offers all of the visual flare and long-lasting durability of the Hercules at about a third of the overall size. Built for 13″ and smaller laptops, it boasts ECBC’s own foam spacer that Velcros into the laptop slot and makes my 11″ MacBook Air fit perfectly.
Opposite that divider sits a secondary compartment perfectly sized for a 9″ tablet – it’s where my new Kindle Fire HDX lives – and a large document pocket joined by a pair of mesh catch-alls. With the front flap up, the bag offers a myriad of storage for pens, pads and ID cards, not to mention a handy key fob connector and another zipper-secured document pocket.
The flap itself closes securely with both sizable Velcro connectors and a pair of plastic pull clips, always assuring that what you put in the bag stays in the bag, even when madly dashing across the parking lot to make that meeting. Its foam-padded handle is great for hanging the Poseidon from men’s room utility hooks (or the occasional doorknob), and an easily adjustable shoulder strap combines ample padding and a rubberized anti-slip coating to keep it comfortably, securely on your shoulder.
The red ECBC branding, a smart design aesthetic that’s mirrored in its contrast stitching, makes the bag pop in any color, as do more functional elements like the breathable exterior padding that cleverly conceals the Poseidon’s trolley handle pass-through. Beautiful and functional, this messenger bag truly satisfies, eliciting only a few minor gripes from me, a self-professed tech accessory aficionado.
The bag’s side pockets – one zippered and the other a thin mesh for water bottle storage – are quite tiny, as is the front pocket, which seems designed to hold merely a cell phone and a few flat items like tickets or a passport. Even these shortcomings, though, are acceptable given the Poseidon’s otherwise impeccable maximization of space within such a small footprint. And while I’ve relegated those side pockets to tiny incidentals like USB drives, ChapStick and occasionally change for the vending machine, I was easily able to convert that front pocket into ample usable space with the help of my trusty GRID-IT! organizer from Cocoon.
With a sharp design that looks great and promises to last, the ECBC Poseidon is the perfect laptop bag for those of us who like to travel light. While I’d easily recommend one of their larger bags (featuring the timesaving FastPass System) for air travel, the Poseidon is ideal for the day-to-day travel of techies, office drones and other commuters.
Review and promotional materials provided by: ECBC
