WaterField bags Cozmo Review
Highs: Touch construction; comes in three sizes; lightweight
Lows: No padded compartments for tech items
The Waterfield bags Cozmo bag can carry your laptop and a whole lot more. Give your laptop some love.
Summary
Waterfield Bags (made in San Francisco) is very well known for their high quality, durable and stylish messenger bags, laptop bags and sleeves, camera cases, iPod cases, ad infinitum. There are plenty of messenger/attache bags on the market – they’re everywhere – and this forces manufacturers like SF bags to compete for your hard-earned dollars by producing the best possible bags with the greatest combination of style, durability, function and affordability.
The Cozmo is constructed mostly of super-tough black nylon, but its accent colors vary. SF Bags offers the Cozmo with white, red, blue, grey and stone (tan) stitched herringbone-like pattern. It also comes in a full-black version, a pink leather trimmed version and one with black leather accents. They’re all very stylish – upper class hip.
The Cozmo bag has plenty of room for carrying your tech goods and a whole lot more. On the left face of the bag, there’s a large pouch with an 11" opening. It’s big enough to fit a small laptop, although there’s no padding in this compartment. On the inside of the bag, there’s a huge velcro-fastened slip for largelaptops. It’ll easily fit a 17" MacBook Pro or similar sized laptop.
Image Courtesy of Waterfield Bags
The main storage compartment is huge. You can fit books, hard drives, a lunch box, even clothes for an overnight trip. It’s big enough to fit two or three shoe boxes. The inside compartment has a softer, colored nylon lining to help prevent scratches on items you may place inside. It isn’t lined with microfiber or fleece like some bags, so there’s a slight potential for hairline scratching of softer metals. To prevent this, get soft sleeves for fragile goods.
There are two more fist-sized pouches on the inside of the Cozmo bag. Behind these pouches are two smaller slips for pens and business cards. The left face of the bag has a zippered compartment for pens, cables, etc., and an unzippered pouch for miscellanea.
The nylon handles have leather accents. The shoulder strap is strong, adjustable and has a nice soft rubberized pad to prevent sore shoulders. The bottom of the Cozmo bag is very rigid, which means that it won’t get squashed easily if pressed up against other bags. This will help protect anything inside. Granted, there’s no real "padding" inside like with some of the Logitech bags, but SF Bags makes it clear that you should use padded sleeves for laptops, etc.
The Cozmo bag comes in three sizes – large (16" x 12" x 5"), medium (15" x 11" x 4.5") and small (14" x 10" x 4"). The three sizes are fairly close in dimensions, but every inch counts when considering a bag for carrying tech goods. The large sells for $169 USD, the medium costs $159 USD and the small goes for $149 USD.
Image Courtesy of Waterfield Bags
Conclusion
An anecdotal reference to the size and storage capacity of the Waterfield Cozmo bags: I had to take the Gateway One computer on the road with me recently. I didn’t want to use the massive box that Gateway shipped it in, so I tried slipping it into the Cozmo. Lo and behold, it fit! A full all-in-one computer with 19" screen fit into my Cozmo messenger bag. Keyboard, mouse and power supply, too! This isn’t the intended use, for sure, but it just shows how much you can fit into a Cozmo bag without stressing it out.
Pros:
• Tough construction
• Three sizes available
• Handles and shoulder strap
• Fits tons of stuff
• Surprisingly lightweight
Cons:
• No padded compartments for tech items
