Okay so first and foremost, the massage feature is a gimmick. YES, it’s fascinating. YES, it’s unique (it’s what drew me to this bag). YES, it feels great when you first use it. But the novelty fades quickly. It doesn’t do anything to actually improve your condition. In fact, after a few minutes, it becomes a kind of an annoyance. And actually starts feeling uncomfortable. So after the initial excitement has worn off, you’ll find that you prefer to not use this feature.
Second, from a design perspective, this is a really unique bag. It comes with all these inner smaller pouches which can be useful, but not always. So what ends up happening is that I’m stuck with them. They take up a BUNCH of space inside the bag, also there’s a permanent rain cover pouch that takes up two fistfuls of space (they should have designed to put this on the OUTSIDE of the bag — after all, if it rains suddenly, am I gonna go scrounging inside the bag for the rain cover!?). The cloth pouch is nice, came in handy, specially because it’s stretchy, but I have real mixed feelings about the laptop pouch. I would have preferred a normal laptop pouch — this one takes up SO MUCH SPACE that you’ll be surprised as to how quickly you run out of “40 Litres” (which makes me wonder how exactly do they calculate this number? I can bet my ass 40 litres ain’t gonna fit in here).
That being said, I’m not saying this is a bad bag. It’s strong, reliable. Looks decently cool. It’s just that… it is more of a gimmick than a functional product. I think it genuinely COULD have been a great bag, had they focused more on “how to make it more useful” than “how to give it more features”. See the most important function of a “BAG” is storage and convenience… in those regards this “FORTY LITRE” bagpack starts lacking big-time. If they wanted to give so many mini-pouches inside then they should have made the overall material more stretchy so I could truly stuff things in… but it’s just pretty rigid beyond a point… and the lower side is really small…
I mean it’s a decent bag… but it could have been better. Specially for that hefty price.
