I just want to say upfront that I am a super macho guy. I have a moustache, I arm-wrestle bears and I can yodel to a semi-professional level. Why am I telling you this? Well I wanted to make sure you knew that I was comfortable enough with my rugged manliness to review the latest lime green man-bag from be.ez.

Now that my position as heterosexual dynamo has been firmly established I can tell you that I rather like this bag.  It is not a bag for long term travelling, unless you travel naked with just an iPad, but it is ever so useful if you do most of your work on a small laptop or netbook (or I guess iPad, if that is possible) and spend a lot of time on trains.

I’ve been using the Le Rush (Le presumably “Se Dépêcher” wasn’t available?) for about a month now so I’m pretty comfortable with it. It forces me not to carry around mounds of crap; old print outs, that book I was probably going to read, fourteen “time saving” gizmos that slow me down, a set of pens/pencils and accoutrements and emergency cat treats for those times when I’ve totally forgotten to feed Sputnik. So I feel like I’m working efficiently.

The bag is tough and sort of water retardant (i.e. if it’s raining your stuff doesn’t get soaked immediately, but if you drop it in the bath then you are going to need all new things) it is also very well made with all the seams, zips and stitching remaining in place even after you try and stuff far, far to much into it. The padding is a bit lurid in colour but it does do a good job of keeping all your electronic junk protected from all the scratchy gubbins that one just accumulates. The strap is basically a seatbelt so it is ok with taking the strain even if you have one of those gold-plated iPads but it doesn’t have any kind of fixing pad so it will slip of your shoulder .

There is the downside that if you have to take something like an A4 pad with you anywhere then you’re bang out of luck as this bag will only carry A5 pads (and only then if you are ok with leaving 50% of your other stuff behind) but who seriously uses paper nowadays? Oh right, everyone… well you can always take it in a Tesco’s bag or something I suppose. There is also the fact that because of the design of the strap it ends up dangling under your arm rather than on your back which means you spend quite a lot of time putting it back where it should be so you don’t look like you have got a green handbag.

Conclusion

Ultimately I like this bag. I like the dinky “only-fits-the-essentials-in” size and the fact that I can sling it into the passenger side of a car and not worry massively about destroying my netbook. I don’t like the fact that it is like a handbag but I’m willing to overlook it. If you want a small bag for visiting clients then at about £35 you can’t go far wrong with this little robust number.

In brief

On the plus side…

  • Compact but well organised
  • Looks nice
  • Has lots of pockets, so if you have OCD issues, you’re still ok
  • The size means it is eminently portable
  • Well made
  • Tough and padded for those general incompetencies

However…

  • It’s basically a handbag
  • The strap means that even if you put it over your head, courier style, it invariably slips back to under one arm so it often looks like a handbag
  • Your stuff has to be all booklet shaped, the bag won’t fit stuff that is more than about an inch wide in any of the pockets
  • No handle, only a strap so you have to have it over your shoulder