Carrying a bag on the move

Two things change when a bag leaves the house for a journey rather than a commute: it goes through a screening line, and it spends time in crowds where you cannot see all of it. Neither is solved by a bag, and both are made easier by one.

The laptop comes out

The screening agency asks travelers to take the laptop out of the bag and put it in its own bin for X-ray, and the only bags that escape that are the cases built to open completely flat. Our work tote has a padded sleeve, not a folding case, so the machine comes out.

What helps is packing order. Put the laptop in the sleeve last so it is the first thing out, and keep the small pieces of the set zipped rather than loose: a tray of separate items takes longer to repack than a bag with three closed pouches in it. Travelers enrolled in the expedited screening programme are not asked to remove a laptop at all, and the final call at any checkpoint belongs to the officer.

What a back zip does

On the three-piece backpack set, the main zip sits on the panel that rests against your back and a flap covers it. Worn, the opening faces you and nothing else. That makes the bag slower to get into from behind than one with the zip facing outward: which is the whole of the claim, and it is a fitting rather than a guarantee.

Personal larceny, which is what pocket picking and purse snatching are called in the national victimization survey, is counted as its own category of crime and it has not been designed out of existence by any bag. What you can do is keep the outside pocket empty of anything you would mind losing, carry a crossbody in front of you rather than behind in a crowd, and take a backpack off and hold it in a queue.

A second bag you did not have to pack

The practical argument for a set on a trip has nothing to do with theft. The evening bag is in the box, it matches, and it was decided before you left. A crossbody or a wristlet that lives inside the main bag means the hotel room keeps the big one and you still have somewhere to put a phone, a card and a key.

If a figure here disagrees with a product page, the product page wins: both are built from the data behind the Soperwillton catalog.