The Commuter Backpack has excellent materials and overall construction quality, but I ran into two major issues:

1. The laptop compartment is smaller than expected. My Dell Latitude 3510 (15”) doesn’t fit, even though the website claims it supports laptops up to 15". It would be helpful if the product page included the actual compartment dimensions to avoid confusion.

2. The combined shoulder straps are uncomfortable. The narrow section where the straps meet at the top constantly rubs against the back of my neck, making it unpleasant to wear for long periods.

Overall, the backpack feels sturdy and well-made, but it’s not as comfortable or as universal as it looks in the photos. I’d only recommend it for smaller laptops (13–14”) or light, short-duration use.

Overall a good backpack but with some flaws that make it less commuter than it could be.

The side pouches are too deep making it hard to get stuff out without taking the backpack off. A normal sized coffee cup just vanishes in them for example. That's a compromise though, and I see why they did that. Same with the hidden pockets in the outer wall of those pouches, they're good to get stuff out while you wear the backpack (like access-badges, love them for those), but only if the pouches are empty/lightly filled.

The straps seem quite easy to loosen, I regularly loosen them when I take off the backpack, forcing me to re-tighten them later. Not sure if this a design thing, or a me thing. Would either be nice if they were harder to loosen, or had some guide to make it easier to re-tighten evenly (like lines on the straps, or fix points where you can attach the ends of the straps).

All that would have been a 4 star review. The reason for the 3 start is that there is no e-reader/steamdeck pocket. A pocket you can reach while you have the backpack on the back, but still easily and securely take out a small device in a commute. Just think of standing in the subway wanting to get a book out, without taking the backpack off and then on again. Now, this was never promised before purchase, but I'm still kinda disappointed that it's not there, and/or the existing pockets don't support such access for stability and other reasons.

I guess my commute just looks slightly different than other peoples commute.

Great quality, nice design. Hope there was room in the pockets of the storage layer for stuff with more depth (e.g., a pen & paper notebook)

it’s small my laptop barely fits in.
Otherwise extremely high quality and the strap that can be buckled on your chest when the backpack is worn. Although gimmicky is insanely useful, it reduces the load on your back by about 1/3. Overall great but make sure to see if your equipment will fit in.

I've had this bag for month and brought it work often. It's my first time owning a quality bag and I immediately noticed the material that feels very solid. I enjoy a lot the fact the bottom stays in shape and always which helps a lot when unpacking at work. It has a great professional & sleek look and is very comfortable with me standing at 5"10, 190 pounds (haven't worn it for more than 10 consecutive minutes though). I also love the water bottle holders zipper storage. Never seen that before and I love to put things like my car keys and money since I feel like it's a more subtle place than the top section.

It's not a perfect bag, there are some nitpicks I have. First of all, it's smaller than I thought. I carry a TKL keyboard and notebook in the laptop section, a mouse, LTT screwdriver, 2 USB-C wires, the LTT pouch and the Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones in the admin panel and I feel like the backpack is almost full. Obviously, everyone has different use cases for a backpack but I feel like a slightly bigger backpack would be perfect. The laptop section in particular feels too narrow. I also wish the hidden storage place (where you would typically put a passport) had a bigger zipper. It's way too small and I find it too annoying to try to open/close. The handle is also too small. It's too tight to the hand when carrying it and isn't practical to put on a hanger for example.

Overall, I still love it so far though. It is a very expensive purchase as a Canadian when accounting for shipping cost so I expected a lot but I'm happy that it does the job. Hopefully it stands the test of time too!