The Checkthrough Brief (continued)

Figure 9: The nickel-finished metal hardware looks great, and would doubtless stand up to some serious wear and tear over time.

Figure 10: The strap is comfortable, but it's nothing special. On a bag that's $139.95 USD, it would have been nice to see a Skooba Superbungee strap (which is truly a great strap).

Figure 11: The Checkthrough logo indicating that this bag is designed to make security screening easier.

Figure 12: This is how the bag looks when you lay it on the security conveyor belt. There's a piece of black fabric stitched into the bag with green text - you can see it on the far right in the above photo - that explains that this is a bag designed to go through security with the laptop left inside the case.

So the real question is, does this bag work? Does it speed up the process of going through airport security? My answer is "sort of". When I went through airport security in Calgary, I unzipped the bag and left my laptop in the compartment. As I was moving toward the security agent, he said "Please remove your laptop from your laptop bag." I smiled and said "Sure", but as I unpacked it, I explained that this bag was designed to go through airport security screenings with the laptop inside it. He hunched over and read the text on the black piece of fabric, and said he'd never heard of such a thing, but that it sounded like a great idea.

On my way back to Calgary, going through airport security in Seattle, I once again left the laptop in the bag, and opened the bag with the laptop facing up. It went through security without a problem, and nary a comment from the agent. Calgary is a city of more than a million people, so it's not like it's a hick town - my hope is that as more travelers use checkpoint-friendly bags, it will raise the awareness of security agents around the world, and these bags will be able to operate as they were designed: to lessen the hassle of unpacking and re-packing your laptop.

Even with the 50/50 success rate of my first effort - and my first trip of 2010 had me carrying no laptop bag at all - the Checkthrough Brief made for an excellent travel companion and is a product I'd recommend highly to anyone who travels with a laptop. If you don't need all that space in the middle, however, the Checkthrough Messenger might be a better choice as it's lighter, smaller, an less expensive.

If you want to save 20% off any order of $50 or more, use the coupon code DIGIDEAL.

Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys photography, mobile devices, blogging, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, his son Logan, and his sometimes obedient dog. He hopes his next trip was better than his last one.

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