Thule Crossover 25L Backpack Review

Thule Crossover 25L backpack offers the excellent quality, design and workmanship seen in many of their other products. Better known for items such as roof racks and bike carriers, Thule has defiantly had a positive impact upon the laptop market with a range of backpacks, sleeves and cases.

Priced between £80-£90 in the UK this bag is defiantly classed as one of the more expensive bags available. However you should not be put off by this, with the offer of a 25 year warranty you can see that Thule themselves are very confident in the build quality of the product that they have created.

This bag comes in a choice of two different colour combinations; Black (more graphite in appearance) with aqua detailing or Blue with lime green detailing. These colour combinations make this bag stand out from others available on the market, and steer the design of this bag away from the more plain or boring designs seen in many laptop bags today. The small coloured details can be found throughout the bag from the zips, to small details on pockets inside the bag and even in small areas on the straps of the bag.

Made from water resistant dobby nylon the bag itself is very hardwearing and combined with the extremely hardwearing water resistant zips the bag provides excellent protection for electrical equipment in the rain. For further protection of those more delicate items such as sunglasses or phones Thule have also incorporated a specialist compartment. Known as a safe zone, this pocket includes a heat moulded lining specially designed to be crush proof. With a very simple yet effective security feature which allows you to lock the pocket to prevent anyone accessing it.

The overall design of the bags interior is also very good, providing separate pockets for a number of different items including laptops, tablets, pads, folders, books, stationary, hard drives, other electronic equipment or even clothes. I also found that you would be extremely surprised by the amount of equipment that can be safely and easily packed into this bag.

Whilst the specialist crush proof pocket does cause the internal pocket space to decrease, I did not find this a problem with plenty of room for all of my equipment. However Thule has also catered for those who need the extra space or do not use the safe zone pocket, with the ability to quickly and easily remove the heat moulded section from the pocket. This then increases the overall storage space within the bag and also provides another small internal pocket that can be used and accessed from the top of the bag.

The laptop pocket itself has adequate protection for most laptops and can fit up to a 15” laptop according to the manufacturers specs. I tested this with a 13” MacBook Air that is considerably thinner than the laptops that the pocket has been designed for, with no problems. The amount of protection between your back and the laptop pocket is more than adequate ensuring comfort when carrying. There is also adequate protection between the laptop pocket and the tablet pocket that are next to each other in this bag design. However the amount of padding found on the bottom of the bag that is responsible for protecting the laptop from the floor was slightly thinner than I had expected.

Overall I would recommend this bag to anyone needing to transport large amounts of equipment around on a regular basis. Whilst the price tag of this bag is high in comparison to some of the other bags with similar storage abilities on the market, you are most defiantly paying for quality, style and durability.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Hardware Item was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.