As a man who is often on the move with a lot of gadgets, I am engaged in a never-ending hunt for plugs. Yes, plugs; often referred to as "electrical outlets," plugs are the lifeblood of this industry; laptops, cell phone, tablets, handheld gaming systems, e-readers; if I'm not at the office, I am generally packing at least three of these things at any given time, plus chargers to go with them. When I go to E3 or Gamescom and writing needs to happen fast and on the fly, fighting for a wall outlet is commonplace, and it is generally poor etiquette to take more than one plug in these situations, despite needing to charge multiple devices. What is a journalist to do?
Introducing the Mos Pack, which aims to help out the tech heavy traveler. While not a traditional power bag, which has its own power source, the Mos Pack instead has a padded place for all your gadgets and gear, and a glorified power strip with an electrical outlet, two bluetooth ports and a cord that snakes out of a zippered pocket along the bottom. At $100 dollars, this is not a cheap bag, but is it worth the price?
The Look
The look of this bag is all class. A charcoal/slate gray outside is muted and attractive, very much looking like an "adult" backpack... until you unzip the bag to reveal the bright orange interior. The bright orange actually works pretty well against the slate gray of the exterior, with a small orange logo on the lower corner of the bag really setting off the dark exterior, but it definitely isn't a "business" look. With exterior dimensions of 18 x 12 x 5 in and a weight of about 2 lb, the MOS Pack is not a big bag; more like a midsize school bag.
Comfort
This is definitely a comfortable bag. The straps use thick padding, and the same cushy padding is on the part that sits against your back as well, with sunken lines running though it for airflow so your back doesn't get all sweaty. The straps are slightly turned in for comfort, and there are even magnetized cable holders to keep your cords where you want them along the straps, which is a nice touch. Even with a 15 inch laptop, a tablet and a few other gadgets weighing the bag down, the cushy straps kept my shoulders from getting sore. Keep in mind that this isn't a big bag, so don't expect to jam all your gadgets and a week's (or weekend's) worth of clothes inside it. Once you have it loaded with your tech, there isn't a lot of room for much else.
Usability
Here's the big one; how does all this come together? The answer is pretty well. First off, the bag is absolutely jammed with sleeves, pockets, snaps and zippers. There are the main pockets inside, and then there are smaller pockets both inside and outside for myriad uses. On the exterior of the bag, there is a reinforced pocked on the top for your sunglasses, a feature I absolutely love. A lot of packs have a soft cloth pocket for my sunglasses, but there's no way I'm just chucking a pair of sunglasses in there and hoping they don't get crushed. With the reinforced pocket, I wouldn't think twice about stowing a pair of Ray Bans in there. There's also a long horizontal pocket and a vertical one with multiple stretchy loops for pens or pencil's and a waterproof water bottle holder on the side as well. The waterproof material looks secure, but I would still be a little wary of stuffing a bottle of liquid in there when I had thousands of dollars worth of electronics inside.
Inside is where the real action is. There's also a passport pocket that you can zip up, and a dedicated spot to place a spare rapid charger/battery; a pocket to keep your phone, additional loops for writing implements and cloth "tubes" that your cords run down through to the bottom of the bag. You've got a pouch for a 15 inch laptop, another for a 10 inch tablet, four places where you can clip and organize your cables, and at the bottom lies the MOS Reach, the star of the show and the whole point of the bag.
The MOS Reach (which is a fancy name for a plug) kind of "floats" in the bottom of the bag and it's basically a mini-power strip, and has one three-pronged AC port and two USB-A ports, and an AC cable that extends out a wide pocket of the bag to plug into the wall. The idea is that you can plug three things into the Reach, then unzip the horizontal pocket, pull the cord out and plug it into the wall, charging everything in the bag at once. I took this thing to a minor conference, and it was a weight off my mind to just plug into a wall and know that my tablet, laptop and phone were all charging, without fumbling around with multiple chargers and plugs. My colleagues looked at me in envy as I plugged in one plug and smugly sat back to type my article.
With that said, as a friend pointed out, “one electrical outlet and two USB outlets? Why not just go full-on power strip?" And he has a point. The MOS Reach is a fairly heavy, clunky power supply. Why not add another outlet to it? Why not four bluetooth slots? It's a nitpick, but when you are looking at this thing, it's a little strange that it only has one three prong outlet, instead of two or four. For a $100 bag, you're paying for the design and the plug, so it would have been nice to have gotten a few more outlets.
Another concern we had was the stitching and material of the inside of the bag. The outside seems well-made with quality material, but the inside has short, thin stitches that I worry won't hold up over time. The interior material itself is thin as well, and with the amount of weight the bag is by nature designed to pack may eventually be too much for the flimsy inside material.
