I've seen and used a number of laptop cases and bags over the years, but it is so often the case that there's a compromise somewhere along the line, either in terms of price, quality or features. It's always welcome when a case seems to find the sweet spot in terms the right levels of compromise. Could this CG Pro-Case be the one I've been looking for?

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Design

There's no question about the target audience for the CG Pro-Case, it's clearly aimed at business customers. At first glance you see the brown and black leather look (it's not real leather) with a substantial carry handle, comfortable shoulder strap and pockets and pouches aplenty. Just holding the bag you feel like it should cost more than the £19.95 on the price tag. You'd think that with this air of quality on the outside the interior would be a disappointment. Surprisingly, you'd be wrong.

The bag has no fewer than five external pouches. These consist of two full size ones, one just below full size at the front, and two smaller ones to the front and rear. Inside the first of the full size pouches there's a seperate laptop compartment with velcro strap, an area for documents and a couple of CD pockets. The other full size pouch consists of two large document bays with a divider between them. There's plenty of space inside these two main compartments alone for this bag to perform as your mobile office.

Moving towards the front and the larger of the two pouches is filled with card holders, pockets and bays to hold everything from wallets to phones and the main central area will comfortably hold your chargers and cables you may require. The frontmost (and smaller) pouch is the only one to not be fastened by a zip, instead opting for a foldover lip fastened by magnetic clasps. There's nothing too fancy here, it literally is just one pouch but of a decent enough size to be of use.

At the rear, there is a similar sized pouch that is also zip fastened. With so many pouches in this bag, I quickly found I'd run out of things to put in each one. This is always encouraging as it leaves the feeling that there's plenty of room to expand. In fact talking of expansion, if the larger pouches aren't quite enough for a lot of papers, there's even an expansion zip to give you extra compartment space. The designers really have covered just about every possible use here.

All of the zips are sturdy and feel like they could give you years of use without ever seizing up. This only adds to the confidence in this bag being a hardy companion for the mobile office warrior.

Testing

As you may have already gathered from above, I've pretty much filled this bag right up and still ran out of ideas of what to put inside. Under load it still feels sturdy and the padding around the laptop bay is sufficient to protect your computer. It's not thick padding per se, but as the laptop compartment is in the middle of the bag, there is ample protection. I've tested with a 13 inch MacBook, slightly smaller than the intended size, but you can go all the way up to 15.6 inch laptops. This pretty much covers a large chunk of the laptop market. In fact through testing there really was only one factor I found limiting and that was how much weight I was prepared to carry around with me, a testament to the storage space on offer.

Final thoughts

This is a well designed laptop case, of that there really is no question. It's well built and should last a while. If I had one thing I might like to see added, it would be a flap to cover the zips on all the pouches to provide full rain protection. That, however, really is being picky. If you take this bag for what it is, well designed, plenty of internal space, classy executive looks and bargain price, it's very hard to find anything not to like. Simply put, if you need an all day laptop bag, this has to make your short list.

Final score 9.5/10