| LEVEL8 Products Macbook Air Sleeve |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Notebook | Compact PC | |||||||||||||||||
| Written by David Ramsey | |||||||||||||||||
| Thursday, 26 May 2011 | |||||||||||||||||
LEVEL8 Products MacBook Air Sleeve Review
Manufacturer: LEVEL8 Products Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by LEVEL8 Products. If you've read my Hackintosh article, you alreadt know I'm a Mac guy at heart, and so my laptop is of course a MacBook: to be precise, it's the latest-generation MacBook Air 13". With 4G of RAM and a 256G SSD, it's plenty fast enough for non-development work, and it has enough extra horsepower to run Windows 7 in a 2GB virtual machine should I need it. I carry this computer everywhere I go. For the past couple of years I've used generic laptop sleeves I bought at the Apple store. These were all reasonably serviceable products, simple in design and construction: two slices of closed-cell polyurethane foam with fabric stitched around them, basically. The felt thin, but with these sleeves you trade off some protection and carrying capability for a smaller case. And let's face it: none of us MacBook Air owners want to carry our supernaturally sleek andelegant machines in some giant clunky case.
When LEVEL8 originally offered this product for our evaluation, I wasn't that interested: how much innovation could a company bring to such a simple product? More than I expected, as it turns out. The 8 Points of Precise Protection
Features list provided by LEVEL8 Products. Closer Look: LEVEL8 MacBook Air SleeveThe LEVEL8 sleeve initially looks like a generic black laptop sleeve. But it's not: the first thing you'll notice is the outer zippered pocket. Granted, a sleeve is rarely carried separately, generally being relegated to protecting your laptop while it's inside some other piece of luggage. But for some reason most sleeve vendors seem to think you'll never want to carry your laptop's charger or other items with the computer. And the combination of this case and a MacBook Air is so light that even without a separate handle, it's easy to carry with one hand.
The next thing you'll notice is the interior. Those odd-looking bumps serve as a "suspension system" to provide extra protection in case of impacts. Pressing on them with a finger reveals that they're firm and springy.
Seen edge-on, the sleeve doesn't appear much thicker than the MacBook Air.
And it's pretty much the same size...perhaps 1/2" longer and wider than the 13" MacBook Air.
Nestled inside, the Air is safe and cozy. With the computer inside, the total thickness of the sleeve is about 1.25". LEVEL8 says that this sleeve can accommodate a MacBook Air even when it's got one of those weird hard-shell protectors on it.
I'll present my conclusions on the LEVEL8 Products sleeve in the next section. MacBook Air Sleeve Final ThoughtsAs I mentioned at the beginning of this review, laptop cases and sleeves aren't as interesting to write and read about as processors, motherboards, video cards, and other hardware. But if you have a laptop, you need some sort of protection if you're going to carry it around. I thought that there was little any company could do to distinguish a laptop sleeve from any other, aside from making it from exotic materials like fine leathers or carbon fiber. I was pleasantly surprised with the LEVEL8 sleeve. The inclusion of a zippered exterior pocket might seem obvious, but hardly any other sleeves do this (none that I can think of right offhand). And while I didn't perform any drop tests, the unique internal suspension system seems as though it would provide an extra level of protection. When comparing the "feel" of the MacBook Air in the LEVEL8 case with the same computer in the generic sleeve I was using previously, the LEVEL8 product felt signficantly sturdier and more secure, albeit at the expense of about 1/3" in thickness. Looking at things like the quality of the seams and stitching, it's obviously a higher-quality case than the generic sleeve.
LEVEL8 Sleeve ConclusionA sleeve's use is different from that of a standard computer case: you carry the latter as a separate item, but sleeves usually are carried inside another piece of luggage. This is why sleeves typically lack handles, extra pockets, and other things like that: if they had them, they'd be cases and not sleeves. Still, it's possible to innovate within these constraints, and LEVEL8 has done so with their sleeve. With high-quality construction, a unique internal padding design, and the addition of an external zippered pocket, they've increased the appeal and functionality of a standard sleeve for a price increment of about $10. I paid $39.95 for my generic sleeve and thought it overpriced at the time; in contrast, $50 for the LEVEL8 sleeve seems quite reasonable. If you have a 13" MacBook Air, or perhaps a Dell Adamo, this is probably about the best sleeve you can get for it. If you have a regular laptop computer, based on what I've seen with this product, I'd recommend looking at some of LEVEL8's other case offerings. The performance of this sleeve would probably be pretty good, judging from the feel. As I mentioned, I didn't conduct any drop tests! The appearance is fairly bland: a plain black nylon exterior with only a couple of seams, the zipper pocket, and the LEVEL8 badge for visual appeal. The construction quality was excellent: all seams were even, there were no loose threads, and even the zipper pulls seem larger and more robust than normal. Functionally, this sleeve raises the bar with its integrated zipper pocket and internal suspension system. Value is a little harder to assess. Once you hit the $50 barrier, you've typically left the realm of "sleeves" and moved into "cases", which, while larger, carry more and have more features. Still, this is only $10-$15 more than the most other sleeves. If you want to go with a sleeve, this is about the best you can get. Pros:
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