Description
The Luminary is an everyday bag intended primarily to be a small backpack for adult humans. It's designed for an evening on the town, a day spent at museums, the commute to work and back, and traveling the world: wherever you go, the Luminary has your back.
Though the design may look straightforward, its simple lines hide its subtleties. While on first blush the Luminary appears to have a single compartment, its long zipper with four sliders actually accesses the main compartment as well as two side pockets. Both side pockets are sized generously to fit most smart phones and even the iPhone Plus or the HTC U Ultra: you can carry your phone in one and your wallet/keys/personal minutiae in the other. One side pocket is a bit taller than the other, allowing it to accommodate bigger phones/phablets; this makes the main opening a bit asymmetrical, but that’s OK, we promise. The side pocket zippers now close to the top (rather than to the bottom, as did the original Luminary); the juncture where the zipper goes from main compartment to side pocket closure now features a small fabric “garage” to better seal contents from the weather. Both side pockets have O-rings so you can tether keys, multi-tools, Organizer Pouches, whatever.
Handy too is the largely inconspicuous zippered padded back pocket that is sized to fit a tablet or small laptop (see below). Your device is protected by the 1/4” / 6mm foam back padding, yet is easy to access via the exterior, vertical zipper. Inside the main compartment is a zip-away stretch mesh water bottle pocket/divider: when zipped into place, the divider creates three vertical spaces to help you organize your gear and control the load. If that’s not your idea of a good time, leave the divider unzipped and push it out of the way. A small (read: very small) pocket inside the main front panel has been added by popular demand: Nik’s Minimalist Wallet, tiny notebook, pen, lip balm, not more.
The shoulder straps are gracefully curved and feature soft knit edges and undersides; they are padded with 5/16” / 8mm thick EV50 closed-cell foam. They may be the most comfortable shoulder straps ever. The top handle/grab loop is our new soft handle webbing: easy on the digits but isn’t padded and bulky. A 3/4” / 20mm sternum strap and 1” / 25mm waist strap are there if you want them and easily removed if you don’t.
We’ve opted to make the exterior back panel from the same fabric as the rest of the bag. Some users may find it not as cool as our spacer mesh back panels, but as we did not intend this bag for serious aerobic activities, we chose instead to keep the aesthetic simple and the design elegant.
Stuff that's good to know:
Some folks are inclined to wear smaller backpacks low on the back by adjusting the shoulder straps to their maximum length. We don't recommend wearing the Luminary this way. Why? The shoulder straps of the Luminary are designed to conform to one's neck and shoulders when it’s worn relatively high on the back, y'know, like a proper backpack. If you let out the straps and wear your Luminary low on your back, the padded portion of the straps won’t be adequately long, and the adjusting buckles will likely poke you in the wrong place. Additionally, the curve of the strap won’t ride correctly over your shoulder and the straps may tend to splay widely apart: you might think that the sternum strap will fix this, but the sternum strap will likely be too high on the strap to sit anywhere near your sternum.
The Luminary 15 is designed to carry a device about the size of the 13” MacBook Pro or 13” Air, though you may find you’ll need to do a two-point turn to get either in position (note: that’s without any protective sleeve – add a sleeve and these laptops will not fit). Slightly larger laptops in their respective Cache sleeves (or other minimalist sleeve/case) will fit loose in the main compartment of the Luminary (note that the bag itself does not have rail loops for the Cache). How about a 15” MacBook Pro? Pfft – no way.
