I had been looking around for a small sized backpack that I could use as my day-to-day bag for college when I came across the Covert. It seemed to be what I was after, though there was not quite the level of detail I wanted to confirm that it could actually hold the bare essentials I needed. Seeing as it was in many ways the best, I took the plunge and ordered it several months ago. I will first say what I was hoping someone would mention: Yes, this backpack can hold a decent amount of notebooks and files, as well as a thin laptop (think Macbook air or ultrabook thickness). The pictures do it more justice than I can write here. The photos show the bag as fully loaded as I can, without it bulging awkwardly out. It has four Moleskine Cahier X-Large notebooks, a softcover 400 page textbook (thin pages), a Mead plastic file with around 80 pages of an engineering pad, an iPad mini, standard pens and calculator etc, and a Macbook Air. One of the images shows the bag with the aforementioned items, but placed inside a Northface Jester II backpack, to illustrate the massive size difference. It can comfortably hold around 5 thin notebooks as a maximum, with a Macbook Air in the sleeve. For another reference, without a laptop, I managed to fit a three semester calculus book and its softcover solution manual within the pack, which pushed it to its extreme holding capacity. If you are inclined to carry any more than a single textbook, or more than a few notebooks or files, this might not be the best pack, but if most of your work is done on a (thin) laptop, with maybe some files and notebooks for class notes, this is the perfect lightweight backpack. Also, note that the bag is very rectangular, so anything that is not will fit poorly. Sweatshirts, lunch bags, and so on are not really something you can use with this, unless they are the only thing you put in it. This is also a poor fit if you'd like to carry mass market paperbacks around (due to the thickness constraint). I have been using it almost daily both for class, and now for an internship, and it has held up without any visible wear. It is apparent that Ogio cheaped out on the zipper pulls, making them out of plastic that would definitely break if you yanked on them, but as long as you are conscious of their fallibility they should hold up. I have not had any issues with them so far. For the select few who can rely more on digital than paper, but still need to takes notes and have some scratch paper, I would highly recommend this backpack.
