Gear: Air Boss by Red Oxx

UPDATE! 13 Feb 2011 -- I have just posted my full, final (and much shorter) review of the Air Boss.

In mid-November I purchased for myself a new piece of hand luggage, the "Air Boss" by Red Oxx ($225).  This was to replace a standard black rolling suitcase (by Samsonite) I've had since 1999.  Normal wear and tear across continents and years have done their thing -- the extending metal arms are now lubricated with 10W40, one of the leather(-ish) handles has come almost completely undone, and zipper into the main compartment is now secured with a safety pin.  It's had a good run, and with a bit of care will probably serve me another five years or so.  The coup de grâce, however, is that airline requirements have changed; the old bag is now too long by 2 inches to carry on.

Enter the Air Boss.

Its official dimensions are 21" x 8" x 13", with a capacity of 2,184 cubic inches.  It is just about exactly as small as my wife's quite diminutive rollie by Eminent (the particular product apparently being discontinued).  Despite being much smaller, it has about the same practical capacity as my old rollie (see Fig. 2 after the jump).

For my money, it is the single best piece of gear I have stumbled upon.  It is a hard-working, thoroughly rugged bag, great fun to have at one's side, and as nearly flawless as I can imagine for doing what it was designed to do (to wit: travelling efficiently).

Fig 1.:  The Air Boss, Cthulhu & ruler for scale, T-shirt for colour match.

The Hudson Bay Start

"It just goes to prove a point that once a traveler leaves his home he loses almost 100% of his ability to control his environment." -- Special Agent Dale Cooper, Twin Peaks

While researching the Air Boss before I ponied up, I found that a lot of other people had the same unanswered question I had:  What is the Air Boss like to use on an ordinary trip?  There is a very helpful set of images on by Jason_Helmet on Flickr (not available for direct linking), but you don't entirely get the sense of what it's like to live with the thing.

 

With my brand new gear in hand, I decided to use our Thanksgiving road trip as a chance to test out my gear with a kind of Hudson's Bay Start -- I packed as if I were going to India for a month and then went on a relatively short jaunt for a couple days to visit friends in Colorado.  The advantage of the Hudson's Bay Start is that it gives a fairly accurate idea of how the gear performs on the other end -- riding in cars, unpacking, repacking and generally depending on it for everything.

Fits very smoothly behind the driver's seat.

A great traveller has the ability to travel lightly and be flexible to the vicissitudes of his journey.  The Air Boss requires these virtues and teaches them quite readily.

In just a few days, I could see that it was going to challenge a lot of my old (bad) habits.  I'm used to being able to throw whatever clothes, books, electronics, and assorted nonsense into my rollie, without a second thought, folded or unfolded.  I will admit that I have on occasion been so rushed, stressed, or lazy that I didn't bother to fold anything.

The Air Boss simply will not allow this.  It was designed with the advice of Doug Dyment at OneBag.com, and the theory behind how to pack it comes from him*.

The Air Boss has only two shallow (<2") compartments on either side, which secure clothes with straps.  This is probably the second biggest obstacle Red Oxx have in getting people to like this bag (first being the lack of wheels).  

The first challenge these thin compartments create is that the sides really don't have enough room to just throw things in.  You must carefully consider what you're going to take, and how you're going to pack it.  You either pack it the way you're supposed to, or not having enough to wear, you'll end up buying more clothes at your destination (thus creating problems with bringing everything home).

The second effect (not so much of a challenge) is that while you are living out of it, you can't just leave it open like a dresser drawer.  Because it opens on three sides, it prevents you from throwing it down, rummaging around in it and forgetting about it.  In less than a day, it had me thinking Maybe next time I go on a trip, I'll hang all my clothes up on hangers when I get there.

Say WHAT now?

The Good News

The Air Boss is much easier to pack than a regular suitcase.  The requisite skill set for packing consists of laying clothes flat on a bed.  That's it.  (Both OneBag and Red Oxx [pdf] have diagrams if you want specifics.

Getting ready to come home, I folded my clothes and put everything back in 20 minutes, including 5 minutes I spent looking at a catalogue for more gear.

The Air Boss means liberation for the adventuresome man of the 21st Century:  never again will your daring James Bond in waiting be forced to fold a dress shirt properly.  Tomorrow's photo safari Hemingways will have no fear from crumpled khaki.

Bright red insides aid spotting anything not bright red.  E.g., an English penny.

 Red Oxx's claim that your shirts will come out of the bag as fresh and wrinkle-free as they were when you put them in overstates the case.  Still, they're still good enough to wear after 24 hours in the bag.  They do wrinkle a bit along what one of my friends called "the boob line", so for professional or formal dress, a bit of light ironing will be required.

Despite it being unorthodox and idiosyncratic, I'm pretty happy with this new system.  It cannot be overstated:  you would have to be in a natural disaster, combat zone, or pretty drunk to mess up packing the Air Boss.

The Central Compartment 

One idea I thought of, which I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else, is that because the centre compartment unzips all the way round, you can lay the inner walls flat on the bed and pack/unpack both outer compartments at the same time.

On the other hand, everything pretty much goes in there and falls into a lightly organized mess.  No matter what you want, it's under something else.  Many of the reviews I read prior to buying the bag suggested something be done about it -- a little mesh pocket, a key fob, a pen holder, anything.

The good:  my camera, netbook, and the four books I took all fit quite nicely, and remained available at all times.  This was my first trip in years, maybe ever, that I skipped taking a backpack.

The bad:  Anything small or slim I put in there fell to the bottom and disappeared - pen, plasters, medicine, headlamp.

The ugly:  It's like throwing everything into a grocery bag.  I like the fact that it has enough capacity to replace a larger bag and my backpack, but you give up all the organization a backpack affords.

More Compartments?

Despite all this, I don't want more pockets in the centre.  I am positively opposed to them.  One of the key virtues of the Air Boss is its simplicity.  The urge to compartmentalize, gadget-enhance, and overthink the bag leads it down a path I do not like.

Out of the last five backpacks I've owned, only one had a mobile phone holder that actually fit my mobile phone.  Pockets are always slightly too large or small, slightly out of place, intended for things I don't own, or not intended for the things I do.  I have always been able to make do with a good bag lacking a pocket I may have wanted; by the same token, I've avoided buying gear that had too many pockets of the wrong type.

The basic problem is that by adding even one pen holder, you are treading a path toward madness.  It suggests an impulse to bloat, gearify and gadgetize, to throw more unnecessary stuff in as long as there's room.

I prefer to look on it as a challenge.  I will take less "stuff".  I will try to organize and inhabit the room I stay in, rather than leave an open suitcase and random items scattered everywhere.  As long as I'm hanging up clothes on hangers, I'll put books on the nightstand, set up a desk for my computer, and put my toiletries in my shaving kit in the bathroom.

--Which reminds me.  I've never been able to take my shaving kit anywhere, because my old suitcase had a pocket for my shaving kit that was too small for my shaving kit.  The same kit that fits perfectly in the pocket-free Air Boss.

Going Wheelless

Old habits die hard.  If you're using a standard black rollie bag like I'm used to, it will be a definite change.  I have a very fond memory of wandering around Paris, suitcase in tow.  I had several hours between checking out of my hotel and my afternoon flight, so I just took a walk.  Me, my backpack, my wheel bag.  I must've gone miles.

Contrariwise, the Air Boss kind of assumes you know where the hell you're going.

The weight itself is not an issue; I packed everything at about 9-10 kg (19-22 lbs).  I've got good upper body strength and I'm not worried about that in itself.  But I can't carry that weight forever.  I consider it inevitable that I will get tired and want to sit down for a bit long before my Beloved Wife with her little black rollie bag.  The endless corridors of O'Hare and Minneapolis come to mind.

In the end, I consider that to be a reasonable trade-off with A) one less thing to fail on the bag and B) the bag itself weighing almost nothing.  It feels like having a heavy backpack slung off one shoulder, and so far seems just as easy to control.  And where I find wheeled bags to be at their worst -- crammed into no space with 200 other people and their wheeled bags trying to get off a plane and not get the damned thing stuck -- or on planes small enough to board by staircase -- I think the Air Boss will come into its own as manoeuvrable and, overall, faster and lighter.

Fig. 2: Air Boss rests on end with companions.

I should also mention that the Claw shoulder strap is no lie.  Not only does it not slip like every other shoulder strap I've seen, it also doesn't hang snugly like a backpack strap.  No sir.  They call them claw straps because it feels like it is actually holding on to you.  Twice I've almost lost my balance putting the bag down because I forgot and the strap took my arm with it.

The Upshot

The Air Boss is rugged, well-made gear.  Every component feels tougher and stronger than almost any other luggage I've seen.  It almost feels like an armoured parka for your belongings.  As soon as I opened the box and had a look at it, I could see that will easily outlast the 11 years my old suitcase has done.

It is a fine piece of equipment that inspires the possessor to imagine magnificent adventures anywhere; it is something I will be pleased to take with me anywhere in the world.  I am completely confident in it, and look forward to putting it to the test later this week.

To India!

* Mr Dyment says he gets no kickbacks for sales of the Air Boss (and I sure as hell don't for reviewing it).  I did hear about the Air Boss through his site, and contemplated buying one, before I realized he'd helped designed it.  Mostly that was because I've followed his OneBag packing list on past trips and have been quite pleased with the results.