Back in January I bought a new backpack and it was a long overdue purchase because my old backpack was literally falling apart after about 10 years of hard use. My old backpack was an Oakley model that I bought in San Diego and it served me well over the years, but it wasn’t exactly state of the art. After a lot of research, looking at backpacks from a variety of different companies I finally settled on buying a Synapse 25 from the Seattle based Tom Bihn company.
Last year I purchased a Ristretto Laptop bag from Tom Bihn and I was really impressed by how sturdy and well designed the bag was. That made me lean toward buying another Tom Bihn product, but I did seriously consider a number of other high end backpacks before pulling the trigger on the Synapse 25. After having used the Synapse 25 on a nearly daily basis since I received it in late January I can unequivocally say that I am very happy with my decision. Once you use it for a few weeks you really appreciate how well designed the Synapse 25 is. The pack has 5 external pockets and those are extremely useful. The main compartment is spacious and the overall capacity of the backpack is 25 Liters.
You can’t go to a store and buy Tom Bihn products. You have to order Tom Bihn products straight from the factory via the company website. This backpack does not have a bombproof laptop compartment and some might consider that a drawback. No big deal to me. I store my MacBook Air in a sleeve anyway. Tom Bihn also sells sleeves for laptops and a variety of other accessories right on the website. You can also select from a wide variety of exterior and interior colors for the backpack. The model I purchased is Black Halcyon/Iberian
I highly recommend this backpack. At $200.00, it is at the upper end of the price scale for a backpack of this size, but I think it is well worth it because it is so well made that I anticipate that I will get many years of use out of it. I also love the fact that it is an American made product.
Here are the Spec’s:
| Dimensions: 20″ x 13.4″ x 9″ / 508 x 340 x 230 mm |
| Weight: 400d Halcyon  /420d nylon ripstop: 1 lb 11 oz / 770 grams1000 denier Cordura : 1 lb 13 oz / 820 grams |
| Volume: 1526 cubic inches / 25 liters (ASTM Standard Measure) |
| Removable 1″ / 25 mm waist strap included |
| .375″ / 10 mm padded and contoured backpack straps with .75″ / 20 mm removable sternum strap |
| Total O-rings: 9 (2 in the main compartment; 1 in the top center pocket, 1 in the small center pocket, 3 in the bottom front pocket; 1 in the left side pocket; 1 in the right side pocket) |
gmf journal 