What’s in my Tech Bag, 2023
The Bag – a TimBuk2 Authority that I’ve had for a number of years. Holds the laptop and iPad well and has enough room to stuff whatever else I need to carry for a day trip. I can even stick a camera in it if I don’t want to haul a full camera bag.
The bag itself isn’t heavily loaded, although I do tend to make it the place I stick stuff where I need a bit of room, and it usually carries the non-taking-image parts of my camera setup, which I’ll cover separately. It’s mostly the key pieces needed to keep the tech gear going and space I can use as a catch-all.
The gear: M2 Macbook Pro 14” and a 5th Generation iPad Air.
The iPad is my content consumption device and I love it for that. If I’m going to be doing any writing or photography, I’ll bring the Mac because I simply have never gotten comfortable writing on an iPad. If I’m not going to do that, I will leave the Mac home.
Charging station
In looking for a charger for the MacBook 14” that wasn’t a wall wart, I ran into an interesting tool from Anker, the Anker Nano Charging Station. It is a low-profile brick on the end of a fixed 5’ cord that includes two AC outlets, 2 USB C ports and 2 USB A ports. The unit can dole out up to 67 watts of charging power to those four ports, which can recharge the laptop quickly (under 2 hours). It does not quite keep up with keeping the laptop charged when at full power (i.e. “running Baldur’s Gate 3”) but it actually comes close and so far has worked quite well for me. On the road in a hotel room, it’ll easily let me run the laptop at full throttle for a few hours and get everything charged up again for the next day.
To charge the watch I carry Apple’s Duo charger, which is… okay… and I’d replace but I haven’t seen something I love enough to buy. I also carry two lightning cables (one USB A and one USB C on the other end) and three USB C cables. To make sure the laptop charges quickly, I’ve started using these Anker 100 watt charging cables, after figuring out the hard way that many USB C cables throttle charging to lower rates even if the charger has high capability. Ah, love you USB C.
This all fits in a nice packing square and nestles down in the bottom of the bag out of the way.
Everything else
I carry a few pens, and I’ve started carrying a sketchbook for when I want to put things down on paper. I also carry a flashlight, typically a headlamp, and I’m auditioning a new one for this trip that’s USB C chargeable. If I like it, I’ll talk about it more later.
Finally, I always carry a backup drive for the laptop. My current one is the LaCie rugged models (the orange ones), with USB C and 2 TB. When on the road, I’ll keep a time machine backup going as well as backblaze if the hotel wifi can deal with it, so I can get copies of the new images into multiple places.
And that’s about it! I don’t carry headphones (I will have EarPods with me) or a Kindle, and I don’t haul a lot of other gear with me on these trips.
The two things I’ll point most people to here are that new Anker charger, and the 100 watt USB C wires. That latter was something I’d never really considered until I realized the reason my laptop recharging was going so slowly was the cable. Having a couple of these handy (and in a distinctive color, of course) really improves life. The charger and it’s attached wire might be a pain for some, but I always travel with an extension cord because I’ve needed one way too often, but this new setup is allowing me retire it from the bag, along with two wall wart chargers. So this setup is a bit more compact and lighter than I’ve carried in past trips.
I still want a better solution for charging the watch, but… I haven’t seen anything interesting. Any suggestions?
