Booq's midrange laptop bag, the Cobra Squeeze ($195), will keep your laptop and accessories well-organized without weighing you down. But it doesn't hold much other than your laptop and accessories, and like its stablemate, the Booq Cobra Pack, it's expensive for a laptop backpack.

Physical Layout
The Cobra Squeeze is a sinuously shaped, gray backpack made out of a sturdy cloth that's 47-percent recycled plastic. The bag measures 16.9 by 11.8 by 3.9 inches (HWD) and weighs a light 2.4 pounds, but one of its strengths is that it really compresses; if it isn't full, it can squish down to about 1.5 inches thick.

The "cobra" element here, in my mind, is the long wraparound zipper which pulls a big flap up to reveal the main pocket. It's a great way to get deep access into the bag, but it's a lot of zipper, and it requires extra tugging when you get to the corners. During my week with the bag, I kept getting stuck on those corners.

And that's not all the zipper you get! Along with the main pocket, the bag has a phone pocket near the top of the bag that is lined with a delightfully plushy material; an iPhone 6 Plus doesn't fit straight into it, but requires a little bit of a wiggle. There are also two side water bottle/mini-umbrella/document pockets, one of which has a key clip.

Open the main pocket, and you have a mesh pouch and a zippered top pocket facing a neoprene-lined laptop sleeve, a tablet/magazine sleeve, two holsters for accessories, and a relatively limited amount of room left over for cameras, chargers, and such.

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Features and Performance
Booq says the main pocket is appropriate for 15-inch laptops, but I found it a very tight squeeze for a 15-inch Macbook Pro, and snug for a Dell Latitude 14. Stick with 13-inch laptops or smaller in this bag. The tablet sleeve fits a 10-inch tablet or a magazine just fine.

The narrow, padded straps are somewhat less padded than on the Booq Cobra Pack, and thus a bit less comfortable. The padded back is still very cushy, though. I really missed having a phone pocket on the strap, as I had to take the pack off to access my phone in the top pocket.

I carried the Cobra Squeeze for three days, and I want to emphasize, it was comfortable the whole time, and less bulky than the Cobra Pack. But especially on weekends, I just wanted more free-form space for the random guff I take out and about in a day, like my daughter's karate uniform. The Squeeze is a tech bag for your tech.

Like other Booq bags, the Pack comes with a "Terralinq" tag which lets you recover a lost bag if someone follows the instructions on the tag. It's a good idea, but at the same time: Good luck with that.

I subjected the Cobra Squeeze to my standard 30 seconds of drenching on all sides of the bag. The water beaded up nicely on the outside. Opening it, I found that the main pocket and the top phone pocket stayed bone-dry—even at the bottom—but the two side pockets were soaked through.

Comparisons and Conclusions
The Cobra Squeeze is stylish and comfortable, but $195 is a high price to pay for a commuter's backpack, especially one with limited carrying capacity. Booq's own Boa Shift retails for $45 less and has more flexible pockets, including a phone pocket on the shoulder strap. The $100 Ogio Commuter 15, is another option, as it also has a bit more capacity.