So, you just paid a whack of change for the Pixelbook. This thing is amazing and you want to haul it out everywhere you can. But how do you do that? Do you have a laptop bag already? Those are bulky and huge, and this is so teeny tiny, feels fragile (it’s not as fragile as you may think). It’d be nice to have some holster for it.
I have a couple of these neoprene ‘cases’ with zippers that are fairly universal, but the problem is they just are either too small or too large. Nothing like putting your super awesome, cool looking, expensive laptop into some cheap looking holder.
Introduce the Sleeve by Bellroy. It’s $109CDN (I know, this is how they get you right? You buy the laptop and then there’s a $129 pen, another $75 for a spare charger, now another $100 for a case…) and is a pretty good way to carry it around.
The advantages it has is that it fits specifically for your Pixelbook. At first, it’s a little tight. To get it in you kinda have to squeeze the sides to open the ‘mouth’ a bit to get it in and out.
It loosens up a little, but over the past couple weeks, I haven’t noticed it getting too relaxed that it would fall out. The next advantage is that it’s fairly rigid. I can keep it in my bag and rest assured that the charger or other items I have in there that it won’t be pushing against the screen causing scratches or cracks. It won’t protect it against high impact, but I don’t think there’s much out there that could anyways without it turning it into a tank. And that would really kill the vibe of this.
After the rigidity, there’s a neat little engineering in here. When you first look at the sleeve, it looks like there are 3 ‘lips’ in the mouth. The ‘middle lip’ is really like a tongue, it doesn’t go all the way down, and can be bent. It took me a while to figure out how this works (there was no real instruction manual with the sleeve). You squeeze the sleeve to open the mouth. Push on the ‘tongue’ to fold it back into the mouth and you’ll find a little ‘flap’ (using this analogy of the mouth, should I call it the uvula??). When the tongue goes beyond that and then you release the pressure, it’ll set itself up against it and because that tongue is rigid it acts to keep the mouth open and thereby causing the sleeve to look like a little ramp, which you can place your laptop on and have it a little more ergonomic to write on. Neat.
It takes a little practice but becomes something you can do super fluidly and I rarely use the laptop without it.
The last bonus the sleeve includes is a holder for your pen. Great … this addresses the concern I had with the review of the pen. Except for 2 things.
Getting the pen into the holder is a little awkward, it’s so ‘in the mouth’ that you have to angle it into the mouth to get it in there. If the holder was just an inch or so smaller, angling to get it in might be a little better.
The other thing is that now that it sits in the mouth when you put the laptop into the sleeve the laptop slides across the pen now. Usually not an issue, but sometimes you can feel the metal of the pen slide across the metal of the laptop housing and then I can see just super tiny microabrasions across the body… Now, I noticed it early on and took a picture. I thought it was super obvious and showed some people. They couldn’t see it. And now that I’m writing up the review about a week later I can’t find the lines anymore. Did they heal themselves?
Now, when you look at the website there was the mention of ‘magnetic closure’. I’m not sure what that refers to… maybe because I have the pen it prevents it from fully closing to have a magnet keep it closed.
So, it’s available from Bellroy in 2 colours, and I have (as you can see) the black. Which is fine, very utilitarian. But that grey looks pretty sexy. Maybe that’s just my personal opinion.
https://bellroy.com/products/pixelbook-sleeve/woven/black#image-0
I have a couple of these neoprene ‘cases’ with zippers that are fairly universal, but the problem is they just are either too small or too large. Nothing like putting your super awesome, cool looking, expensive laptop into some cheap looking holder.
Introduce the Sleeve by Bellroy. It’s $109CDN (I know, this is how they get you right? You buy the laptop and then there’s a $129 pen, another $75 for a spare charger, now another $100 for a case…) and is a pretty good way to carry it around.
The advantages it has is that it fits specifically for your Pixelbook. At first, it’s a little tight. To get it in you kinda have to squeeze the sides to open the ‘mouth’ a bit to get it in and out.
It loosens up a little, but over the past couple weeks, I haven’t noticed it getting too relaxed that it would fall out. The next advantage is that it’s fairly rigid. I can keep it in my bag and rest assured that the charger or other items I have in there that it won’t be pushing against the screen causing scratches or cracks. It won’t protect it against high impact, but I don’t think there’s much out there that could anyways without it turning it into a tank. And that would really kill the vibe of this.
After the rigidity, there’s a neat little engineering in here. When you first look at the sleeve, it looks like there are 3 ‘lips’ in the mouth. The ‘middle lip’ is really like a tongue, it doesn’t go all the way down, and can be bent. It took me a while to figure out how this works (there was no real instruction manual with the sleeve). You squeeze the sleeve to open the mouth. Push on the ‘tongue’ to fold it back into the mouth and you’ll find a little ‘flap’ (using this analogy of the mouth, should I call it the uvula??). When the tongue goes beyond that and then you release the pressure, it’ll set itself up against it and because that tongue is rigid it acts to keep the mouth open and thereby causing the sleeve to look like a little ramp, which you can place your laptop on and have it a little more ergonomic to write on. Neat.
It takes a little practice but becomes something you can do super fluidly and I rarely use the laptop without it.
The last bonus the sleeve includes is a holder for your pen. Great … this addresses the concern I had with the review of the pen. Except for 2 things.
Getting the pen into the holder is a little awkward, it’s so ‘in the mouth’ that you have to angle it into the mouth to get it in there. If the holder was just an inch or so smaller, angling to get it in might be a little better.
The other thing is that now that it sits in the mouth when you put the laptop into the sleeve the laptop slides across the pen now. Usually not an issue, but sometimes you can feel the metal of the pen slide across the metal of the laptop housing and then I can see just super tiny microabrasions across the body… Now, I noticed it early on and took a picture. I thought it was super obvious and showed some people. They couldn’t see it. And now that I’m writing up the review about a week later I can’t find the lines anymore. Did they heal themselves?
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| do you see it? |
So, it’s available from Bellroy in 2 colours, and I have (as you can see) the black. Which is fine, very utilitarian. But that grey looks pretty sexy. Maybe that’s just my personal opinion.
https://bellroy.com/products/pixelbook-sleeve/woven/black#image-0