We recently jumped on a plane and enjoyed a long weekend in the Big Apple with some friends. This was our first trip away from our girl trio, so we made sure to enjoy the time away.
New York City is never the same. The city cuts itself down, then rebuilds to the sky. There’s never enough time to see the things you list off in your pre-trip planning.
All photos in the linked set were shot with the Leica Q2. New York’s autumn palette explodes out of this beautiful Leica sensor.
I continue to be head over heels for this camera. And this city.
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Leather is the best. It looks amazing, especially after years of wear and tear. It smells amazing, specifically right out of the box. And it feels amazing, doubly so after it’s fully broken in. I’m always on the lookout for top-of-the-line leather goods that will keep their shape for the rest of my life.
Harber London has, apparently, long been a producer of these high quality leather goods. It’s embarrassing really that I didn’t know — I had always assumed Harber London was one of those wannabe leather-makers who marked up their prices and shipped shoddy leather.
When Harber London reached out to see if I wanted to try one of their wallets or sleeves, I figured I would give the assumed-to-be shoddy leather a chance. The photos of all their products on their site look impressive, as do the colours and the types of leather products.
I opted for the Carry-All Folio for the MacBook Pro. It’s a loose-fit folio, capable of carrying a MacBook Pro and various other smaller items you might need for a meeting.
I’ve come away quite impressed with the Carry-All, and embarrassed of my prior assumption.
I really should have tried a Harber London product a long time ago.
Editor’s Note:Harber London sent me the Carry-All MacBook Folio for the purposes of review.
Materials
To accommodate the Carry-All Folio’s main raisin d’être — to provide additional space for carrying more than just your MacBook Pro in a stylish case — the folio’s material choices have to fall in line. Leather has to be supple and maneuverable. Zippers need to open and close securely and relatively easily. Interior material has to ensure your devices are protected, despite other items rustling around inside.
By and large, the Carry-all Folio succeeds in every material respect.
You’ll quickly note how the Carry-All’s supple leather. It’s quite soft. Not too soft to require worry about tearing. But soft enough that it in no way maintains its shape when empty.
I love this tan colour — it reminds me of the British Tan Schuyler Bibles I’ve seen in the past. An orangey-brown tan. In no way is this an unassuming colour — if you walk into a boardroom meeting with the Carry-All under your arm, people will notice what you’re carrying.
Not maintaining its shape is perhaps the Folio’s biggest downfall, specifically at the 16-inch MacBook Pro size. The MacBook itself is so big, more than a few folks will require some juggling to put the notebook on a desk or countertop and ensure other belongings inside the Carry-All don’t fall out. I’ve had good luck simply resting the Carry-All with MacBook Pro flat on the desk and sliding out the laptop. If I’m trying to remove the MacBook above the desk, AirPods and cables have crashed to the floor.
The Carry-All’s zipper is large, sturdy, and functional. It’s not as heavy duty as some zippers I’ve seen on folios — the Galen Leather folio I reviewed a few years back still holds the crown for the most impressive folio zipper. The Carry-All’s zipper isn’t poor, though, and should present no concern for inadvertent opening during your travels.
You should, however, keep the zipper in mind when closing the Carry-All with a MacBook inside. If you aren’t careful, the corner of the MacBook will nicely rub against the inside of the zipper, and you’re left with that cringy metal-on-metal sound we all hate.
Inside, the Carry-All’s felt lining is nice and soft and sure to protect your belongings. It’s a lighter grey colour, which looks better than dark grey, but does a poorer job hiding day-to-day stains. Protectively, I’m more concerned about the interior zipper scratching a device than I am about the felt lining causing some damage. The felt does shed a bit, though — more than a few times, I wondered if our house had inherited a new cat or dog after pulling out one of my devices.
Lastly, stitched inside are various leather pieces for storing odds and ends, business cards, memo books, and a pen or two. These leather pieces differ greatly from the exterior leather, providing more stability for sliding things in and out of the Folio.
I really quite like the big pocket for storing a charger, cable, and a set of AirPods Pro for the day. It’s a great pocket for any small knick-knacks. Anything too large in the pocket does bulge on the outside, so you need to be cognizant of what’s inside the Folio before you just chuck it into the back seat of the car.
The other leather organizers, though? I’m not a fan. It’s a giant pain in the butt to slide a pen in and out of the pen loop. The memo book slot is nice and all, but despite my lengthy history writing through Field Notes books, I no longer carry a memo book with me. I would expect the memo book slot to work well for folks, but the pen loop is the pits.
Usability
There are specific circumstances for when you would choose to use a folio-style carry case like the Carry-All Folio. For some, this can be an everyday carry item, though I expect those folks are fewer than those who would use the Carry-All as a sort of intermediary carry between the office and coffee shop. I think I tend to prefer using the Carry-All as my “during-the-day” carry over my “end-of-day” or “start-of-day” carry.
This, of course, depends on what you want to carry in the Carry-All. A laptop, iPad, a pair of AirPods, and a small notebook and pen? Sure, you can carry these all at once in the Carry-All. Things will be a bit tight, but it’s doable. A laptop and paper notebook with a few documents for presenting at a meeting? This carry would fit a bit better in the Carry-All. I suspect this is the sort of use-case Harber London had in mind when designing the Carry-All.
Another specific element to consider: The Carry-All does not have a shoulder or hand strap, nor are there any options for one. This is a folio, through and through. And this surely limits the Carry-All’s everyday carry features for those who commute via subway or bus each day. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to carry this under their arm through the subway. I can imagine someone being OK with the Carry-All as an everyday carry option if they physically drive themselves to work — i.e. they put the filled Carry-All Folio on the back seat of the car while they commute to work. Even still, the lack of shoulder and hand straps will surely limit how you use the Carry-All to move your things from Point A to Point B.
A few other anecdotes I’ve discovered while using the Carry-All the last few weeks:
Obviously, the Carry-All’s loose fit allows for carrying far more than just a laptop and charger. There’s enough room for a 16-inch MBP charger, AirPods, other cables, and it can hold both a 16-inch MBP and a 13-inch iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard. Things are tight when carrying both devices, but it’s entirely doable.
Inside, the leather pockets and slots don’t close, so items could be removed and float around inside the folio. This threatens scratching your devices.
The notebook/business card slots are tight. You can use them to carry exactly this, but not much more. Even a 3.5-inch by 5.5-inch memo book — the classic Field Notes size — is extra-snug. You can put one in the slot, but it’s going to make you queasy if you don’t like bent paper corners.
The pen loop is actually quite difficult to use. Early on, it takes two hands to slide a pen into the loop. Over time, perhaps the leather pen slot gets easier to use. I also found any metallic pen to be a far greater scratching hazard for a MacBook Pro. I don’t expect I’ll use either the notebook or pen slot all that much.
Because the Carry-All is so soft, it’s not too bad to throw this into a bigger bag or suitcase and fold it into a corner. The ability to fold it into a bigger bag without breaking its shape is one of its biggest selling features, in my opinion. The Carry-All doesn’t need to be your everyday carry (especially during travel), but can more than easily still accompany you on a trip to ensure you look classy when arriving at your meeting.
The biggest Carry-All provides ample room for any size MacBook Pro plus additional belongings. I’d recommend this option even for 14-inch MacBook Pro users who may want to carry more than just their computer from time to time. It’s also a good future-proofing decision, if you end up wanting a larger MacBook Pro at some point in the future.
The long and short: The Carry-All Folio is likely not going to replace your everyday bag. Rather, the Carry-All is more likely to supplement your everyday bag once you get to the office. You can certainly use it as your everyday carry option — I have for the last few weeks, and it works awesome, save for when I want to carry my bigger AirPods Max to the office. Instead, I expect the Carry-All to be a great supplement to your assortment of bags and other carry options.
Cost
Easily my biggest surprise with the Carry-All Folio is its price. Harber London’s quality here isn’t something to shake a stick at — the Carry-All has a high-quality leather, high-quality interior felt, and a great design, and this combination of features usually leads to a top-shelf price as well.
At $150-$200 (it’s currently listed at £139.00), this price tag comes in about $50 lower than where I expect it to be. For this type of money, I think most customers are going to walk away pretty happy with their Carry-All Folio purchase.
Additionally, Harber London’s shipping was quick and painless. And the Carry-All’s packaging was well put together and easily presented.
This has to be one of the best-priced leather products I’ve bought or tested in recent memory.
Sometimes I think we get caught up in looking for items that act as trump cards — items that solve a problem forever and are the immediate recommendation to a friend or colleague looking to up their game. “Showstoppers” and “game changers”. In reality though, there’s always bigger and better, and more often than not, things tend to work together better than they do replace each other.
I think that’s how I’d summarize the Harber London Carry-All MacBook Folio. The Carry-All shouldn’t be viewed as a replacement for your daily bag. It also shouldn’t be viewed as a simple folio capable of protecting your MacBook and nothing more.
Instead, the Carry-All can fulfill the role of a messenger bag when you can spare a hand. It can also fulfill the role of a classy folio worthy of stepping into a high-pressure, formal meeting. This is the ultimate folio for meeting with a client.
On the flip side, I won’t pretend the Carry-All tops my everyday carry list. On many occasions, I need a bit more space to carry a MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, a set of AirPods Max, and some documents. I especially require a handled-messenger bag whenever I may need to use my hands.
But the Carry-All Folio really does hold its own as a messenger bag complement. You can carry a lot in the Carry-All, and you can do so in a classy, high-quality aesthetic. This is a superb leather for a superb price and is sure to fit alongside any bag or briefcase portfolio.
The Surface Laptop 7 is a wonderful little laptop, but ultimately ran into a number of hiccups in the first eight hours of use. Above photo shot with the new iPhone 16 Pro’s 5x camera.
I came into this experiment with the most open-minded approach to Windows in my entire life. I went to bed the first night with a plan: I would be excited to move my work life into this beautiful Surface Laptop and perhaps pick up a fun MacBook Air for anything personal I still wanted to do at home. Likewise, I would use the iPad at the office for the minor personal stuff required while working. I would downgrade my computing life from a hefty 16-inch MacBook Pro to the svelte and less expensive Surface Laptop 7.
That dream was crushed within 3.5 hours the next morning.
The saying goes, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks", which puts the onus on the experienced individual's inability to build a new skill. Perhaps this is partially true. In reality, though, I'm willing to bet it's more about how much information is packed into that old dog's head. Cramming new information in there unnecessarily — when the payoff is but a tad bit more productivity — doesn't come off as a wise bet. And change is stressful, especially when the plate is full.
That's how I felt the next morning. Every minor change required a mental investment to determine a solution, determine whether that solution was palatable and had a long life, and determine whether that solution was better than the solutions I had already developed.
The serious mental gymnastics were wide-ranging. I considered whether I should create keyboard macro shortcuts for oft-used keystrokes. I researched methods to replace my most-used apps on the Mac (like Textsniper, Alfred, Notion, and more). Not only that, but I even found myself down a rabbit hole about how the Apple Studio Display interacts with the Surface Laptop.
The mental overhead this morning was significant. I had a headache by lunch and I had hardly completed a single task for my day.
I'm not sure this old dog was up for learning new tricks.
Miscellaneous Head Scratchers
There were other breakdowns, however. More technical breakdowns. Breakdowns I could possibly overcome, while others I most certainly could not. In no particular order:
I raved about the Surface's function key row, and specifically the inclusion of Home/End/Page Up/Page Down across the F9-F12 keys. I still love this idea for a small laptop like this. But the functionality of jumping in and out of media keys is head-scratching. In Excel, if you want to move between worksheets, you need to hold Ctrl and shift between sheets by pressing Page Up or Page Down. But to achieve this, you have to unlock the function row (making the media keys active). If you keep the function row locked, you'll inadvertently create macro sheets, open the Save As dialog box, and more, because you're effectively running a Ctrl + F12 keyboard shortcut. Then, if you want to lock a cell in a formula or jump into the cell to edit the cell by hitting F2, you once again have to re-lock the function row. The absolute focus you have to have to know whether your function key row is in the right mode is off the charts.
The dedicated Copilot key is in a really awful spot next to the left arrow key. I accidentally launched Copilot six different times while meeting with a client today. All I wanted to do was some simple cellular math in Excel, and I continually hit the Copilot key rather than the left arrow key when attempting to sum a series of cells. The correct answer is "Josh, you'll get used to it." But when under pressure, I'm not sure if I have the patience for it.
The Surface Laptop at one point today completely crashed, on the spot, with no warning of what was coming. I haven't had a complete and utter computer crash in probably 10 full years. I thought I might have caused the crash by installing Beeper (an x86 app), but I was able to get Beeper installed after the reboot. I'm not sure what caused the crash. But that's quite the experience to relive after all these years.
Speaking of x86 apps — Apple is better at emulating x86 apps in an emulated Windows 11 environment (via Parallels) than Windows 11 is at emulating x86 in its own native Windows 11 environment. Where I expected our archaic Intuit ProFile tax software to run better on the Surface Laptop, I found my 16-inch MacBook Pro could run circles running ProFile in an emulated Windows 11 environment. I was also hoping for a range of document generation and printing fixes, but alas, the Surface has the same (if not more) errors to work through in ProFile than my MacBook Pro does.
The lack of proper messaging apps in Windows 11 is terrible. I really, really hoped I'd be able to send iMessages via Windows Link to Phone, or via Texts.com, or via Beeper. Nope. Not one. Apple's locked-down ecosystem officially bit me in the butt today.
Lastly, I was blown away by the poor coverage of Windows for ARM apps out there. Notion Calendar — a newer app than Notion itself — is still x86 and runs like garbage on the Surface Laptop. Notion itself isn't all that much better. Google Drive for Windows? Nope, x86 only, and there's not even an option to emulate it. I thought I'd be able to work through these app shortcomings. But that was no small task.
I have a few thoughts on Copilot relative to the iOS 18.1 Apple Intelligence betas, which I'll explore another day.
Miscellaneous Delights
Of course, it wasn't all negative. Apple really needs to take a few things out of Microsoft's playbook, if you ask me.
The smaller trackpad on the Surface Laptop is great. It doesn't feel as responsive as a MacBook trackpad, though it's far better than any non-Apple trackpad I've tried. More importantly, the trackpad's size is ideal — it doesn't cause nearly as many inadvertent taps as the ginormous trackpad on my 16-inch MacBook Pro. The result is that my hand (my left hand in particular) can rest on the body of the laptop when typing, which causes much less strain than the wrist hovering I have to do on the 16-inch MacBook Pro.
How I adore having a built-in USB-A port. I know the Apple world loves to hate on old ports. But hopefully, there's a chance for a USB-A return inside Apple's latest fascination with old-fashioned buttons.
The Surface Laptop's keyboard is to die for. I want to keep using this computer simply because of the keyboard. I brought it home today to write this out, just so I could use this keyboard. It works so well with the old Surface Numeric Keypad I had kicking around.
The Surface's display is glorious. Again, not as good as any of Apple's XDR displays in the MacBook Pros, but I'd love to see this up against a MacBook Air display. I love the 120 Hz motion. I love the vibrant colours. I specifically love the way the Windows 11 rainbow blob wallpaper pops out. Everything about this laptop looks and feels great.
The svelte Surface Laptop chassis has quickly reminded me how much I don't care for the gigantic 16-inch MacBook Pro. I love the screen real estate, but I love the tiny, take-anywhere attitude of the Surface more. Assuming this experiment falls apart, I am for sure moving back to a 14-inch MacBook Pro, or something even smaller if possible.
Day One Wrap Up
I went to bed that first night thinking this was the beginning of a new era in my life — operating a Windows laptop for work, seamlessly separating work and personal space between two inexpensive notebooks, and happily skipping down the sidewalk along the way.
I went to bed the next night thinking about whether I should return the machine, or if I can find someone else in the office who would enjoy a new computer. (The second option seems much preferable to me). (Update: I found someone in the office who was more than happy to keep the Surface.)
I never could have imagined the experiment would fall so quickly onto its face like this. And really, I think I could probably trudge through the experiment and find workarounds and solutions for most of the hiccups I faced that first day.
The problem is that this old pupper dog isn't yearning to create new solutions to old problems (and certainly old problems already solved on another operating system). I never calculated the mental hula hoops to work through before the Surface Laptop 7 arrived. Now, after experiencing that first eight hours, I'm fairly certain I'm going to need a truckload of creative energy to ever go down this path again.
