Originally Posted by
oshelef
Maybe I'm the one missing something.
Take the B&R bag, now move the fabric to the other side of the mechanism. That gives you 3 "pockets". Each half inch deep. Suppose each one is 20"x4". (leaving 2 inches of width for the tracks, and 1" at the top and bottom for handle and wheel clearance.) That's still 60 cubic inches. And if the bag was "flat" in the bin before, it still is.
I think the argument for the space has to rely on the definition of "usable".
Oh no, Grasshopper....... you take the Briggs bag and move the fabric to the other side of the mechanism. that gives you 3 pockets, each 1.3 inches deep. Not 1/2 inch.
Yes, that is the "opportunity cost" of having the handle mechanism on the outside while keeping the same dimensions.
And now you say, "what, this dude isn't making any sense......" Rightly so, it's something a 9th grade geometry student can figure out. And this leads to the conclusion that the folks over at Briggs has been drinking un-purified Hudson river water.
Hold on a second before you make the conclusion.
This isn't about the bag itself. It's about utilizing the capacity (of the overhead bin) given to us with another squareish looking contraption we call rolling suitcases.
Please take a look at my pic 1. do you see the outerbox and the inner box (which is the bag). You will note that the bag is deeper on one side vs the other side. It has to be that way cuz the wheels have to stick out. There is no way around this. Otherwise, it won't roll right. For most bags they stick out as much as 1.5 inches to .75 inches (my crude estimates). so this introduces a "difference" between to the top depth and bottom depth. Thus, the bag cannot sit flat on the bottom. There is "wasted space."
And in Pic 2, you can see that by putting the handle on the outside, the wasted space is gone and the bag sits flat. Thus, taking the wasted space on the bottom, top right and top left inside of the bin. As an example, you can try measuring conventional bags depth. You'll see that on top the depth is closer to 9 inches whereas on the bottom including the wheels it's more like 10. With Briggs the depth is uniform.
The final question was and is: Yes, Briggs better utilizes the bin space but what about the spaces around the handle bars and that could have been used as cubic inches? The 1.3 inches of handle depth is parting coming from the "wasted space" on the bottom that we discussed and interior space that we find so valuable. However, I find that interior space gets wasted on the conventional bags with top handle recess, bottom plate and the handle rails.
So, yes. As tfar has said earlier there is still a small advantage of having the handle on the inside. My point is that it's really not that much... probably less than 100 cu in where only small things can fit.