Sometimes gaming gear comes from the most unlikely of places. One of those places is from a company normally known for is cleaning and safety products. Falcon Safety Products, makers of the well know Dust-Off compressed air cans, has introduced an interesting gaming accessory that will keep your gaming gear safe in transport. They call it a Keyboard Quiver.
Unlike the leather satchels used by archers of yore to hold their arrows, this one is updated for the digital world. Constructed of heavy-duty cotton canvas, this sling pack is built to hold everything a gamer could need. There’s protected storage for what Falcon calls “the essential tools of the gaming trade,” which includes a keyboard, mouse, headphones, cables, power cords and even MP3 players.
Falcon came up with the cross section of computer hardware, and the resulting bag design, after observing the behaviours and interactions of the participants of LAN Party or gaming event participants. They noticed that to carry their peripherals, gamers used a variety of methods. These varied from simply loading ones arms to the point of exhaustion, to grocery bags and backpacks that were entirely too small, to the box that a peripheral originally came in. Falcon saw this as a bad thing, since this wasn’t the safest or easiest way to carry one’s peripherals and keep them protected. They looked at it from the standpoint that these aren’t throw away devices; these are singular tools a gamer uses to ply his trade, and would need to be kept from being damaged. That’s where the Keyboard Quiver comes in.
Measuring 21″ x 12″ x 6″, the Keyboard Quiver is much bigger than the average backpack. This facilitates being able to carry a full size keyboard without any of it sticking out. As for the pack itself, it’s a single strap sling pack that can be worn on the left or right shoulder. This pack is designed for the “active gamer,” whatever that means, though I take it to mean anyone that actually gets out of their chair to walk around. As such, both the strap and the pack are padded for comfort and durability. Upon release back in October the Keyboard Quiver sold for $69.99 USD, which in my opinion was a little steep. Recently a price reduction was announced, and this bag can now be found for as low as $45 USD, which is somewhat more palpable. That being said, we still need to find out if the Dust-Off Keyboard Quiver is worth the price of admission.
Quit Playing With Your Pockets
To hold the amount of gadgets and peripherals that the Keyboard Quiver claims it can hold, it’ll of course need a great deal of pockets and pouches. Once we’ve taken a look at how this bag is built, I’m going to see exactly how much stuff you can…stuff in it.
The main pocket is where you would strap in your keyboard. You can also wedge in a power bar, cables, and whatever else won’t fit in the many surrounding pockets. It should be noted that if you’re keyboard is too large, it will not fit in this area. I’ll have more on that later. As for the little pocket in the left of the picture, that’s the pocket to store your portable music player in.
This MP3 player pocket ends up at the top of the Keyboard Quiver once it’s slung over your back. There is cable routing hole for your headphones or wired remote. Be aware that this is for MP3 players only, and once again, only of a certain size. My 5th generation iPod fit fine, but there are players out there that are bigger. If you are still rocking a portable CD player, maybe you should upgrade. Besides it definitely will not fit in the Keyboard Quiver’s music pocket.