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I had a hard shell on my m1 air. Dinged the laptop and broke the screen…. Ergo : hard cases are ******** in my opinion. And it was an incase, not some cheap Amazon one.

For my new m1 pro I use the incase icon sleeve and my Herschel backpack, it has an elevated laptop compartment.
Moshi screen protector, but that’s more for the anti glare, I can’t stand this reflection on the screen.

I used a XD design anti theft laptop backpack, but although it looks awesome and futuristic, all the pockets everywhere and the design gave me more problems to carry around my stuff than actually enjoying it.
 
Naked inside a rucksack or shoulder bag. When A1278's were everywhere I bought clip-on plastic base and lid-cover for mine, aka hard case, and it wasn't cheap either, but it ended up marking the aluminium more than if I'd just left it bare.
 
padded sleeve inside padded section of laptop bag.

 
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I use a Timbuk2 quilted laptop sleeve that I’ve used since my white MacBook in ‘08.

If I need to use the main compartment in my Timbuk2 Commuter bag, I’ll put my laptop in its padded zippered compartment.

I prefer to the extra padding of the sleeve when I can use it.
 
I coddle my personal air, I have a sleeve for it that I toss in my bag.

My work laptop I don't bother being as careful, it goes basically everywhere with me when I'm on call and I (and the IT dept) expect it to get beat up anyway, so it just gets tucked in my bag as if it were, well, a notebook
 
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