Zip-Linq Deluxe Urban Road Warrior Kit review

If the name 'Deluxe Urban Road Warrior Kit' conjures up images of the kind of indispensable tools Mad Max might carry with him in his quest for revenge on the highways of Oz, prepare to be disappointed.

This kit is, in fact, much less exciting, but consequently, much more likely to be of use to you and I. Imagine one of those zip-up nail clippers travel sets you can buy in any airport gift shop and expand it to the size of a Wilbur Smith novel, quite possibly from the same shop, and you'll have a fair idea of the external appearance of the DURWK. Unzip it and it falls open to reveal just about every cable, connector and accessory the modern MacBook owner could wish for, and one or two that would be better left at home.

There's an 18in flexible 'Super Bright' USB light which plugs into a USB port and allows you to carry on using your laptop during a power failure, or any situation where the ambient light goes out. Perhaps more useful is the high-resolution optical mini mouse. With two buttons and a scroll wheel, its cable is detachable, so easy to store.

Three male-to-male USB adaptors allow you to connect pretty much any USB device to any other device with a USB port, and the Cat6 crossover adaptor turns any RJ45 patch cable into a crossover cable.

Completing the kit are four cables featuring Zip-Linq's retractable cable technology. These retractable cables are easily the highlight of the kit. They extend and retract easily and eliminate the problem of having to untangle cables after pulling them from your laptop bag. The cables in question are a USB 2 A male to mini 5 pin, USB 2 A male to A female, Cat5e Twisted Pair, and perhaps a little superfluously, a pair of earphones with a built-in mic and corresponding 3.5mm jack plugs.

If you're the kind of person who regularly finds themselves in a foreign office, scrabbling around for a cable to connect to the network, printer, or any other peripheral, the Road Warrior Kit will come in handy. It's well put together, although the space inside is not used as efficiently as it could have been. And the compartments, while snug and sometimes difficult to slot into, don't always hold the contents firmly in transit.

Mad Max would have had no use for this kit, but for the rest of us, it could prove itself well worth a place in our laptop bag.