The Gear I'm Using To Cover MWC - And Why You Might Want It Too

Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, is one of the biggest mobile shows of the year. Phone makers of all shapes and sizes show up to display the latest in not only smartphones, but mobile devices in general, with a healthy heaping of infrastructure technology as well. I'll be traveling to Barcelona for the first time to take in the sights and sounds of MWC and see what's new. I'm expecting a pretty wild ride.

As with any trade show or event, how I pack has to be carefully curated to bring the tech I need to cover everything I'll see, without bringing too much so I have to lug it all around with me. Even just strolling through an airport with a too-heavy suitcase is not ideal. Of course, my suitcase is too heavy, because that's how I roll, but I thought it might be worth a look to see what's weighing it down as I bring you the best coverage of MWC in sunny Spain.

You might remember the STM 16L bag I toted to CES about 45 days ago (and again to Samsung Unpacked). While I visited STM at CES, I mentioned that I was more of a messenger bag guy, and they said, "We can help with that". Fast forward two weeks, and I had the DUX 16L Messenger Bag on my doorstep. At first, I wasn't much of a fan. The bag is a little like a backpack turned on its side. But as I used it a bit around Chicago it started to grow on me, to the point where I was confident enough to bring it 2,000 miles from home as my get-around-town bag.

The bag has slots for not one, not two, but three laptops or tablets. I used those slots for my 6th generation iPad Mini and another device I'm not allowed to talk about yet. As I made my way through TSA Precheck, they asked me to take out the electronics. Of course, the whole point of TSA Precheck is so you don't have to take those out, but I was told that when the devices are stacked on top of one other, it's too hard to see in the scanner. Whether this note came from a TSA officer having a bad day or a real logistical concern is hard to determine, so we'll call the capacity for three computers a bit of a double-edged sword.

The rest of the bag consists of a large pouch for everything else. There's a Velcro phone holder pouch that you can attach to either the front or the back of the bag's interior, a smaller pouch off to the side and a large zipper mesh pouch across the top for smaller items. Overall, I like it, but I also wonder how bulky it'll be to carry around the show floor for three days. Time will tell.

Speaking of bulky items, I'm also carrying around my Lenovo IdeaPad 5x Copilot PC with a Snapdragon X Plus processor. This laptop is meant to be more of a midrange device, and because of that it comes with some compromises. Notably, it's a little on the chunky side at 3.2 pounds. Fortunately, it earns its bulk with a ton of I/O including a full HDMI port, two USB-C ports, two USB-A ports, a headphone jack and a microSD card reader.

This is a 2-in-1 laptop with a touchscreen on a 180-degree hinge, which is great for watching movies during the precious little downtime I'll find myself with. The 57 Whr battery is rated to last up to 21 hours according to Lenovo and it's Snapdragon X Plus processor should be pretty battery efficient — at the end of the day, that's what you really need on a show floor.

Mostly, I love the keyboard which is a chicklet-style keyboard with a nice clickiness to it. You almost get a mechanical keyboard feel — though it's possible I just "type with purpose" as Anna Kendrick famously said in "Up in the Air." Finally, it comes with a fingerprint sensor which is increasingly becoming a must-have in my laptops.

Of course, when I'm back at the hotel, I will very much enjoy having two screens to play with on the Asus Zenbook Duo. This laptop manages to weigh even more than the Lenovo laptop, and it doesn't boast the same battery life, otherwise I could probably just use this one at my hotel and the show floor. As it is, I have both, and if there's any amount of overpacking I did, this is it.

I've had the occasion now to use dual-screen laptops from both Lenovo and Asus, and they both have plusses and minuses, but make me pick just one and this is probably it. I especially like how the keyboard fits inside the closed laptop and doesn't require you to tote around a separate folio. The built-in kickstand is also a nice bonus. 

If you happen to be shopping for a laptop, it's worth mentioning that the Lenovo I tried costs about half the price of the Zenbook duo. Still, $1,600 for a dual-screen Asus laptop is very attractive.

Ekster is arguably best known for its Cardholder wallets that flick all of your credit cards out in a nice stack with the push of a button. Well, it turns out the company is in the travel space as well. Ekster sent over a TravelPack Vacuum Kit for me to try to save some room in my luggage. Those are the bags that you stuff all your clothes into and then suck out the air to make them all smaller.

The bag is a nice thick nylon material that is hygienic and claims to be odor-proof — we'll see about that on the way home. I got all the clothes I needed for five days in Barcelona in the bag, and sucked out all the air using the adorably tiny vacuum that's included. The vacuum even charges with USB-C which is a big win in my book. When compressed the TravelPack fits nicely into one half of my carry-on suitcase, which is convenient.

I suspect I don't really need a vacuum-sealed bag because none of my clothes are puffy. I wear cotton shirts and pants most of the time. I don't have big puffy sweaters or anything like that so I think the advantage to me is minimal, but that's because I have no fashion sense and dress like a Walmart greeter at these events. Your mileage may vary.

I have a number of headphones on my wall with long battery life and Active Noise Cancellation, but I have very few that cost as little as the JLab Epic Lux Lab Edition. These headphones have a very comfortable set of ear cups, long-lasting battery, are capable of wireless charging with a puck that fits in the case, and a comfortable headband. All of these features make these headphones very good for air travel.

The ANC isn't as good as some other headphones I've used — it kills a lot of the low-end drone of airplane engines, but you can still hear the higher pitched whine. It's not bad, but I've also heard better. One thing that I particularly like about these headphones is the fact that the controls are pretty intuitive. If you want to change volume, or skip tracks, you can swipe up and down or side to side on the right ear cup to do so. ANC is activated with a button on the same earcup. You can also hard-wire these headphones with an included cable if you want, although I'm pretty much over that these days if I'm being honest.

Still the fact that these headphones only cost $199 is pretty compelling, as you're getting a lot in these headphones for that price. It would also be nice if they folded down a little smaller for easier transport, but overall, I'm calling these a win.

The real game changer for me on this trip might be the XReal One AR glasses. This is one of those things you need to see to believe — no pun intended. 

I first paired up the XReal glasses with the XReal Beam Pro. This is basically a phone form factor (but without actual phone radios) that can power the XReal glasses. When disconnected, it's basically like a phone-sized Android Tablet with all the apps, Google Play Store, etc. There are two USB-C ports on the bottom — one for charging, and one to connect the glasses. The glasses drain power on a host device pretty quickly, so the second USB port comes in handy.

With the Beam Pro, you get a whole AR interface that uses the phone as a sort of 3D pointer that you can use to select things, move them around, etc. After testing it by watching movies, I connected my Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra to the glasses and turned on DeX. After connecting a Logitech Keys 2 Go and the ProArc mouse I used at CES, I basically had a portable computer with a movie theater sized screen to get some work — including this article — done on.

The XReal Beam Pro interface is really nice from an AR perspective, but you can only open two windows side-by-side, which can be limiting. DeX on the other hand allows you to open up to five apps at one time and uses a desktop UI with floating windows, so it's definitely my preferred workspace.

I called these glasses a game changer, and I do not use those words lightly. I can pretty much promise that not only will I always travel with the XReal glasses, but I honestly may stop packing a laptop.