A friend of mine who is a teacher commutes to and from school. Books and papers in one and his computer and lunch and maybe a few things in the other. Swears by his Ortliebs for all the reasons others have mentioned. Apparently he has used them for decades and only owned two sets.
I have 30L lightweight Axiom Seymour DLX 30 Panniers that I got for @
£85, 5 or so years ago. However, they are quite lightweight and I do not commute with a laptop computer.
FigBat, As
Pale Rider said, you'll want to pay special attention to how your panniers connect to your rack. One day riding home from work on a trail with my old faithful MTB, a bungee came loose which supposedly helped hold my pannier down onto the rack, it popped off, and that was the end of one of my panniers… Never to be seen again. Lesson learned. The clips possibly breaking is another thing to pay attention to and inspect now and then. I have a bit of rubber in between my rack and the rack clip in the hopes it will give it a slight amount of cushion.
I think the best piece of advice is to go see the panniers you are thinking of buying and trying them out on YOUR bike. It is possible that the bags might be wide enough that once on the rack, it may still be within range of you kicking it with your heels even if the bag is all the way toward the back of the rack. Since most racks have a curve at the back, the bags will not even reach all the way to the back of the rack. Go check them out on YOUR bike. Have yourself a nice fitting experience. It will be worth it in the long run. Get exactly what you know will work on YOUR ride. Keep us posted.
One more thing… My light weight panniers well, “pannier” is listed as “water resistant“ not waterproof. So I also have covers for them that make them waterproof, supposedly. I would much rather have “waterproof” bags if I were riding in weather that is often wet.
My ride with pannier and cover: