Peak Design Travel Backpack 45L, Black, Expandable 35-45L Design, Rear and Top Access, Weatherproof Shell, Laptop Sleeve, Ideal for Travel or Everyday Carry, Versatile Backpack for Men and Women

TL; DR - Amazing backpack if you travel a lot. Very durable, packed with featuresI'm a who loves backpacks, especially ones that fit my exact needs. I travel around pretty frequently and always try to pack as light as possible. Always trying to avoid checking a bag when I travel and only using carry on's. This backpack has always been on my radar, but just couldn't stomach the price. Eventually, the little voice inside my head that's always whispering "treat yo self" finally got the best of me. And I took the plunge. It got here right before my 3 week trip to Europe.As soon as I got it, I was blow away with all the hidden features that it had. Peak Design is very good at not just product design, but also integration with its other products. I paired this with the small camera cube and medium size packing cube. The ideal set up for this bag in my opinion. I can carry most of my camera stuff in the camera cube, and about 4-5 days of clothing in the packing cube. With some room to spare! This set up leaves a small cavity at the top of the bag which I used to put with my toiletry bag or my Bose QC35 headphones along with a travel blanket. It all fits very snug and fits like a puzzle.The hidden straps at the bottom of the bag were way more useful to me that I really thought they would be. I typically travel with a crew neck or hoodie because airplanes are typically cold, but when I'm walking around or its warm at my destination, I'll take it off and use the straps to secure it on the outside of my bag. I've also used the straps to carry a blanket, works beautify and its very secure.The middle diver in the bag can be unzipped and folded away if you just want one big sack to work with, I prefer to leave it in place, has a well padded laptop and separate tablet compartment, and a few hidden pockets in the bottle holders. My only gripe with the backpack would have to be those afore mentioned bottle holders. I feel like they don't hold bottles snuggly enough. But given everything else about this bag, I can can't deal with it.The zippers are very solid, and water resistant, as is the whole bag. Personally tested this out when walking around Paris in the rain. My belongings were perfectly dry inside! Another big feature about the bag is its stow away backpack straps and waist belt. I always remove the waist belt of any backpack I get because I hardly use it. In this backpack, you can't remove them, but they do fold away behind some cleverly designed magnetic flaps! And when they are stowed, you don't feel any weird bumps and won'y even know they're there. You can also stow away the backpack straps under those same flaps and make this thing a full blown duffle bag. Which has come in handy more times than I would've thought.Final thoughts. Given how much I travel, I wish I would've bought this bag sooner. Cant recommend enough! The Value/Convience factor is just as high as the price haha. But well worth it.

I recently bought this backpack for personal and business travel. It worked great on my first trip going to DC for a long weekend. I was able to pack 5 days of clothes, a pair of shoes, a laptop, a rain poncho, umbrella, a packable backpack, a hat, a shave kit, a mess kit, toiletries, a DLSR camera, a smaller gimbal camera, a journal, a couple of battery packs, assorted cables and chargers. It all fit without having to expand to the full 45 liters. I'm sure I over-packed it versus how Peak Design expects it to be packed. It still easily fit the carry-on size for my carrier. I also love how I don't have to lean it up against anything when I'm sitting waiting for the flight. It stands upright all by itself.Even though the initial packed configuration looked like it deformed the back, everything zipped up nice and easy. On top of that I could open it up from the side and slip in the umbrella, although it could have also gone in the extra large exterior side pocket. Surprisingly, even with all that weight it was super comfortable even without the waist straps. Getting it up and down from the overhead was super easy since the straps all tuck away and it has handles on 5 sides of the pack. I also made use of the loops to hook my headphone case for easy access.I used the Peak Design packing cubes and those were awesome as well. They open all the way up making them easy to pack and then can be compressed. They kept everything separated and had a nice extra pocket for dirty clothes. This was nice because I could leave my pack on the hook at the end of the bed, pull out a cube to get ready for the day, and stuff it back into the pack pretty easily. No need to unpack everything or worry about checking through drawers on checkout day.Since the bag butterflies open I was able to go through the airport scanner without putting my laptop in a separate bucket; It stayed in the padded pouch. Peak Design provides some internal cubes for cameras that are secured to internal hooks using custom carabiner/clips. I didn't need those cubes, but I did want some extra restraint for my gear all the same. I couldn't find similar clips locally, or something like G-hooks, or other straps that could hook on easily. I found some simple metal loops at the store along with some hook and loop elastic straps. A snip with some wire cutters and a little filing for the cut ends and I had an easy way to use the built-in loops and add some straps to further secure the interior contents. Could be overkill, because everything fits great. But I like not having to worry about things spilling out in the shuffle of the security line. I did end up buying some of the Peak Design clips separately after the trip and they're definitely superior to my little hacked clips.Everything is super easy to access on this bag; Front, back, and both sides. I like this configuration much better than other backpacks that have a ton of pockets and zippers and organizers that never get fully used for what they were meant for. This is simple and easy. Big pockets to throw your stuff into. Very simple organization pocket for common things or plenty of room to throw your own favorite organizer into.The only negative I have for this pack is that because it is so well built and well-structured it's going to be an effort to minimize how much I put into it to meet weight limits when traveling internationally. It's about 4 lbs empty which eats up a bunch of weight when limited to 17-20 lbs for a carry-on with many flights. It also just invites throwing everything into it for one bag travel.Really love this pack.

Recently went on an extended weekend trip and brought this Peak Design Backpack on the plane. It held everything I needed and then some. Expanded to 45L which is great if you need extra room and the airline (Air Canada) allowed. It fit into the overhead compartment.Extremely durable material, along with creative & practical design makes this a great backpack for travel.The quality of the materials are high performance. The pulls are really tough, the zippers don't get snagged and are very high quality. Many compartments to house different items so you can be very organized.Almost everything about this backpack is wonderful. The only thing I can say that they can improve on is the shoulder straps have a sternum strap, which is not easy to connect to the other shoulder strap. Maybe use a better system, with two sternum straps with a metal clip on both ends that clips onto each other.Other than that, a real quality product. I hope to use it more in the near future. I will use it as my exclusive travel backpack.