Travel Backpacks

A travel backpack has to do two jobs that pull in opposite directions. It must swallow a week of clothes like a small suitcase, then carry like a backpack through airports, train stations and city streets without wrecking your shoulders. The packs that fail usually fail at one end or the other: a duffel with straps packs beautifully and carries badly, while a hiking pack carries beautifully and forces you to unpack everything to reach the shirt at the bottom. The twelve packs below were chosen because each one resolves that tension in a different way, and the differences are worth understanding before you buy.

The real buying split is opening style first, capacity second. Clamshell packs from Peak Design, Cotopaxi and YETI open flat like a suitcase, so packing cubes and folded clothes stay where you put them. Panel-loading packs from Osprey and Nomatic open from the back or front in one big zip, which suits travellers who live out of the bag day to day. Capacity runs from 20 litres for short work trips to 46 litres for the largest carry-on in this guide, and every pack states its laptop fit plainly because a sleeve that stops at 15 inches is a deal breaker for a 16 inch machine. Every pick is sold on Amazon, every capacity and weight figure is the maker or retailer figure, and no pack here claims a test TrueGear did not run.