When setting out on adventurous hiking and travel expeditions, choosing the best backpack goes beyond the conventional considerations. While ergonomic design, storage, and durability are essential, there are some unconventional features that can elevate your backpacking experience. In this guide, we will explore three unique and often overlooked features to consider while deciding on the best backpack for hiking and travel.
1. Convertible Daypack Mode:
Versatility is key when traveling and hiking. Look for a backpack that offers a unique convertible feature – the ability to transform into a daypack. This innovative design allows you to detach a smaller section of the main backpack and use it as a lightweight daypack for short excursions, leaving your larger gear securely at the base camp. It saves you from carrying two separate backpacks, reducing weight, and enhancing your mobility during day trips.
2. Hydration Water Bladder:
Convenience has always been a paramount feature while deciding your gear for your adventures. Team BTG is always on the look out to select and sort features that are both convenient in their utility and effortless in carrying. A water bladder becomes a part of the backpack and most accessibly used while travelling through rugged or natural outdoors.
3. Internal Water Filtration:
The lightweight and compact design of the filtration system reduces the burden of carrying heavy water bottles during long hikes or multi-day trips. While the initial investment may be higher, it proves cost-effective in the long run. This versatile feature allows you to collect water from streams, lakes, and rainwater, expanding your exploration possibilities. In emergency situations, the filtration system ensures a continuous supply of purified water, reducing the risk of dehydration and enhancing safety.
Osprey Atmos AG 65 Men’s Backpacking Backpack
What we liked?
For a weeklong tour or heavy weekend getaway, Osprey Atmos provides a comprehensive solution with its ruggedness, versatility, and comfort. The antigravity suspension makes much of the load feel light on your shoulders and arms, so much so as if you’d feel you have forgotten something from your massive list of luggage. It also includes a waterproof rain cover to defend against weather uncertainties. Its zipper compartment for sleeping bag adds to its overall advantage and versatility, the compartment comes with a removable divider and sleeping pad straps that help keep the sleeping bag sleep system secure. The thickly padded and highly adjustable straps keep the back comfortable and fit well around your torso. The load distribution is excellent for moderate loads – eliminating hot spots, pressure points and friction areas. Despite its grip, the back panel’s ventilation is superb, providing you comfort while taking a stretch in the wilderness. One of its interesting features includes a stretchy mesh pocket. You can quickly tuck in spare layers, snacks, or any miscellaneous items.
It is a diverse adjustment features that come along with its Fit on the Fly system. This provides a range of four inches or vertical play, offering you the perfect torso length for your need and comfort. Its hip belt allows you to adjust a range of six inches, allowing you to adapt to your waist size in the most convenient way.
It is exceptionally comfortable and well-ventilated to suit the need of hiking and travelling the rugged outdoors.
What Could be Better?
The Osprey Atmos has an average weight, and certainly does not come near any ultralight category backpacks. It weighs around 4.6 lbs., which is a fair weight for the range of functions and comfort features it has given, but certainly demerits its provision of load support.
Also, its suspension system and paddings are made to carry a weight of about 40 lbs., and beyond that limit the comforts and convenience of its fit tend to reduce.
Osprey Ather Plus 70L Backpack
What we liked?
This is Osprey’s signature heavy hauler with its remarkable comfort when handling heavy loads over a long distance. To provide you with a comfortable fit, Ather has Osprey’s “Fit-on-the-Fly” adjustment system. The Velcro design of the shoulder straps and hip belt allows a highly adaptable grip so you may fix it where you feel it to be most supportive, this, coupled with lumbar padding creates a close body-hugging grip with negligible bounce while you’re trekking through the sturdy outdoors.
The weight of the backpack stands at nearly 6 lbs., which is slightly heavier than the ultralight backpacks. But to cheer you up, this comes with several prominent features of multiple compartments, easy access zip pockets and a usable daypack for small detours.
In terms of organization, the backpack offers an all-round mechanism. Starting with its u-shaped zipper at the front which provides thorough visibility to the main compartment with less than half an arm’s length long access to all you’ve put inside the backpack. Then comes the sleeping bag compartment with a removable divider.
It has about 11 pockets, including the DayLid and rain cover compartments. The top lid boasts a pocket, to quickly stuff and grab essentials, the front pocket is made of nylon that provides ruggedness for tear resistance, with mesh sides for ventilation and extra stretch. You can keep your wet stuff there to dry out without damping other items or leaving a bad odor. Ather Plus also includes Stow-on-the-Go trekking pole attachments on the shoulder straps.
What could be better?
One simple aspect is the weight, the 6 lbs. weight poses a restriction in terms of carrying the backpack fully loaded over longer distances. Although it mere constitutes 15% of the overall weight you may carry, load the backpack to full i.e. around 40 lbs., but even a single lb. differential can be impactful when used most frequently. But, to compensate for this frailty, the overall organization and comfort is commendable.
Gregory Mountain Products Baltoro 75
What we liked?
Starting with the comfort aspect, Gregory Baltoro has an A3 suspension system. A3 stands for automatic angle adjust properties, which allows the shoulder straps and hip belt to independently move and adjust. Comfort is always a foremost feature when the team BTG looks out for distinguished backpacks, as it can make and break the deal for your trips and journeys.
The Quick Swap suspension allows three harness options coupled with five hip belt sizes. Overall, the suspension system is just fantastic, most appropriate for heavier loads for long distances. Its U-shaped aluminum frame transfers the load from packs to the hips, meanwhile the large mesh in between provides excellent ventilation between your back and the backpack.
For its ease of use, it has a mesh water bottle holder on one side, along with a stowable forward-facing pocket on the other side which allows an extremely convenient way to access the bottle as you’re trekking to get to the destination.
What Could be Better?
The waist belt pocket that can store a phone is rather smaller, it can accommodate phones that are around or less than 6’’ of size. But you can use it to store keys or cards for easier accessibility. The new model has expanded hip pockets which can store a bigger mobile phone.
Roamm Nomad 65 +15 Backpack
What we liked?
This backpack brings a whole package for your travelling needs. As the name suggests, it’s a combo of two backpacks clubbed as one unit. The Roamm Nomad 65 + 15 is definitely one of the best backpacks for hiking and travel and would be the editor’s one of the top picks. The combo doesn’t only provide a large capacity, but the satellite nature of the smaller one helps you organize your stuff more intelligently.
While hiking or travelling in the wilderness, you can keep the essentials in the smaller one and quickly grab them for small detours from your main destination without the worry of forgetting something useful. The top lid is detachable with allows further customization in terms of carrying the backpack and arranging your stuff. The detachments can easily shrink the size of the backpack for diverse utility.
For further organization, it comes with a host of pockets. The sunglasses retainer on the sternum strap, a panel loading main compartment for quick access, front organizer pocket for small essentials, side mesh pockets to carry tripods or water bottles and has reinforced bottoms for extra strength in carrying tent poles or snow pickets, an adjustable sleeping bag diaphragm, removable hip-belt has an over-sized pocket to store things in the front for urgent and frequent grabs.
For the comfort, the users have claimed to be hiking for up to 04 hours straight with full load without feeling unusual strain on the back or shoulders. This happens because of its super light alloy frame, frame sheet and aluminum stay, fully adjustable shoulder harness and the usual adjustable hip belt.
Interestingly, the utility loops on the lid allow you to attach extras like a solar panel, helmet, or crampons to aid your adventure and its sturdiness.
What Could be Better?
The fabric tends to not stay on too well when loaded fully. When maxed out to its capacity, the stretch on the fabric tends to tiny rips if you use it too long like that. But the good news is that still it won’t tear, or the rips get bigger because of its ripstop fabric.
Osprey Rook 65 Men’s Backpacking Backpack
We have listed this quite excitingly in our list of best backpacks for hiking and travel as Osprey took upon great sweat to create this masterpiece. Backpack has always been tough, but Oprey Rook 65 makes it as effortless as possible. Starting with comfort, its highly ventilated and comfortable AirSpeed back panel coming with intuitive torso adjustment is a treat to wear. A robust suspension model keeps your hiking and walks comfortable, added with its light weight standing around 4lbs. The straps are ergonomically designed with moderate padding to sit comfortably on your shoulders. It offers a 4-inch range adjustability around the torso, which is a reasonable range to fit your size. Shoulder straps can simply slide and adjust with their pegs popping out of a webbing loop on each side, similarly the sternum straps has discrete loops to secure the shoulder straps at different heights.
The ease of use pertains to minimalism in design. The two side mesh bottle pockets have a ‘on the move’ side access to quickly grab your bottles. The sleeping bag zipper allows you to most conveniently grab anything from it while you’re quicky trekking to the destination and a simple twist of your torso can impede the pace. Most interestingly, there is a flap in the main compartment, separating the top and bottom portion. You can store your wet clothes or tents to keep them away from the other stuff. The side compression straps on the sides can hold your trekking or tent poles, and in addition to these customary trekking pole straps, it also has compression straps to hold a foam sleeping pad. The toss-up lid easily keeps the gear inside and prevents any spilling.
What could be better?
Overall comfort features and customization is moderate. Lack extensive padding at the shoulder straps, not ideal to carry max load for longer distances. The top lid is tight and attached with the main compartment, which makes taking out stuff slightly tedious. But the overall features presented at this price point is a true value for money, and if you’re looking for a budget backpack with decent features, this must be your go to choose.
TETON Sports Explorer Internal Frame Backpack
The Tenton Explorer is a meticulously picked choice for your best backpacks for hiking and travel with the host of amazing features it offers. Starting with the most obvious, the upright sturdy look of the backpack comes with its internal frame which gives it stability and strength to bear the strain on outdoor adventure and travelling, and to keep things in place while keeping the backpack balanced. The frame doesn’t allow the backpack to trip and fall, making it dirty on all sides while you’re adventuring through the rugged landscapes. The fabric is made of two times of canvas, the colored section is made of 600D polyester, and the black portion is made of 600D oxford canvas, the combination gives immense strength and durability. It can easily carry a load of up to 60 lbs. for long distances without any effect on its frame or fabric.
For ease of use, the pass-through side pockets are ideal to hold tent poles or trekking poles, the multi direction compression straps on the front are dual purpose – to hold the upper lid and to adjust the compression. The base has a large sleeping bag compartment, the side pockets are medium size which allows you to keep and separate the essentials that would’ve otherwise messed up with the stuff in the main compartment. The hydration system allows you to bladder up to 3 liters, which should be sufficient for a day long adventure before you need to refill it. The bottom pocket is big enough to hold two pair of shoes, if you aren’t stuffing it with the sleeping bag.
The aluminum frame doesn’t only give stability, but also the flexibility of the frame allows it to adjust to the contour lines of the user. The strap around the shoulders and torso are padded with open-cell foam pads and well-insulated to allow maximum comfort, minimal strain on the body and keep you ventilated.
What could be better?
It comes with a rain cover, but the bottom part may be prone to wetness if you put it down while it’s raining or around any wet surface, but this comes in effect in extreme situations, the exterior is water resistant. The adjustable torso section does not offer much flexibility for tall people and the hip section does not have any small pockets for quick grabs.
Osprey Ariel Plus 60
What we liked?
Osprey has most articulately designed the backpack for women’s body and fit while providing the same extraordinary features for its lead models. Osprey Ariel Plus stands at a weight of 5.4 lbs., making it slightly bulky, but the features it offers are totally worth the little weight trade-off.
The internal frame and fit is extraordinary. We have heard from users that out for weeklong adventures, with strenuous day boulder-hopping while this backpack stick to their frame like a glue. This remarkably increases the level of comfort and resilience that you need in such strenuous situations. Its series of complex straps are well-engineered to distribute and stabilize the load across your back. The internal red strap would keep the backpack top near the drawstring opening stable, meanwhile the four side straps will always pull the load near to your back. Furthermore, the two straps at the bottom will snug up the load in the base of the backpack, while the two straps of the top flap keep the load at the top wedged with your upper back. Even if you are climbing a little, this will keep all the load stable to avoid any pressure points and jerks.
It has zippered sleeping bag compartment with removable divider, and the backpack also comes with an internal hydration reservoir sleeve. The huge main compartment has dual access, one from the top and another from the front.
What could be better?
The top opening of the main compartment comes when you remove the top lid/daypack which can be inconvenient sometimes. The weight of the pack does not comes under ultra-light category hence you might have to compromise a little bit on this.
Conclusion
The list is definitely not exhaustive and there are certainly another bags that may come to your liking. The above list was carefully picked to seek a balance between affordable options with adequate features while also including the most sophisticated of the lot.