Peak Design’s new Travel Backpack is perfect in every way, but may be too large for most

Peak Design is well-known when it comes to photography bags. I have the Everyday Backpack and the Everyday Messenger personally, and carried the Backpack with me every day of CES 2018 while on the floor, in meetings, and traveling between buildings.

The Everyday Backpack I have is the 30L model and fits just about everything I need it to, though it gets quite heavy packed as full as I had it. Part of the reason was I had it overstuffed most of the time, and could really lay everything I needed with me on an average CES day out in that bag well. That’s where Peak Design’s latest Kickstarter for its new Travel Line comes in, bringing a bag that can hold up to 45L and organize everything you need in a much more convenient way.

The Travel Backpack has 45L of storage which is a huge upgrade from the previous 30L Everyday Backpack. That’s not the only change here, this entire bag has been redesigned from previous offerings.

My favorite is how you access the contents of the Travel Backpack. You can now access it from the back of the bag, which is great when you have tons of gear. The side access of the Everyday Backpack was OK when I only had a few items in the back, but if I had multiple lenses, multiple cameras, and more then accessing some items would become cumbersome.

The top of my Everyday Backpack was a great place to funnel things in but I could never get things out of it easily. With the new design, you can open from the rear or side of the bag giving you much better access.

Along with better access, organization is also handled in a completely different way. Whereas the Everyday Backpack was designed to use dividers to keep your gear separate, the Travel Backpack 45L can still use the flexible divider system, but also has storage “cubes” that can go inside to keep things properly separate.

The camera cubes come in three sizes and can go from holding just a single camera body/lens to multiple lenses, bodies, battery packs, and more. There’s also the tech pouch, packing cube, and wash pouch to help you keep things organized and separate while traveling.

The Travel Backpack can really be pushed out to three sizes. 35L, which is the largest size that’s able to be carried on an airplane, 40L, and 45L to really fit everything you’d need.

This isn’t just a camera bag though, as it can easily stow your 15-inch MacBook or iPad Pro, clothes, and even kicks in the included shoe pouch.

Peak Design is using Kickstarter to raise the funds for this bag, but under 24 hours into the campaign and the company already has over $600,000 pledged of its initial $500,000 goal. Delivery is slated to be “before Christmas” in December 2018, and prices start at $235 for backers, though the MSRP starts at $300 after the campaign ends.

Personally, I had a hard enough time spending $250-$300 on my original backpack, and spending upward of $450 during the campaign or $635 after could be quite a hard sell for more budget-minded purchasers.

This bag can get quite pricey, however. The $235 price only gets you the backpack itself, with no packing cubes, pouches, or assistance there. If you want that, it starts at $399 and goes all the way up to $459. If you want more items like if you chose the large camera cube and would like a secondary small cube to go along with it, you can add on specific items during the campaign at lower prices than you will receive after the Kickstarter ends.

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