Wheeled Backpack Comparison Coming Up

By Mika | Permalink |

6 comments | April 11th, 2007 | Trackback

Osprey Meridian Backpack The Wheeled Backpack is a bit of an oxymoron and potentially even significantly controversial if you’re talking with a die-hard backpack traveler about their choice of luggage. Personally, I think the concept was long overdue.

Now there are lots of different rolling backpacks available, from the school-kid kind, to full on travel trunks with wheels and straps on the back incase you want to pretend you’re ESPN 4’s World’s Strongest Man. Or whatever number ESPN channel it’s on. Our qualifications on narrowing them down made it quite simple to pick the top few to test - for true travelers. First, they absolutely have to fit the carry-on-only doctrine. Second, if we don’t feel comfortable putting in a laptop it’s not gonna work. Finally they must have a detachable day-pack.

After checking out tons of these at my local travel stores I narrowed it down to the 3 most appealing ones to test out, and find out which really does the job well. Unfortunately, The North Face wasn’t interested in sending us a loaner like Eagle Creek and Osprey did, so we’re limited only road-testing the first two.

Eagle Creek Switchback MAX ES 22
Osprey Meridian 22
The North Face Doubletrack 21

Our first test will be for a jaunt through an “emerging” country in Central America, followed by a business trip. Here’s what we’re going to be keeping in mind while grading these wheeled backpacks:

Usual stuff like build quality, durability, reliability of zippers and such. We’ll try not to bore you with specs that you can find online, this is a travel test.
True multi-purpose ability. These bags will be on commercial planes, tiny puddle jumpers, boats, maybe even rafting, rolled and carried down dirt “roads” and and we’ll want to see how well they handle all of this.
Intelligence of design. How do all these pockets (or lack of) actually work? Are they useful or just ignored or in the way?
Application for specific trip types - one may be better for a trip through the jungle to an eco-lodge than the other, but also worse for a business trip to London. We’ll find out and let you know.

Look for the full reviews to be up sometime mid next month, but until then here’s a picture of our two test bags, waiting for us to pack ‘em up and get goin: