Topo Designs Global Travel Backpack Review

If you’re trying to travel with just one bag, you have plenty of options, from 40L travel backpacks to tiny personal item bags. While carry on bags can still cost money to bring on some airlines, personal item bags are usually free. So, what do you do when you’re trying to maximize that space? You might opt for a bag that purports to meet the personal item requirements of most airlines. The Topo Designs Global Travel Backpack claims to be just that, and if you’re going by the measurements given by the brand, you’d find you’re pretty close, going maybe just ¾ of an inch past the height requirement.

But how easy is it to pack and carry around a destination, and will it pass muster once you pack it up? That’s what we wanted to test, so let’s get to it.

External Components

Before we get to what goes inside, let’s go over the package. In the case of the Topo Designs Global Travel Backpack, you’ve got 200D recycled ripstop nylon on the face and 1000D recycled nylon around most of the rest of the bag for durability. A PFC-free DWR provides weather protection in case you’re carrying it from the train station to your Airbnb in Seattle (or anywhere else it rains), and the materials feel sturdy enough to last through many trips.

There are daisy chains of webbing loops running vertically down both sides of the bag’s face and a few more on the shoulder straps, so you can use carabiners to clip on extra gear, from a hat to hand sanitizer or a packable towel that isn’t dry enough to repack.

They frame the Topo Designs logo patch at the bottom of the front of the bag. If you’re familiar with the brand’s trademark designs, you’ll be happy to see they’re all here, from the patch to the daisy chains to the chunky YKK zippers with large cords woven through every pull.

Those zippers all work well, though we did get the pulls tangled up in neighboring zipper tracks once or twice. Mostly, internal zipper pulls got stuck in the exterior track, but you can also catch the expansion zipper pull with the main compartment zip if you’re not careful.

While you’ll obviously primarily carry this pack on your back, there are several carry handles to grab when you need to pull it out of the trunk, the overhead bin, or the seat in front of you (if you can make it fit). The same long and somewhat padded handle is on three of the four sides of the bag, with only the right side lacking one, as it has the bottle pocket instead. These handles are comfortable enough to hold for short periods and wide enough to fit even larger hands, though they’re not the plushest, most thickly padded handles we’ve encountered.

However, if you pair the Global Travel Backpack with rolling carry on luggage, there is a sleeve on the back panel where you can slide it over the handle to take the weight off your back. It’s thin and lies flat against the back panel padding, but it is easy to pull out and stretch over a handle, even with the bag fully packed.

That back panel padding feels cushy and is lined with micromesh, which is soft, though not terribly breathable. It feels like athletic leggings, so it’s slightly breathable but will still get sweaty after a while. However, while it feels well-cushioned, you will feel your laptop as soon as you slide it into the bag, especially when you’ve filled the backpack. It’s not thick enough to prevent it from feeling like a wood block against your back.

Unfortunately, the shoulder straps aren’t much better. They include load lifters and a sternum strap that you can adjust from one daisy chain loop to another for the right fit, which helps but doesn’t entirely stop the feeling that you’re being pulled backward by the bag’s weight. The shoulder straps have slightly more padding than the back panel and the same micromesh lining, which wraps around the straps at the top to prevent rubbing against your neck. However, they tend to dig into your shoulders pretty quickly with a bag packed for a trip, and there isn’t a hip belt or any other means of support to help carry the load.

Fit Notes

Stiffness aside, the Topo Designs Global Travel Backpack works well for travelers of various sizes. It’s not so long that it hangs low on shorter torsos, nor comically short on taller ones, so it seems like a happy medium … as long as you don’t have to carry it for miles on end. It’ll be fine if you prefer backpacks over suitcases, but plan to take Ubers or cabs from the airport to your accommodations. It fits well in most situations, with a fun yet not overly outdoorsy aesthetic. While Topo Designs is known for its colorful combinations, the Global Travel Backpack comes in more muted hues that don’t stick out as much as some of their other products.

However, if you’ll be climbing tons of steps, walking across the city to get to your destination, or can’t check in for several hours, you might need a break from carrying it or have to switch from backpack to hand-held and back again.

Inside The Travel Backpack

Sometimes, though, that’s just what you have to put up with to carry a lot of gear, so let’s take a look at where you can pack everything in this 25L bag.

In front of the carry handle at the top is a quick-access pocket. It’s a good place to tuck your phone, wallet, and passport, especially as you make your way through the airport, but it hangs into the main compartment. That means you’ll lose space either here or there, depending which you pack first. Filling the main compartment before loading up the top pocket, as we mostly do, means this pocket ends up lying horizontally against the top of the bag instead of hanging down. You lose a little of its capacity this way, but not all of it.

If you run out of space, you can tuck more travel essentials in the front pocket, which opens vertically behind the daisy chain on the right side. It encompasses two-thirds of the height of the bag between the two daisy chains and is a good spot for small toiletries, gloves, and anything else you can’t fit in that top pocket or want to grab before settling into your seat on the plane. It can protrude out the front instead of into the main compartment, so you get a bit more space, though overpacking it will affect your compliance with personal item restrictions. However, as we’ll get to shortly, this isn’t the only way you’ll balloon over those tight measurements, and it’s actually the least of your worries when it comes to fitting into the sizing bin.

On the right side of the bag is the bottle pocket we mentioned earlier. It’s stretchy and even has a tab at the top for you to pull open to slide in a water bottle when the bag is already packed. It’s also much taller than some other bottle pockets we’ve encountered, so you aren’t likely to lose your favorite drink container when you lay the bag down under the seat in front of you. We have no issue sliding our trusty 21-ounce Hydro Flask inside, but you can even fit a wide-mouth 32-ounce Nalgene with some effort. The elastic at the top and the mesh material hold tightly to both, even if you leave a shorter bottle closer to the top so you can pull it out easily instead of digging into the pocket.

Against the back panel is a zipper to open the laptop compartment fully clamshell. It has two zipper pulls, so you don’t have to open it all the way; instead, just open the top to load or pull out your laptop when you don’t need to get anything else from inside. Up to a 16-inch device fits, and a strap at the top attaches with a hook-and-loop fastener to keep your computer in place if the backpack is upended at some point in your journey. The back of the sleeve is obviously padded because it’s the back panel of the bag, and the front of the sleeve also features a light padding for device protection. The pocket is raised about an inch from the floor of the bag, so your computer hopefully won’t slam to the ground if you set the bag down roughly.

Organization for your tech is on the opposite side of the compartment (against the main compartment instead of the back panel). There’s a zippered pocket made of stiff mesh, and two slip pockets that are each half its size at the top. And when we say stiff, we mean stiff and rough; it’s the most uncomfortable-feeling mesh we’ve touched on a bag. While that hopefully means it’s durable, it’s not exactly what we hoped to find in a travel backpack, especially since this isn’t the only spot Topo Designs puts it. However, we put an Aer Split Kit made with equally sturdy CORDURA Ballistic Nylon in here, so no harm, no foul in this case, but you may want to take care with more sensitive tech gear or devices with screens. On the other hand, it’s probably not meant for scratchable gear since this is where the key leash is. It’s not easily accessible without laying the bag down and completely opening the laptop compartment, so it won’t be great for keys you need to use constantly. Instead, use it for your house and car keys while on a trip so you know where to find them when you return home. Just make sure to pull them out when you have a place to set down the bag so you’re not trying to dig for them while it hangs off your shoulder.

The slip pockets are made with the 210D recycled ripstop nylon liner material, which is bright yellow as on most Topo Designs gear. That makes it easy to see what’s inside if you want to reach in and grab your wall charger without unzipping the entire compartment, and that’s a good option for these large pockets. We also use them for cords or a glasses case. The pocket on the left also has a few loops on its face where you can hook a pen or a carabiner to attach other gear. We could even argue that creating your own key leash here with a carabiner through your jumpring might be more useful and convenient than where it’s located below.

Flipping back around to the front of the bag, you’ll see two more zipper pulls that open the front in a clamshell style to get into the main compartment.

On the lid is a stretchy, elastic-topped sleeve where you can stick a travel journal, your paper itinerary, or even a tablet in a protective case. It lacks padding, but it is the size of a folder or an iPad, so we recommend using extra protection if you’re putting another device here.

The opposite side holds the remaining capacity of the main compartment. It’s beneath a zippered mesh panel, which is great for keeping your gear in place so it doesn’t spill out when you open the main compartment. However, it has the same rough mesh as in the laptop compartment. The zipper pulls that open the mesh can also get stuck in the main compartment zipper if you’re not careful about where you leave them, so we have a few problems getting into this area.

Once you do, it’s a large open bucket space that’s easy to fill with packing cubes, a toiletry bag, and other gear. We have no issue fitting one large and two small-medium cubes, along with our Dopp kit, inside, with space remaining for a pair of jeans and a thin hoodie. That’s without engaging the expansion zipper, which gives you an extra few inches of space to fill around all but the bottom side of the bag. Topo Designs says that’s an extra 2L for you to fill with souvenir T-shirts or other gear.

However, here’s where we take issue with the measurements provided by the brand and encourage you to always check your bag after packing it up. While you can see above in our details that the bag’s depth is listed as 7.75 inches, that’s pretty much only when it’s empty. When we packed it with the gear we mentioned above—which all fit easily without engaging the expansion zipper, we might add—it ballooned up to at least 10 inches deep, not counting the shoulder straps. That means it won’t fit into the bag sizer for Frontier Airlines, for example, which only allows for a depth of 8 inches, including all straps. We got the bag down closer to 8 inches by removing our journal, hoodie, and jeans, but that left the bag visibly under-packed, and we just don’t think most people will do that.

So, if you’re looking to use the Topo Designs Global Travel Backpack as a carry on bag for the overhead compartment, a road trip, or a train, and you don’t have to carry it for a very long time, the space and organization might be right for your next trip. However, if you hope to use it as a personal item bag to pack for your trip to save on luggage fees, measure it early and often as you fill it, comparing it closely with the allowable dimensions of the airline you’re flying. Because while you don’t want to pay for a carry on when you purchase your ticket, you really don’t want to pay for it at the gate.