YETI Ranchero 22L Backpack Review

Travel daypacks include many useful features, from capable harness systems to easily accessible pockets, and enough space to carry what you need throughout the day, whether you’re at home or on a trip. But, while some smaller backpacks eliminate features because of their petite size, you might not want to give up creature comforts just because you have a shorter frame or don’t need to carry as much.

Enter the YETI Ranchero 22L Backpack. Like its 27L sibling, it includes a decent amount of usable capacity, wrapped in materials that hold up to the elements to protect your gear and (should be) comfortable to carry for longer periods. So, do its durable materials, beefy harness system, and wide access come together to create the perfect backpack? Let’s find out.

External Components

YETI is prioritizing durability over weight with the Ranchero backpacks. The exterior material is Tuffskin™ nylon, a 700D abrasion-resistant fabric. There’s a thicker, water-resistant PU-coated 840D nylon on the bag’s base to protect your gear if you have to set it down on something damp. It’s beefed up with a piece of plastic hidden between the bottom of the bag and the 210D nylon ripstop liner to keep the bag standing whenever you set it down.

However, while the Ranchero comes with optional compression straps, the built-in structure fights them. Even if you cinch the straps tightly, the top and bottom of the bag retain their structure, so it doesn’t really get much smaller. You can use them to attach gear to the outside of the bag and to hold bottles in place in the side pocket, though they block the tops of the pockets, so you have to get the straps out of the way before sliding a bottle or anything else inside.

The compression straps slide through four loops on the front of the bag and four more against the back panel. The fit is tight as you try to shove the buckle through, but you’re probably only going to install them once, not feed them in and out as you need to carry or remove your bottle. Instead, unbuckle the straps and loosen the side you need to slide what you want into the pocket, then retighten them.

Duraflex makes the buckles on those straps and the optional sternum strap. They all work well and include elastic keepers to reduce dangling straps around the bag. We appreciate that; there are a lot of straps on this bag.

The YKK zippers have a PU coating for weather protection. The zipper pulls are easy to find and grab, as they have cords woven into them wrapped with heat-shrink material at the end. There are also loops at the top of the bag that you can grab for extra leverage to open some of the zippers. That’s another nice inclusion, as they’re pretty stiff.

The main compartment is supposed to open with a “RipZip.” That means one zipper runs vertically down the center of the bag’s front and meets two angled horizontal zippers near the top. The idea is that you can just grab the lid just below the hook-and-loop YETI logo and pull it open to access your gear. You can, but it’s not easy and takes a lot of muscle to make it work. It has gotten easier over time, but you’ll want to break the zippers in before relying on that feature for a trip.

For sure, the Y-shaped design is useful for accessing gear at different parts of the bag without undoing the entire zipper, but it’s just not as quick as it seems it should be.

There’s a sturdy carry handle at the top that works well for hanging the bag up and moving it from place to place. It’s not so cushy that you’ll want to use it for long periods, but it’s not so anemic that it’ll cut into your hands if you must. There’s also a luggage pass-through against the back panel if you want to pair the daypack with rolling carry on luggage or a larger suitcase. It’s a stretchy strap that connects with a gatekeeper clip G-hook in the middle. You can separate the two halves and tuck them behind the back panel when you don’t need them, if you feel them while carrying the bag, though we didn’t have that problem.

The harness system is the same for the 22L bag as for the 27L, so it’s quite beefy. There are load lifters with two adjusters on each strap, a daisy chain of loops on the bottom half to hook the sternum strap, and a stiff, thick foam back panel pad. The sternum strap hooks on with a large plastic clip on each side, so you can move it wherever you need it on the straps or just take it off if you don’t like using it.

Fit Notes

However, if you read our review of the larger bag, you might know that, while very capable, the harness system is quite stiff. Unfortunately, the 22L bag is no different. The back panel is great for improving your posture, but the straps can dig into your traps, even with the load lifters cinched as tightly as possible. If you’re using this more as a commuter bag, it’s just fine for shorter periods, whether over one or two shoulders. You can also keep the fit looser than you would typically, as that can alleviate some of the issues. One of our testers would rather do without the sternum strap’s support than have the shoulder straps dig in; your mileage will vary as to whether you agree, and it will likely depend more on your body type than anything else.

The YETI Ranchero 22L Backpack definitely has a rugged, outdoorsy vibe. It’ll be great for a day hike or a camping trip, and you can use it to explore a new destination, but it’s probably not something you want to bring into more professional settings. It’ll work great if your office is more business casual, you bike to work, and plan to hit the gym afterward. It doesn’t blend well with a suit or more professional clothing.

Inside The Backpack

There are plenty of spots to organize your gear, though, so let’s start with our favorite: the quick-access pocket on the top. Its zipper runs parallel to the back panel, and the pocket encompasses the entire lid.

It has a mesh bottom visible from inside the bag and more space than you’d typically encounter in a quick-access pocket. The mesh bottom is flexible enough to let you stick your hand in, even when there’s a lot inside. We use it for a phone, wallet, a toiletry pouch, and keys. Those clip to a nice-length leash with a gatekeeper clip at the end, and we like that the leash is long enough for key fobs to reach the panel on the door, though you’ll have to remove them or swing the bag around to use an actual key in a door lock.

There are also two large stretchy pockets for water bottles, travel umbrellas, tripods, or whatever other thin gear you want to carry. They can expand large enough to hold thick YETI Rambler bottles, yet also hold tight to slimmer ones. In practice, that means it takes more effort to put in wider bottles than narrower ones, even if you don’t fill the pockets adjacent to them inside the bag. We’ll get to those shortly, but basically, if you fill the interior pockets, you will bump into the gear inside when you try to squeeze in a water bottle.

That’s it for the outside, so let’s head into the main compartment through that Y-shaped opening. The design is useful because it allows you to pack bulkier gear at the bottom of the bag without it getting stuck on the pockets at the top.

Against the back panel are two padded sleeves—one for a 15-inch laptop and one for a tablet or notebook. This is one of the reasons the Y-zip comes in handy—you can pull out your device without dislodging the rest of your gear by opening just the lid and sliding it out.

The organization is the same on each side of the bag. There are two stretchy zip pockets at the top to lock down small gear, even items that are a bit more toward the “medium” side of small, like a hard glasses case. That’s what we’ve been using one for, while the other is good for cords, chargers, or anything else you haven’t put into a separate pouch or pocket elsewhere.

Below are the stretchy slip pockets we mentioned earlier, adjacent to the exterior bottle pockets. We put an Aer Split Kit with our tech in one and left the other empty to avoid clashing with it when we carried a bottle on the outside. This isn’t as big an issue if you don’t have the main compartment fully packed, but it becomes one once you do.

Thanks to the bag’s structure, there’s still plenty of space in the center. We carried a small cooler and an extra layer inside for everyday carry, but you can fit a few packing cubes, a toiletry bag, and other essentials instead if you want to use it as a personal item bag for the plane. Just be sure to double-check the allowable dimensions of the carrier you’re flying, as its depth might bump against tighter restrictions, and as we mentioned, it doesn’t exactly cinch down smaller at either end.

So while the structure is great when you’re filling it, it doesn’t flex the other direction when you want to minimize your gear. The comfort doesn’t suit every body style, either. On the other hand, it feels much more spacious than you might expect from a 22-liter bag, so you’ll have to decide whether the space and organization are worth the stiffness.