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Knack Pack Review 2.0 Expandable Backpack (Large Size)
Cost: $235
Capacity: 22-37 liters
Dimensions Unexpanded: 21.5” x 14” x 4.5” (55 x 36 x 11 cm)
Dimensions Expanded: 21.5” x 14” x 9.5” (55 x 36 x 24 cm)
Style: Clamshell
Weight: 3.3 lbs (1.47 kg)
Laptop: 17”
Materials: Water resistant 1200D polyester, YKK zippers, Duraflex hardware
Origin: Manufactured in China
Overall Impression, Aesthetic
In this Knack Pack review, I’ll show you a collapsible travel backpack with a unique style and design, that you probably either going to love or hate. I’ve been testing the large Knackpack for about a month, which expands from a 22l daypack to a 37L travel backpack.
It has great organization, a huge front compartment, and a padded laptop compartment. The styling is minimalist except for the triangle shaped front pocket, which gives the bag a unique look while still being professional enough for business travel.
Materials, Colors, and Size
Material
The main fabric on the Knackpack is a thick 1200 denier polyester fabric with a thinner 150D nylon interior colored with an orange pattern to give contrast help find gear inside the bag. The exterior fabric is advertised as being water resistant and has what is probably a DWR coating. That helps to repel water and bead up, but with prolonged exposure it will eventually soak into the fabric.
Zippers and Hardware
The Knack Pack uses all solid brand name zippers and hardware. The exterior zippers are reverse coil #8 YKK. Which means they are sewn in backwards so the nylon coil is on the inside instead of the outside. This doesn’t do much, but it does give the bag a sleeker look and helps prevent water from getting through.
There are two sets of locking zippers on this bag on the large front pocket, and the main compartment. But for some reason, it doesn’t have a locking zipper on the laptop compartment.
For the hardware they use a combination of Nylon Duraflex and metal. The adjustors, D-Ring to attach the straps, and sternum straps are both Duraflex. While the clip to attach the strap is metal, as well as the sternum strap hooks and the key leash clip.
External Components
The external features are a big part of what I like about showing this Knack Pack Review. It has stowable backpack straps, a padded laptop compartment, top carry handle, several large organizational pockets and an expandable zipper, as well as a great water bottle pocket.
Organizational Pockets
The exterior pockets are one of my favorite things about this pack. The three big pockets, help keep you organized, and help transition from a travel backpack to a daypack.
The top slash pocket has a divider and lined with a fuzzy fleece on one side for sunglasses, with no fuzzy lining on the other side. This is a great place for easy access items, like your phone or charger.
The bottom pocket looks like it’s designed to be a shoe compartment, but is supposed to be for electronics, chargers, and travel adapters. It’s pretty big, but not quite large enough to fit a size 11 men’s running shoes, or flip flops. However a women’s size 5 flat fits in there perfectly!
I have mixed feelings about storing my electronics in this pocket, because it’s located on the bottom of the bag where they could get damaged. There’s quite a bit of padding down here, so it’s not a huge concern, but there are so many other pockets better for electronics, I ended up using this pocket to store my rain jacket instead.
This front triangle pocket has an interesting double zipper where the zipper pulls hide behind a small logo flap. You can easily open this pocket, by pulling on the top of the pocket.
The front seams sew together several separate fabric panels, which gives this compartment its own volume. And looking at it from the side, you can see the pocket is quite large.
There are a few internal dividers inside, one large divider, and a bunch of smaller slots for credit cards. This pocket is large enough for a book or magazine, but it’s kind of hard to utilize the entire space of the pocket because of the location of the zipper.
Water Bottle Pocket
The water bottle pocket on the Knack Pack is large and very well designed. When the zipper is closed, you can barely even see the pocket. But when you open it, you can fit a huge water bottle in here. And if your bottle isn’t too big, you can actually close the zipper.
I have a 1L collapsible water bottle in the pocket right now, and managed to fit it in with the zipper closed with no problem. You can see when opening the front pocket, that instead of extending out from the pack, the pocket expands into the front compartment. So as long as this pocket isn’t too full, you can fit at least a 1L bottle in here and still close the zipper.
Laptop Compartment
The laptop compartment is located on the exterior side of the pack, nestled between the main compartment and the backpack straps. Other than the lack of a locking zipper, it’s large and well designed. Both the Medium and Large hold a 15” laptop, and the large holds up to a 17”.
It has a lot of padding, a soft foam pad on the back, and a thinner, slightly firmer pad on the front. Add that to the foam backpack padding and you have a very thick padded case for your laptop.
It doesn’t have a true false bottom, but the sleeve helps to keep your laptop away from the sides of the bag. The top side is the best, staying several inches away from the top, while the sides don’t offer much protection at all. The sleeve keeps your laptop about ½” off the bottom of the pack, and offers a small amount of padding, but not enough to protect it against a drop.
Knack Pack Review Carry Options
Shoulder Straps
The backpack straps on the Knack Pack are moderately padded, curved straps with a breathable foam backing, and an adjustable sternum strap. But they have no top load adjustors, and no hip belt option.
The padding is somewhere in the middle of what I see in travel backpacks. It’s thicker and softer than the padding on the Peak Design Travel Backpack, but not as thick as on Tortuga Packs.
The shoulder straps attach to the bottom of the pack with metal hooks into a nylon Duraflex D-Ring. You can detach them and tuck them in a top access pocket that goes behind both the back padding, and the laptop compartment. This pack unfortunately only has one top handle, and no side carry handles, making it slightly awkward to carry the pack when the shoulder straps are stowed.
The back padding is a very soft, low-density memory foam material, and very flexible. This is great because it’s very soft on your back, but because it is so flexible the back of the pack tends to mold to your back. This can reduce the air flow through the vent channels and can make the bag hot on your back.
Carry Comfort
The Knack Pack is designed to be worn in two size modes, as a 37-liter travel backpack, and collapsed to a 22-liter daypack (Knack Pack Comparison Chart). For this picture I have the bag packed out with a full set of cold weather travel gear including clothes, laptop, water bottle, electronics, a rain jacket and puffy jacket.
The pack is decently comfortable expanded as a travel backpack, but when its packed out at 19.3 lbs. (8.75 kg) it’s towards the top end of weight. The shoulder straps are decently padded, and I can carry this pack around without any trouble. But if I had any more weight in here it would start be be heavy and uncomfortable.
Now when I remove my clothes and compress the pack by closing the expansion zipper, my pack now transforms into a 22 liter daypack. All of my gear is the same in this pack, except I took out the two large packing cubes that held my clothes. The bag now weighs 13.9 lbs (6.3 kg).
As can be expected by removing so much weight, the pack is now much more comfortable. The weight distribution is much closer to my back, and there is much less pressure on my shoulders. I can easily carry this pack around all day with no problem.
Expandable Zipper
After you get to your location you can take out your clothes and compress the bag using the large expandable zipper than runs around the entire length of the pack. It compresses the pack almost half the capacity from 37 liters down to 22 liters.
100% of the capacity of the expansion comes in the main luggage compartment. This lets you keep the configuration of your gear in the rest of the external pockets the same. Just remove your clothes, compress the zipper, and you’re good to go.
Interior Components and Design
Packing Style
The interior of the Knack Pack has two main large sections: a large top access front compartment and the main suitcase compartment. The front compartment opens from the top with a gusset that stops the flap from opening all the way.
Inside are two large mesh pockets, a metal key ring and a divider with a fuzzy lining for storing a tablet. The main pocket is about 22 liters, which is large enough to store several medium sized packing cubes, or bulky items like jackets.
The main compartment in the back becomes available when you open the expanding zipper. This pocket opens from the side like a clamshell suitcase and adds about another 15 liters of capacity to the bag, bringing it up to 37 liters total.
Inside this compartment is a large mesh pocket on the lid and a mesh panel that does a good job keeping your clothes in place without getting in the way.
The size of the interior compartment is quite a bit different between the Large and Medium sizes. The Knack Pack Large Packing Cube is slightly too small for the large version of this bag. So instead I decided to use two of these Eagle Creek Medium Expanding Packing Cubes, which fit perfectly inside the main suitcase compartment.
Knack Pack Review Summary
Pros
My favorite things about the Knack Pack are the good exterior organization and the expandable zipper. I like the exterior pockets are easy to get to, keep your small items organized, and hold a ton of gear.
The expansion zipper provides a huge increase in capacity. The bag is small enough collapsed that it works well as a daypack. Then it expands 15 liters, making it large enough to hold enough clothes for extended travel without forcing you to change the setup of your other gear in the exterior pockets.
Cons
My main critiques for this Knack Pack Review are the back padding, the laptop zipper, and the front triangle pocket. The back padding is thick, but this also makes it flexible. Forcing you to rely on your laptop to keep the backpack stiff. A stiffer back padding, or an internal frame-sheet would help here.
The laptop compartment is well padded but lacks a true false bottom and a proper way to lock the zipper. And finally, the Front triangle pocket is large with its own volume, but the zipper opening is more aesthetic than functional. This makes it difficult to utilize the entire space of the pocket, especially this upper part.
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