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Osprey Porter 30 Specs
Cost: $120
Capacity: 30 liters
Dimensions: 19.5” x 13” x 10” (50 x 33 x 25 cm)
Style: Duffel Bag
Weight: 2.8 lbs (1.3 kg)
Laptop: 15.6”
Materials: 420D Nylon Packcloth, 420D Ripstop Nylon, YKK Zippers
Origin: Manufactured in Vietnam
Minimalist Packing with the Osprey Porter 30
The Osprey Porter 30 is a great little travel backpack. Good for weekend trips, or minimalist packing for longer travel. While the capacity is much smaller than the full-size Porter 46 version, the main compartment is quite large. If you slim down your gear enough, throw in a few items of merino wool and a minimalist electronics setup, you can easily travel with this pack indefinitely.
Dimensions of Osprey Porter 30
Most people would consider the Osprey Porter 30 to be a weekend bag. It’s quite a big smaller than the 46, but with a huge main compartment, it holds more than you think it would. With dimensions of 19.5” x 13” x 10” (50 x 33 x 25 cm) this pack is great for shorter trips. You could run into some issued with the width being too large for a carry-on. This is much more of an issue with the larger 46-liter version, but as long as you don’t overpack the Osprey Porter 30, you can easily compress it to fit in an overhead.
Laptop Sleeve
Osprey doesn’t list the capacity of the laptop compartment on their website. It’s not large enough for a 17” laptop, but it fits my Dell Inspiron 15” just fine. There’s also an additional smaller padded tablet sleeve in the pocket with dimensions of about 10” x 10”, this thing easily fits my 8” Amazon Fire Tablet which is about 8.5” x 5”.
Packing the Osprey Porter 30
I’ll pack all this gear into the Porter 30 so you can how much this thing can hold. If you want to see how to pack the Opsrey Porter 46 I posted about that here. My goal is to pack it as full as possible to demonstrate the capacity. Here is the complete list of gear I’ll be packing the bag:
Clothes
Long-sleeve button-up shirts (2)
– Hardvark Everyday Shirt Merino wool (1)
– Generic cotton blend shirt (1)
Thermal Layers (2)
– Patagonia mid-weight crew top (1)
– Patagonia mid-weight bottoms (1)
Outlier New Ways Shorts (1)
T-Shirts (5)
– Patagonia Cool Trail (2)
– Generic poly-blend undershirts (3)
Underwear; Synthetic (5)
Socks (3)
– Darn Tough (1)
– Smartwool (2)
Puffy Jacket (1)
– Arc’teryx Atom LT
Rain Jacket (1)
– Outdoor Research Helium ii
Pants (2)
– Synthetic Eddie Bauer Guide Pants (2)
Electronics
CARD 4-Pro Travel Adapter
Dell Inspiron 15” Laptop
Google Pixel 2 Phone
Anker PowerCore 10000 PD Redux
USB-C Cable 6ft.
Nite-Ize Cord Tie
Samsung Ear Buds
USB-C Cable 6ft.
Nite-Ize Cord Tie
Misc. Gear
Matador Freefly Packable Daypack
Vapur 1L Collapsible Water Bottle
Chums Surfshort Wallet
Travel Utensils
Bond Travel Wallet
Flex Lock
Passport
Notebook
Pen and Pencil
Sunglasses
Toiletries:
Sea To Summit Toiletry Kit Small
Humangear GoTubb 0.5 oz. (1)
Eagle Creek Silicone Liquid Tube (1)
Matador Flat Pak Soap Case
Toothbrush
Toothpowder
Small Plastic Unbreakable Comb
Fingernail Clippers
Razor
Small First-Aid Kit
Packing The Porter 30
I found that two Medium sized packing cubes with dimensions of about 12” x 9” x 3.5” fit almost perfectly in the bottom of the main compartment. Here I used two Medium Gonex Compression Cubes, they measure about 12” x 9” x 3”. These cubes are super cheap on Amazon, and surprisingly have become some of my favorite small-ish cubes.
For my socks and underwear I used a small sized Eagle Creek Specter Tech Small Cube. I’m using the small compression cube here, but it only comes in a set with the Medium Compression cube. You can buy them separately in the non-compression version.
You have a lot of options for packing the second layer of the Osprey Porter 30. You can kind of just Tetris your gear in here as you see fit. For this layer I packed the second Eagle Creek Small Compression Cube with my socks and underwear. Then the Matador daypack, rain jacket, and puffy jacket nestled in the remaining space.
I was able to get away with packing so little in this bag largely because I don’t have an extra pair of shoes, or any bulky clothes like cotton jeans. Some of my clothes are also merino wool, which allows me to re-wear clothes without washing every day.
The rest of the small items now have plenty of room to fit in the top organizational pockets. My sunglasses and phone go in the top slash pocket, and the travel wallet in back slash pocket. The rest of the electronics, chargers and cords all fit nicely in the pockets in the main top compartment.
Carry Comfort Osprey Porter 30
It’s worth mentioning that if you fill the Porter 30 this much, you might not be able take it as a carry-on. At about 10” wide, the 30 liter version is too wide to fit as a carry-on packed this full. for budget airlines, the max-carry on limit is usually around 22” x 14” x 9 (56 x 36 x 23 cm). The bag as I have it here is a little under 10” wide. However, this bag has great side compression straps, which will allow you to squish this bag down to fit the 9” dimension restrictions of many airlines.
Osprey Porter 30 Carry Comfort
This is what the Osprey Porter 30 looks like on me fully packed. The bag weights about 23.8 lbs (10.8 kg) here. I’m about 5’10”, 200lbs, with a torso length of 17.5 inches. It fits well on me, the hip belts sit a little above my hip bone, so it’s not quite perfect for my torso length, but it’s close.
For me the 30 liter version is much more comfortable than the 46. The larger version is quite heavy, and the carry comfort isn’t great with this much weight. This bag also doesn’t have very thick backpack straps or hip belts, and back of the pack is flat with no air ventilation. The smaller version fixes a lot of these problems with carry comfort though by just being a much lighter pack to carry.
Summary
The Osprey Porter 30 is a great little weekend travel backpack. If you slim down your electronics and maybe throw in a few items of merino wool, you can travel indefinitely with this pack.
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