Osprey  Skarab 30 Hydration Pack - Men's

Ful disclosure I bought this because it's the only one at my price and capacity points that fits my freakishly long torso. It's great for that! I'm a woman and the shoulder and sternum straps are well placed for me. The main things wrong is that the hip strap is narrow (3/4") and the hip strap pockets are tiny, too small for sunglasses or a wallet let alone a smartphone. Side pockets can be reached if your shoulders are flexible, they're open and made of light mesh. Reachable storage is good but I'd have liked solid closable pockets here. (Why not just fix the zip direction on last year's model??) The fabric and zippers are overall lightweight, back panel a simple flat board of aerated foam. The main back padding is the hydration bladder, located between this board and the main compartment. A good location for load balance and it's nice that it doesn't eat into the main compartment, but it's not very comfortable when the bladder is full, I'd say effective capacity is 2L rather than 2.5. Bladder/tubing/valve, not the fanciest but it's nice that they're included, and you'll definitely want to let this setup outgas for quite a while before using it. No load lifters, no rain cover. Overall it'll do what I need. Tbh for the price I'd have liked just a little more -- there's not quite anything here that I can point to and say I love.

I really wanted to like this pack. I got it primarily for a three-week hiking tour out of the country and was happy that the dimensions of the pack allowed it to be used as my carry-on for my flight. I also liked that the hip belt wasn't just thin straps and that it had hip pockets for snacks. Unlike other packs with hip pockets, these hip pockets didn't make the belt bulky, so I was able to lay the pack down flat and the hip belt didn't get in the way or stick up from the pack. Unfortunately, there is a major design flaw that had me frustrated with the pack several times during my trip. The lid unzips front to back, which was not the problems and was actually nice because I was able to keep the pack on my back while my wife opened the pack to get things out for me and the lid didn't hit the back of my head. Whenever I opened the main compartment, the lid flapped over and hung off the back of the pack. Again, that was fine, but on that lid are two small compartments. One is a meshed zip pocket to hold small incidentals; the other is just an open pocket under that mesh pocket. That open pocket is the problem and the design flaw. While the idea of that open pocket seems good as an easily accessible pocket to drop things in, the reality is that those things then easily fall out and drop into the main compartment when the lid is zipped back up. That's because everything turns upside-down once you zip up that lid. There's no closure mechanism (zipper, velcro, buttons) in that drop pocket and, therefore, gravity and movement takes over and things drop out. It's a frustrating thing to deal with, but if you're aware of that flaw, most everything else about this pack is great.