Matador  GlobeRider35 Travel Pack

Matador’s products are generally great.. It had outstanding quality, was beautiful, and will probably last forever and worth the price if it’s for you. This one was not for me. Two big reasons: 1. It doesn’t really hold that much. Once I put in a couple of Matador packing cubes on the right hand side, it’s pretty much full. The left side has 3 skinny compartments that don’t hold much. Contrast that with the Cotopaxi Allpa 35 which has a left compartment that is as big as the one on the right. When my girlfriend asks ‘can you carry this for me?’ and hands me some shoes she bought, I can do that with the Allpa 35. With the Matador, I must mumble something about my minimalist packing style and nowhere to put things. 2 Speaking of minimalist, we are told to pack light. To eliminate the ‘Maybes.’ Maybe I’ll need these swim fins- no you won’t. Maybe I’ll need these hiking boots- no you won’t. When the Matador design team was faced with Maybes, it said yes, yes, yes. By all means, Yes. Do we need room for 4 pens? Yes. Do we need 9 ways to get at our laptop? Yes. Do we need a secret compartment? Yes. The result is a heavy, bloated, beautiful , feature-rich bag that doesn’t hold much. If that’s what you want, they did a great job-but not for me. Oh, and one other thing. How could the chief designer let that thing out the door with a ‘removable’ hip belt that sorta can’t be removed? Is he the same guy as the one that let the ‘packable’ Freerain 22 out the door without being able to get it into its pack? I was swayed by the beauty, just as I was with my girlfriend, but neither one can hold a pair of shoes. I returned one of them.

I purchased the bag for a recent trip to Japan. I like to travel light and to be mobile, esp walking and traveling without having to check bags. This bag is just the right size for nimble traveling. The materials are high quality and the bag is very sturdy. There are plenty of zipper compartments for organizing gear and clothing. I can understand some may find the bag capacity to be small. But if you want to travel without the hassle of checking in a bag or dragging a wheeled travel bag, the Matador 35 is the perfect solution.

This is an amazing bag. It's high quality and literally has everything I want in a travel bag... except it doesn't fit me. I'm so sad it doesn't! My torso is around 17-18 inches, which is below the height listed on the REI website. I was hoping I could make it work, but it's definitely too tall on me. I acknowledge that I'm technically too small for it, so I don't blame the bag for it. But in addition, the straps don't have the shape that women's straps usually have. This would be fine, and I have other unisex bags, but the thickness of the straps really highlights this issue. I have a Patagonia MLC 30 and the straps are similar, but they're thinner so it's less obvious that they don't actually fit a woman's top (well, mine in particular) as well. This was my dream travel bag and I was excited to see REI had it, so I'm super disappointed that it doesn't fit and I'll be returning it. If you have a longer torso and are okay with unisex straps, it'd be worth checking out.

I just took this on a trip to Germany and it was really comfortable and held a ton of things. The different zippers to get my laptop really helped after I stuffed it with duty free goods. Quality of the bag is really high.