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By Geoffrey Morrison
A travel backpack easily carries all your stuff while letting you navigate airports, subway stations, and city streets.
After traveling with travel backpacks for years across dozens of countries, we recommend Osprey’s Farpoint 55 and Fairview 55 travel packs.
These bags fit everything we need for trips ranging from just a week to months of continuous travel. They come with a sizable daypack and are even airline-carry-on friendly.
They’re also highly adjustable and well padded, meaning that not only can you get a perfect fit, but the packs will also remain easy to carry and comfortable to wear for long treks, even if there are stairs, cobblestones, or narrow alleys in your way.
Comfortable, adjustable, and carry-on capable, the Farpoint has everything we needed for a week, or even months, of travel.
Comfortable, adjustable, and carry-on capable, the Fairview has everything we needed for a week, or even months, of travel.
Osprey has released new versions of both the Farpoint 55 and Fairview 55 for 2026; we are currently testing them. The old versions remain available for sale at some retailers.
I traveled with a Farpoint 55 for years, across dozens of countries for months at a time. The current version of Osprey’s Farpoint 55 and sized-for-smaller-torsos Fairview 55 mostly kept what we liked about previous editions and fixed what we didn’t. Best of all, they’re among the least expensive travel backpacks available.
The front of the main pack unzips like a suitcase, so you can easily fit and access a week’s worth of clothes and toiletries. The daypack, which attaches to the front of the larger pack, has room for camera gear, daily essentials, and a small laptop (via a built-in sleeve). The main pack’s straps can tuck behind a zippered flap, so they won’t catch on anything if you check your luggage.
The main packs are overhead-bin-sized for most airlines. (If you do decide not to check, you’ll be locked into using the daypack as your underseat bag.) Other notable updates include height-adjustable shoulder straps and big exterior pockets on the daypack. Previous versions of these bags used ripstop nylon. The current one uses a heavy-duty recycled polyester, which held up well during a six-week trip across Europe.
Osprey offers a lifetime warranty.
In addition to covering travel gear here at Wirecutter, I write about travel and tech for CNET, Forbes, and The New York Times itself, and I have my own YouTube channel. My first travel book, Budget Travel for Dummies, came out in January of 2024.
A travel backpack is for people who want to travel around the world unencumbered by heavy, slow-moving wheeled luggage. An internal-frame backpack in the 50- to 65-liter range has more than enough room for all of the possessions you need to travel anywhere for an indefinite amount of time — as long as you’re okay with doing laundry once you get to a destination. (If you’re going to carry heavy jackets, going-out clothes, multiple pairs of footwear, or other bulky gear, you may want something a tad bigger.)
A travel backpack is not for business travelers who’d like to maintain appearances, nor is it for outdoor enthusiasts looking to spend six weeks hiking in Patagonia. If you prefer something that rolls, check out our guide to the best carry-on luggage. And if you want something that you can carry on your back for shorter periods of time, that’s business-casual-friendly, and that you won’t ever need to check, see our review of the best carry-on travel bags.
Based on my experience and research, we looked for travel backpacks with the following qualities:
Here’s what I usually bring for any length of trip (and this is our standard kit for testing):
For our first version of this guide in 2016, we narrowed our choices to 11 possible contenders. For that initial round of testing, I poked and prodded the different packs to sort out whether they had any obvious flaws or issues. I had adults of various sizes try each pack to get a sense of what short and tall people preferred.
For each subsequent update, including this one, I tested with similar methods whatever new or substantially redesigned packs were available. In between updates, I took one of our picks on some extended travels.
Comfortable, adjustable, and carry-on capable, the Farpoint has everything we needed for a week, or even months, of travel.
Comfortable, adjustable, and carry-on capable, the Fairview has everything we needed for a week, or even months, of travel.
Osprey has released new versions of both the Farpoint 55 and Fairview 55 for 2026; we are currently testing them. The old versions remain available for sale at some retailers.
The Osprey Fairview 55 and the nearly identical Osprey Farpoint 55 have been one of our picks since the first version of this guide came out in 2016. (The Fairview is for people with 15- to 19-inch torsos, as measured from the top of your hip bone to your C7 vertebra, the one that sticks out when you press your chin to your chest. The Farpoint is for those with torsos from 17 to 22 inches long.)
You can carry them on the plane. Once you detach the daypacks, the main packs are now carry-on-sized, making them the most versatile travel backpack we’ve tested. Interestingly, the total capacity remains roughly the same as those of our other picks — that is, we were able to stow the same amount of clothing in this bag as we could in the REI Co-op packs (our former runner-up pick) and the Salkan (our former upgrade pick). The daypack, in this case, would count as your personal item — on most airlines, this would mean you couldn’t also bring a large purse or a briefcase.
Or check your bag — your choice. The shoulder straps can be secured behind a zippered panel, so if you want to check the bag or put it in a packed luggage compartment on a train or bus, they won’t catch on anything. Doing this essentially turns the main pack temporarily into a duffle bag, complete with sturdy and well-padded handles on the top and side.
They’re adjustable. Like our other picks, the main pack has height-adjustable shoulder straps. This crucial feature lets you get an all-important personalized fit that makes carrying the pack for any length of time far easier. The straps were padded enough for our testers’ comfort (though not as cushy as the Salkan’s, and slightly less so than the REI Co-op’s).
They have comfortable, easy-to-use daypacks. The daypacks are roughly the same size, or a little larger, than those of our other picks, something travelers who plan to cart lots of camera gear or other daily essentials will appreciate. The top of the shoulder straps connect to form a sturdy handle, which is extremely, ahem, handy. Each daypack easily holds a 15-inch MacBook and is comfortable to wear over long treks. There are two large exterior mesh pockets for water bottles. Though the daypack is a little short on organizational slots and pockets, its comfort made it the best overall.
The backpacks are tough. The Farpoint and the Fairview are made from 450-denier recycled polyester, which feels thick and sturdy, though more “plasticky” compared to the Salkan. (Denier is a measure of the fiber thickness in a fabric.) I put the Farpoint through six weeks of train, bus, and airplane trips across Europe, and it didn’t show any signs of wear or breaking.
The packs include a lifetime warranty. Osprey’s All Mighty Guarantee covers repair of any damage or defect for life — or replaces the pack, if repair is impossible. If you just want to return the pack unused, you have 30 days.
It’s been a pick in this guide for eight years — and counting. I have put my money where my mouth is, so to speak. After testing the current version of this pack, I liked it so much that I bought one for myself, replacing an Osprey Farpoint that had been my go-to pack for years of travel.
The U-shaped opening of the daypack is surprisingly small. You can’t easily spot things at the bottom or carry bulky items. On the other hand, this does limit what might spill out of the pack if you forget to fully close it, something that has happened to me several times with the old half-clamshell design.
The daypack feels less securely attached than it once had. Previous versions of the Farpoint and the Fairview had large zippers that basically fused the daypack to the main pack. With this version, the daypack hangs off the back, secured only by the nylon compression straps. The straps loop through reinforced parts of the daypack, so it seems reasonably secure, and this new design does let you stuff more things in both packs — but as someone who carries a lot of expensive gear in the daypack, I’m less than excited about it.
Osprey seems to have prioritized weight and breathability over padding. In warmer climates, though, this could be a good thing.
The packs don’t include rain covers. One is available separately, however. Osprey recommends the large size for the 55 L packs.
This is not a comprehensive list of everything we tested in previous iterations of this guide—just what’s still available.
During our research, we checked out a number of companies that make great packs, but none of those packs met all of our criteria. In most cases this was because the company specialized in top-loading bags, bags with wheels, bags that were too big, or very large bags that didn’t include daypacks. These companies included Black Diamond, Berghaus, Dakine, Eagle Creek, eBags, EMS, Ferrino, Gregory, High Sierra, Kathmandu, Kelty, Minaal, MEI, The North Face, Ortovox, Outdoor Research, Patagonia, Rick Steves, Thule, Timbuk2, and Victorinox.
Our former upgrade pick, Salkan The Backpacker, has been renamed — it’s now The Longhaul 45 + 20L. The 45-liter base pack has been redesigned; we’ll test it and report back.
The REI Co-op Ruckpack 60+ Recycled Travel Pack (which came in men’s and women’s versions) had been our runner-up pick, but this largest size of the pack has been discontinued. (Smaller sizes are still available.)
The men’s and women’s Thule Landmark 60L are well-made, sturdy packs, with a wide main-pack opening and most of the same features that we like in the other packs. They’re more expensive, though, and the daypacks aren’t as comfortable.
The Tropicfeel Shelter Backpack is a highly customizable pack to which you can add “modules” that expand capacity or change its use. It’s a cool idea, and the pack seems well designed, but it’s extremely expensive and doesn’t really add that much practical use over our main picks.
This article was edited by Ria Misra and Christine Ryan.
Geoffrey Morrison
Geoffrey Morrison is Wirecutter’s former AV editor, current editor-at-large, and a travel writer and photographer. He covers action cameras, gimbals, travel backpacks, and other gear. He has been to all 50 states and 60 countries, and he is the author of Budget Travel for Dummies and the sci-fi novel Undersea.
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