Mountain Hardwear Backpack

Rated 5 out of 5 by Aaron8151 nice bag Nice bag. It will fit a lap top or enough stuff for a long weekend. January 15, 2016

Rated 5 out of 5 by Patrick48 Well designed, well built, I like this item a lot I have to admit I hoard backpacks. I need a new backpack like I need a new wife - I have plenty of each. But, this backpack seemed to fit my needs in regular travel so thought I would order and either keep or pass to the kids. I love this design. I have made the switch from my last travel backpack and couldn't be happier with my new bag (papa's got a...). Great pack. Enjoy. October 28, 2015

Rated 5 out of 5 by aa479 Perfect Fieldwork Bag I highly recommend this product to anyone doing fieldwork in remote areas. I had a number of important criteria for a fieldwork bag and this product fit the bill. It is small enough to carry comfortably on horseback and motorcycles. It fits perfectly on the plane as carry-on luggage. There are many internal pockets to carry notebooks, pencils, recording devices, and a safe laptop compartment. It fit all of my fieldwork equipment and clothing for weeks at a time while doing fieldwork in Mongolia. It is rugged and survives abuse, but also has great style. Thank you, Mountain Hardware, for making a fantastic product. April 24, 2015

Rated 4 out of 5 by MarkF Great bag for smaller laptops I wanted to keep this bag because it was well made, sturdy, and thoughtfully organized.But, if you have a laptop that is larger than 15 inches (even 1 cm larger) it won't fit. My laptop is 15.4 and it wouldn't fit. I returned it for the Cronus since it was a little bigger. The Cronus is labeled for a 15 inch laptop also but it has a little more room and fits my machine perfectly. Both bags are recommended, so long as you pick which one is the best fit. March 27, 2015

Rated 3 out of 5 by DaveK Well designed, but the quality continues to slip I had been looking forward to receiving this backpack as a replacement for my very excellent 2009 Mountain Hardwear Guardian backpack. The quality of that daypack, with sealed zippers and durable nylon tarp for the rest of the pack, surpassed anything I had ever seen thus far in a daypack. If it had an external laptop zipper, it probably would have been the perfect backpack. Unfortunately, after years of use, the external zipper broke, and I needed a new bag. On the surface, the paladin is the perfect replacement, and it would be, if it wasn't so cheaply made. All of the materials are substantially inferior to those in the Guardian. The nylon feels cheap, and seems barely a step above the type of material you feel in a backpack you buy from a drug store. The straps are thin and lightly-padded. Where the Guardian had aluminum accents, this pack has plastic ones. Even the tarp is substantially thinner and lower quality. My largest complaint about this backpack is the zippers. The zippers on a backpack are the piece of the pack that you interact with most frequently, and are thus the main way that I experience the quality of the pac. A pack with great zippers feels solid and reliable; a pack with lousy zippers feels cheap and causes me to question its durability holding valuables like my laptop. Gone are the sealed, thick, quality zippers from the guardian pack. In their place are very low tier, un-sealed, zippers that I would expect to find on a pack I buy for $20 in a drug store. I worry I'm going to break them every time I close the pack. A minor complaint is that the top part of this bag tends to fold over itself when the pack is not stuffed (this is why the bag is so stuffed in all the promo shots), but frankly, that doesn't matter too much. The design of the bag is phenomenal. I love the side-loading laptop compartment, the large main compartment, and the top organizer pocket. Even if I have complaints about the materials, at least they are light weight, and the pack empty is significantly lighter than the guardian. I put some straps through the external webbing so that I can carry over-sized items on my back. Design-wise, there is really no other backpack that I've seen that works for my work/play lifestyle balance quite like the Paladin. I have a large messenger bag from a popular company, and I would pick my mountain hardwear bag any day over the messenger bag. It is far more versatile and easy to use. At a $130 price point, I would have been more than happy to pay an extra $20 to have everything top-notch on this pack. I really hope Mountain Hardwear steps up their quality in the next version of the pack, because they could really achieve perfection! May 12, 2014