Review on 🎒 Porter Travel Backpack by Osprey Packs - Enhancing Backpacks for Your Travels by Christina Potter

I'm a very frugal person, and the idea of spending more than $25 for anything less than a refrigerator usually strikes me as ridiculous. However, after an embarrassing incident where my husband and I forced ourselves to lug our massive wheeled luggage through a poorly planned two-hour walking tour of the cobbled streets of Rome, I became obsessed with the concept of the one-backpack trip and plan to do so in the future As we travel a lot more we decided it would probably be a good idea to invest in a quality bag that won't give us serious and costly back problems in the future. But the thing is, I'm not a professional backpacker or travel backpack expert, but my filthy cheapness got me to do some academic research and my options basically boiled down to the Porter 30 or Farpoint 40. I took the porter. Initially, but after a week of testing, in an exciting twist I decided to gift it to my husband and buy myself an unfortunately more expensive Fairview 40. Do I feel like I'm spending too much money? something meant to hold things much less valuable than itself? Definitive. Was it worth it? Probably yes. This bag will definitely accompany us on all our future trips, from day trips or week-long trips to multi-week interplanetary vacations, and will probably be my most important city bag when there is not much to do. but I will explain why I decided to try Fairview even though I rejected that option from the start. First the positives compared to the Fairview: the inner and outer pockets are very well placed and the Porter has more of them. - The semi-rigid sidewalls give it a nice structure, it feels firmer and makes it really bulky and easy to pack. -The black color is actually black (not a fancy shade of green like Farpoint and Fairview). - Model 30l has a smaller profile but claims to hold just as much stuff as model 40 thanks to rigid walls allowing for more efficient packing (we're yet to find out). Pretty awesome as you can attach the shoulder straps to your waistband without having to completely remove the belt when not in use. On the Fairview, all of the straps are either inside or outside, so unless you choose to wear a belt, they'll likely dangle on either side of you, making you look like a small airplane. Functionally and aesthetically, a pair of Porter hydration holsters was ideal. The only drawback for me was the shoulder straps. The shoulder straps are too wide and cut into my neck and the front of my shoulders at the same time, and the waist straps somehow manage to wedge my hips between them and the top of my pants when I'm going fast. These problems do not arise when my husband carries this bag. I'm by no means petite, around 5'6" and 185 lbs, so I'm still skeptical of the Fairview, which reads like it's made for elves, but "ladies-specific" seems to have the exact same issues with narrower shoulder straps to decide turned in at the shoulder, and curved waist straps, that sort of thing, so we'll look at that once it ships. Until then, the Porter remains my favorite backpack, despite the small flaws in my construction. If you are a man, this pack is for you.