Tortuga Travel Backpack 40L Is the Best Travel Backpack for Your Money

15.11.2024 - 09:37 / matadornetwork.com

As a travel editor, packing is a routine part of my life. When you’re constantly on the road, living out of a suitcase becomes the norm and you get used to rearranging and retrofitting your packing setup to make it more efficient. Ironically, the most efficient thing I ever did to my travel setup was to ditch the suitcase entirely in favor of a new backpack, the Tortuga Setout 45L. I acquired my Setout in late 2017, prompted by a summer spent traveling through Southeast Asia and a fall in Mexico, during which I had a rucksack-style backpackers’ pack. At 33, I felt both too old and, now, too experienced, to be carrying around a rucksack.

What hooked me on the Tortuga pack is that it wears like a backpack, opens like a clamshell, and packs like a suitcase. When the brand released the new Tortuga Travel Backpack 40L this year, I knew straight away that I needed one. I’ll get into the specifics of packing below, but know this for starters – this is the backpack for those who have outgrown the vagabond rucksack days and who want something both more stylish and more functional, but who still abide by the golden principle of long-term and frequent travel: “Thou shalt not roll.” This pack single-handedly prevented me from selling out and getting a roller suitcase. Six years in, I have no plans to change course.

We hope you love the Tortuga Travel Backpack 40L! Just so you know, Matador may collect a small commission from the links on this page if you decide to buy anything. Listed prices are accurate as of the time of publication.

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What you don’t see are my biodegradable coffee pods. Photo Credit: Tim Wenger

The Tortuga Travel Backpack 40L is about 22 inches by 14 inches by 9 inches. That creates 40 liters of space to fill. The pack is big enough that you can fit everything you need even for long trips, provided you have somewhere to do laundry. I’ve reached a point where whether I’m traveling for three days or 30, I tend to bring about the same amount of stuff, and this pack makes it easy to create a routine out of your packing. I fill it up in the same order each time, and because of the see-thru mesh packing cubes, am able to view what I have already packed and what is still to come.

The Tortuga backpack is made up of three compartments. The main compartment, accessed via a zipper that wraps around three sides of the pack, opens like a clamshell. This makes it easy to access anything on the inside, rather than having to dig through stuff you can’t see in a traditional backpacking pack (or worse, having to unpack and repack it all every time you want to change your t-shirt).

The compartment that sits closest to your back when wearing has a laptop sleeve and room to store accompanying work gear. I travel