Peak Design Everyday Backpack Zip Review: Meant For Everyday?

POSITIVES

✓ Aesthetically pleasing

Modern and futuristic design cues

✓ Shoulder strap mechanism

Flexible rotating straps for ultimate comfort

✓ Customizable flexible dividers

Rearrange and make the space yours

NEGATIVES

✘ Tight fit for multiple items

Pulling devices out can be difficult

✘ Inconvenient space for essentials

A traditional backpack layout could afford more room

✘ Price

A higher price point for potentially less space than other bags with the same liter size

Purchase Price: $189.95

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Perfect for Everyday?

Peak Design is a company that started off with a lot of success by utilizing crowd sourcing. Due to their unique design language aimed at photographers, the startup has garnered a considerable following in the camera accessories market. They recently launched new updated second generation items and one of the highlights in the new lineup is a new design called the Everyday Zip. With a terrific blend of modern and futuristic design cues keeping the backpack from looking like other camera bags on the market, this Everyday Zip bag further illustrates the evolution of the Peak Design design language. 

The color we purchased for $189.95 is what Peak Design calls bone. It's an off-white cream color with a nice soft beige accent that meshes well for an aesthetically pleasing combination. Although Peak Design bags have a high-end luxury feel and price tag; this particular color does get dirty easily. You can try to maintain it as much as you can, but small stains will inevitably occupy your bag as time goes by. The backpack we are reviewing is a 15L pack that utilizes zipper layouts to give the user plenty of ways to organize all their camera and tech gear.

The Design

Peak Design has packed in a unique shoulder strap mechanism into this design that offers flexibility for rotating the straps. This allows the shoulder straps to extend around into angles normal shoulder straps can’t. There is also a very efficient pass through slot on the back of the backpack you can slide through the luggage handle extension while transporting.

Two zipper storage compartments allows for access into your belongings on this particular backpack. The main compartment houses all your cameras and camera accessories while the rear compartment can only fit a tablet and laptop. The laptop slot is a little tight but it’s fairly easy to use. There is a magnetic clasp inside that separates the slots for the tablet and laptop. The bigger slot fits a 13 inch laptop but it’s a tight fit. Also in this vicinity is a small slot where you can put your charging brick, cables and other miscellaneous small items. I was able to slot in a Pixel Slate with it’s keyboard in the bigger slot, while occupying the tablet slot with the Pixel-C tablet.

With the tablet and laptop snuggly sitting in place, it is rather difficult to pull them out effectively on an everyday basis. For what it’s worth, it does feel protected resting in there. That's the price you pay for the design.  

When it comes to operating the main bulk of the backpack, you can open the zipper in one of two ways: the first is to pull both zippers conjointly down to the side in order to gain access to the entire space. Inside the Everyday Zip, users are gifted with an additional zippered storage pocket where you can store extra batteries, cables and loose parts like screws for your camera. The rest of the layout for storage is for the user to decide thanks to the variety of velcro areas in the backpack. You can disperse the lenses and cameras as you see fit. It's quite a flexible user experience that isn’t specific to this bag, but I do like how Peak Design gives you a few dividers to work with. You can always buy more online if you want. I only make use of two dividers for my particular set up as I like leaving a big space on the top part of the bag for miscellaneous things. For example, if I'm working on a project and I want to bring a binder with me, a layout with deeper slots allows me to bring along bigger items. 

On the inner sides of the bag, little magnetically clasped pouches are just big enough to house a loose battery or cable. I do also like that there are handles on both sides of the backpack that you can use to carry it like a suitcase. Additionally, the dual zipper layout is very pleasing to the eyes but not too convenient. 

There are four sets of zippers on this main compartment side of the bag. Two of them are for the bottom side in order to gain quick access while holding the bag sideways. 

In my case as someone who needs to transfer files on the go and edit videos and photos; a camera along with a few essentials like a charging brick and external SSD in a small bag already occupies a majority of the allotted space. A traditional backpack layout of this size probably could afford me to pack more things in comfortably. 

A Mixed Bag

Using this as an everyday carry backpack to transport work devices is fine if you don’t have it on your back for long periods of time. I don't usually get too sore wearing backpacks, but this one in particular did wear me out. I don't know if it was the way I was wearing it, but I was sore with this backpack on my back during my trip to Seattle. The padding on the back is okay, yet it's not the most comfortable padding out there. There might be something about the ergonomics of this backpack that my back just didn't like.

Peak Design has knocked it out of the park once again with the design. You're not going to find another backpack that looks as nice for urban use as this one. However, for close to $200 and as its name suggests, as an everyday carry, I cannot really recommend it to the general masses; at least based off of my usage, and I think a lot of people do have similar lifestyles to mine. The reason for that is it's just not too flexible for everyday use. If I wanted to put in my laptop and pull it out, it's quite a struggle. For an everyday carry, sometimes you need to pull things in and out rather quickly and ironically it’s not easy here. Now for an avid photographer, this is a pretty good bag. I can see this as a secondary bag that can be used for casual day shoots without the need for too much gear. 3 lenses, a DSLR, and maybe a b-cam could probably all fit in here comfortably. What it comes down to is if you are a creative that only requires bringing a couple pieces of equipment, you can configure that really well into this bag. However, for all the other use cases, I just can't recommend it for the price point.

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