In this video we're going to be taking a look at the Minaal Carry-on 2.0; a great
pack for urban one-bag travel. Really great for digital nomads and perpetual
travelers with a lot of smart features. I'm Tom, the founder of Pack Hacker and we
share our travel tips and tricks, we do travel gear guides and we do reviews
just like this one. So if you're new here consider subscribing. Let's jump right
into the Minaal Carry-on 2.0.
[upbeat music playing]
At the time of this review I've personally been
testing the Minaal Carry-on 2.0 for about 1.5 months in Detroit, Minneapolis,
Los Angeles and New York City. So I've taken it around quite a bit;
it's had a lot of mileage on my back and I've been testing in a lot of
different climates. Also we talked to my friend Roberto and the programmer for
packhacker.com, and he had a lot to say about the bag as well as he's been using
it for the last eight months traveling from country to country, basically living
out of the thing. Roberto has been traveling with the gray version and I
have been traveling with the black version. So this was released in mid
December of 2017. This is the Aoraki black version named after a rocky mountain in
New Zealand, which is where Jimmy and Doug, the founders of Minaal are from and
it's where Minaal operates.
The Minaal Carry-on 2.0 offers a sleek and
minimalistic look. It's definitely one of the better travel bags out there. It does
have pretty optimal packing space, but it doesn't really look like a box on your
back. And although Minaal kind of swears off of leaders and they want nothing to
do with them because there is no consistency in leader measurements from
brand to brand, they do say that this is going to be around 35 to 40 liters in
size. I did email them and kind of confirm that with them. The minimal
branding of Minaal kind of ties into the rest of the aesthetic of this pack.
I personally think it's a great-looking pack and a lot of other travelers do as well.
One of the things that I have noticed with this nylon is that it tends
to attract a little bit more dirt and dust than what I'm used to seeing in
other bags that we've reviewed. If I'm going to say that this nylon is close
to anything, it seems like maybe like a 600d Cordura or something like that.
This fabric isn't listed on the Minaal site, so I reached out to them to clarify
and here's what they said back: "Both bag designs and colors are made from the
most durable, wearable nylon fabric we found in our years of searching." So it
doesn't really tell us a lot. And I followed up again and I asked, "Hey what's
the denier? What specific nylon is it? Is it Cordura?"
So it's a bit of a mystery
nylon that attracts more dust than other nylons.
Starting with the strap system on
the pack - these are super great. They are a high-density foam; very comfortable to
wear. Side note that they can get a little
bit wrinkly, but that's a small aesthetic thing and nobody's ever going to see that.
The sternum strap on here is highly adjustable which is really nice. And they
do allow you to clip your sternum strap to the strap when you're not using it, so
you can kind of have a dangle-free experience. The sternum strap overall
is a little bit chunky. I've seen it done up in a little bit of a more minimal way
on other packs, but it still gets the job done.
And that ability to stow it on the strap itself is super nice to have. On the top
we do have some magnetic load lifters. And at first I thought these wouldn't
really hold that well, but they turned out to be some of my favorite features
on the pack. So again with load lifters - it really lifts that weight off of your
back, and these have held up overall really
well even on Roberto's. There's some slight kind of patina on the magnet,
maybe some like rust going on, but other than that super durable and holding up
well. Really takes a lot of weight off of your pack and distributes it evenly on
your back. Underneath the load lifter straps you have the dimensions of the
bag in text. So you can actually, you know, show that to the TSA or gate agent and say,
"Hey these are the actual measurements!" The black on black is a little bit hard
to read; it's better on the gray. I think they might have had a bit of a design
oversight with that one. And again, like the TSA and the gate agent are probably
going to weigh it with their own systems, or use their own predetermined cubby to
make sure that your bag is again okay to carry on.
But it's kind of a nice little feature that they have there and just goes to
show really how much thinking Minaal has put into the overall travel experience
and trying to make it as seamless as possible. So I definitely really
appreciate that. Additionally the pack does come with a
detachable hip belt - so if hip belts are your thing, you're carrying a lot of
weight, that's going to be pretty good. It does work well; it's kind of no-frills, I
mean it's just a ordinary padded hip belt. And one of the things with this
harness overall is you have the ability to hide it. So you kind of unroll this
top part, fold it down, kind of fold everything inside of the pack (sort of
takes a long time).
There ... boom! All the straps are hidden. Definitely offers a
nice look when it's all sealed up. But there's a couple things that I find a
little bit weird with this system overall. So if you go ahead and unzip it,
right, first of all it takes a while to do this.
Second of all you have to roll this up. And there's really nothing that locks it
into place, which it does stay within the top of the pack after you do roll it up.
But you definitely can feel it - especially with these compression straps
on. You can feel it right here kind of in your upper back and your neck. So that
takes a little bit to get used to. Make sure to wrap that thing up really, really
tightly. And again you kind of just have this zipper right here that's sort of
just hanging out. You know it just kind of looks like an empty zipper and that's
going to be there when you are using the pack primarily. So some of their bags I
think do this a little bit better. They have like a little bit of a pouch that
you can just slip these straps into quickly. And it should be something
that's really fast and easy to do and I think this is a little bit of a complex
system. The wrapping of the harness system - there is a nice padded back spot
that's really comfortable on your back and overall it's a very comfortable
carry. Both of the top and the side handles are nicely padded for quick
grabs. Again you probably don't want to carry this thing around as a briefcase,
but the handle is angled should you need to carry it for a short distance; it's
going to kind of stay balanced. It needs to be angled because
the handle isn't exactly, you know straight on, right in the middle of the
pack. So you're going to have a little bit of weight distribution variance there.
The compression straps are very minimalistic and they're a nice feature
here. So when you're not using the compression strap you just strap it to
the same side of the bag, you clip it to the same side of the bag. When you are
using them - it's easy enough to unhook that, hook it here and then just cinch it
down. And again that will block that main clamshell zipper and the zipper in the
back (which we'll get into in a second), but it's super nice to use those and
switch those out. You know they've really handled this nice. A lot of other
companies have these giant buckles kind of laying around, and I feel like this is
a nice minimalistic system that adds to the clean look and functionality of the pack.
The water bottle system on the side of this is basically just some fabric that
seems to be folded up. There's not a ton of stretch or give in it, which is a
little bit odd. Not super flexible with the sizes of water bottles that you
could snugly fit in here. And then they just kind of have this bungee cord
that's at the top that'll again, keep that bottle close to your bag. But
there's a couple issues with this: one, I think it's just like a massive bungee
cord. Another is when I grab this top cap on Roberto's backpack it sort of just
flew off, and that was a little bit weird. And on this new backpack we're able to
get that off as well. And it seems like it sort of like held in here in a bit
of an odd way. I don't necessarily think this will last for years and years to
come, although it's been decent for the eight months that Roberto's been using
it. I do have a bit of concerns with the durability on that and the overall
configuration of this water bottle pocket. It's decent it's just you know, I
don't think it's the best system. And lastly a big win for the Minaal Carry-on
2.0 is that you do have this little pouch at the bottom here where you can
hold a rain cover, and I think that's a massive win. So this nylon itself is
pretty water resistant if you get caught out in the rain for maybe like ten minutes
you're going to be okay. But if you get caught for longer and in a heavier downpour,
and you do need to stay outside or you want to, there is that attached rain fly
in here. You just pop it out, cover your bag and boom you're good to go. I love that
that's integrated right with the pack - great feature.
Now if we start off with
the back of the pack there's kind of a convenient half clamshell that opens up
here. We're going to have this basically zippered compartment at the top that's
about the height of a credit card - good for pens, good for pencils. And then we
have this document folder right here which you can throw your documents into.
There's also a special passport pocket here for your passport - fits
really nicely in there, even inside of a case. So I definitely think that's a
great way to store your passport; decently secure as well. If we flip that
over we're going to be taking a look at the suspension system for the laptop. So at
first I thought this was going to be a little bit odd, but the more I use it the more I kind of
fell in love with it. I think it's a really slick system. So devices can go up
here in this front pocket and then you have maybe a laptop or something larger
in this back pocket. Both these sides are super adjustable. It takes a little bit to
get used to - you might get the corner snagged a little bit on your first couple
tries in and out of here with the devices. But once you do get this
adjusted to your device sizes, it fits really nicely. And what it does is it
basically holds your devices and your tablets in the center of this pack. So if
you drop your pack on the side, it's going to be less likely that there's going to
be impact right on the side of your laptop because it'll kind of be
suspended in the middle of the pack. Moving on to the outside of the pack -
there are two quick-grab pockets here. So the first is pretty standard, again you
just like throw stuff in there when you're going through security. I think
these pockets are really nice to have at the top - just use them as separate
organization compartments. Then there's another quick-grab pocket with another
mesh pocket within the inside of this thing. So got some Japanese green tea in
here - love that Japanese green tea! And then you kind of unzip this mesh pocket
and you can store more things, and sort more things out. In here there is
actually a key clip, which is a bit of a hidden feature. Pretty standard - it's just
a plastic clip, nothing too fancy. But there is a place for your keys if you do
want to use that. Moving on to the main clamshell of the pack. These are two big,
fat #10 YKK zippers so they're super durable and they're going to, you know, have
some good longevity to them. All the zippers on the Minaal 2.0 are YKK, so
you can be sure that they are high quality. And one of the things with
this main clam shell that Minaal does that I find really interesting, and I
actually started to like a lot, was that you can load your gear onto the scoop
side of the pack. So it's not super rigid. I wouldn't necessarily recommend loading
a bunch of individually rolled up t-shirts, but if you do have a couple
packing cubes these are going to be great to put on this side. So I've got a GORUCK
padded field pocket. I've got two Eagle Creek Pack-It Specter Cubes. And then this
MUJI toiletry Dopp kit going on here. And you know this is great because there's
really nothing else to access under here, nothing at all. It's just again that
plain lining. But then on the backside of the clamshell what you do have here is a
two-thirds mesh pocket and a one-third regular pocket. And these are '3D pockets',
meaning that they do come out of the bag a little bit so you can put, you know
more than just flat items in there. So with this mesh pocket you can have, you know
individual items. I just have a Magpul Daka Pouch because I like to put stuff
within other stuff - it's easy for organization and just quickly grabbing
something out of there. And again you just got this other pocket down here. So
there's another Magpul Daka Pouch in here, and I've got a bunch of Orbit
Wintermint gum - favorite flavor of gum. I was back for the holidays - my family
gave me a bunch of it as a present. Thank you family, amazing! So we'll close that
back off. And the last thing to mention here is that there are four different
attachment points for some Minaal accessories. So they attach their shirt
protector here. We don't have one; we think packing cubes are really great for
that. But just notice that these are here if you need them, and they kind of
disappear into the background if they are not needed.
As we mentioned earlier
I've been testing the Minaal Carry-on 2.0 for about 1.5 months;
Roberto has been testing his for about 8 months. And we kind of took a look and
dived in and compared each of these bags. Across the board I
don't have a ton of confidence in that bungee that holds the water bottle down.
Again the cap on Roberto's popped off right away and we were able to get the
cap off of mine pretty easily as well. And just taking a look at Roberto's -
there's some just normal wear and tear. There's a bit of fraying on some of the
nylon loops. There's some patina and slight rust marks on the magnet - nothing
too crazy going on there. There's a bit of a bite on the nylon on the top part up
here on his. Keep in mind Roberto has been almost living out of this thing and
using it daily, so the durability overall has been pretty awesome.
Even after months of non-stop usage it's held its ground and then some. We definitely
recommend this pack to the digital nomad or a frequent traveler that wants some
handy, slick features and a really great overall look. And some good durability. So
is the pack durable? Yes. Is it the most durable pack on the market? No. Will it be
durable enough for you? Probably, depending on the type of travel you're
doing. Again that's up to you - overall a rate that's pretty high on the durability
scale. So to wrap this thing up with some pros and cons - the overall look of the
Minaal Carry-on 2.0 is some of the best that we've seen in urban travel packs,
and we think it's one of the better looking bags on the market. The
well-thought-out features come in handy whenever you're using this pack, and you
can tell that Minaal really went through and thought a lot about how they were
going to design this thing. So we really appreciate those design considerations.
The laptop suspension works really well and helps protect your laptop when it is in
your bag and you're traveling around. The water-bottle system on the side isn't
the greatest and again, that bungee doesn't seem to be super durable based
on our testing. The specific blend of nylon seems to attract more dirt and
dust than other brands of nylon that we have tested. The hideaway strap system
seems to be lacking a little bit - from rolling up this flap and manually
stuffing it into the top of your bag, to a zipper always sticking out of the pack.
We feel like we've seen some other bags that have done it better, but it still
does its job and works. It's just going to take you a little bit longer and it's
not the slickest system that we've seen. Thanks for taking a look at the Minaal
Carry-on 2.0 review. If you want to get a little bit more
into the nitty-gritty, head over to our website at packhacker.com to take a look at
this full review. We have some product data there, and we just overall go into a
little bit more detail on our written reviews. So definitely check that out. And
if you're wanting to stay up to date on everything Pack Hacker, head over to
packhacker.com/newsletter and never miss an update.
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