- The Tom Bihn Synik is a 30 liter travel backpack
that is the next iteration of the Tom Bihn Synapse.
This is the 30 liter version, and Tom Bihn
also has a 22 liter version.
In this video we will be focused on the 30.
I'm Tom, the founder of Pack Hacker
where we use our expertise and real world experience
to provide practical resources and honest opinions
guiding you towards smarter travel.
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Let's jump right in to the Synik 30, a bag
that I have been testing for the past 3 weeks
in Detroit, Michigan, and Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Let's jump in.
(energetic music)
The name Synik comes from a bit of a joke over at Tom Bihn.
So there's a guy over there named Nik, he's the COO,
a designer, and programmer, and there's a bit of a joke
that his name has to be in every product that he produces.
He created a wallet in 2018 called the Minimalist Wallet
and of course it was called the Nik's Min|imalist Wallet.
So you take the Synapse and then you take the name Nik,
marry those two together and you come up with the Synik.
Overall, the Synik looks very similar to the Synapse.
So similar in fact, that Tom Bihn has actually
moved the Tom Bihn logo down to the bottom right.
So on other previous iterations of this bag
it's in the top middle right here,
and that may be a little bit unnerving
for fans of Tom Bihn, we personally like the look of it
down there, it's a little bit less obvious,
but your mileage may vary,
may take some getting used to as well
since it is a new position for the logo.
We polled our Instagram audience to see what they thought
of the aesthetic of this bag,
if you want to be a part of that for future polls
be sure to head over and follow @packhacker.
We also add those results to individual review pages,
so be on the lookout for those.
Tom Bihn is decently underground, making all their products
right here in the USA.
I feel like if you've heard of Tom Bihn or you're
a Tom Bihn fan, or you have one of the bags,
you are really into bags, and some of the times
when I'm at the airport traveling around
I see somebody wearing a Tom Bihn bag,
I like to ask them about it.
Never once have I ever talked to anybody
that's not really excited about the bag that they have.
So Tom Bihn has a really great community
and a really great support system of followers
that really dig their bags.
From a travel perspective, the overall look of this bag
is a little bit round and kind of an oval shape.
Now when you think of optimized carry-on travel
a lot of the times you'll think of more rectangular bags,
the bags that are sitting up behind me.
And this creates a very ergonomic carry and a great design,
but you sacrifice a little bit of space going on in the bag,
you can't really just jam this thing out with a bunch of
different packing cubes similar to some of those bags
on the wall behind me.
That being said, we are pleasantly surprised
with how much the Synik 30 holds.
A lot of these pockets on the outside, the looks
can kind of be deceiving based on where
the zippers are placed, and the size of the zippers.
A lot of the times you get these pockets open
and there's a lot more room inside than you'd expect.
And the bag kind of shifts and forms based on
the amount of gear on the inside.
The main fabric on our version of this bag
is a 525D ballistic nylon, and the interior
is a 200D halcyon.
We love the interior liner because of its durability.
So the ripstop going on here, if you do get
a small rip in here, those lines will prevent
an additional larger rip from happening.
Depending on the color that you choose for the interior,
the visibility is probably pretty high when contrasted
with darker gear, so it makes everything really easy
to see what's going on inside.
And lastly it is a little bit softer,
little bit more kind of rubbery to the touch
compared to a swishier ripstop nylon
of around 200 denier, so we like that as well.
Wrapping up the rest of the notable materials on this bag,
these shoulder straps have an EV50 half-inch padding
going on, they're super comfortable, dense and thick.
Duraflex, Nexus, and Woojin hardware is used throughout
on this bag, all solid hardware brands.
And lastly, big beefy YKK AquaGuard zippers
for additional weather protection.
If you want more of the nitty-gritty on the specific
technical details of this bag, be sure to click on the link
in the description below, head over to our product page,
everything is listed for you there.
(energetic music)
Kicking it off with the harness system in the back,
the EV50 half-inch foam padding here,
one of the most comfortable shoulder straps
that I have used to date, especially for
a bag of this size.
Now, some would say that this is a little bit of an overkill
for a pack of this size, but if you are carrying
a bunch of heavy camera gear and tech gear
you really can't go wrong.
And who's going to complain about more comfort?
There are no low lifters at the top of this bag,
so a lot of the times that can kind of pull the pack
a little bit closer to your upper back
and prevent sag, but it's not really needed
due to the size and shape of this bag.
It's a little bit more ergonomic, you don't really need
those low lifters at the top of the bag.
Moving down the straps, we have a properly attached
sternum strap that is semi-permanently anchored.
We love that this is securely fastened.
A lot of other bags that we review kind of do this halfway,
and it can be easy to lose a sternum strap,
we've lost a ton of them when testing bags
with sternum straps that aren't quite attached
as well as this one.
The shoulder straps themselves are pretty standard
and easy to adjust, again the same note here.
We wish there were elastic keepers to help manage
this excess strap a little bit more
and clean it up a little bit.
At the bottom of the bag there are
two loop attachment points on the inside of the straps
that can be used for either a waist belt or a hip belt,
Tom Bihn has a ton of options over there on the site.
And again, I really love the amount of customizability
that you can do with a lot of their bags.
Seems like no two Syniks will be the same.
The padding on the back is quite comfortable,
you have air mesh at the top here, and then
a lower denier nylon at the bottom.
Next up we have a frame sheet between
the back panel and the main part of the bag.
That just sticks in this little slot here.
Big improvement on the Synapse, which used to have
that frame sheet on the inside.
The frame sheet adds a bit of structure
and helps the bag stand up on its own.
I'm a little bit taller at six foot two
with a 19 and 1/4 inch torso.
For me, I did notice the bottom of the frame sheet
kind of getting stuck between my belt and my pants
but that only happened just a couple times.
So just something to note, when you do have that
frame sheet in there, that extra structure
and you're a taller person, since this bag isn't super long
it may get caught in your pants.
Next up in the exterior, this top handle which is great
and a really great improvement in iteration
compared to the other previous bags.
First Tom Bihn just started with a nylon strap up here,
pretty standard, basically the same material
as you see on these straps.
Then, on the next iteration they took that strap material,
folded it in half and sewed it
to add a little bit of padding.
And now there seems to be about a 1/4 inch thick padding
here on the sides, sandwiched in between
two pieces of ballistic nylon.
This is a big improvement on the handle overall,
way better than the previous iterations of the pack
and again, this just goes to show that
Tom Bihn is constantly iterating,
improving, and just making their packs better.
And then lastly, at the bottom of the bag there is an
additional attachment point for a guardian light
that they sell, great for bikers, you could also
get away with attaching additional accessories as well.
Another bonus of this loop at the bottom here is
that it makes a great handle to pull the bag
in and out from under an airplane seat.
Generally with the wedge shape of this bag,
it's way easier to put this under the airplane seat
with this side going forward first.
(energetic music)
Kicking it off with the quick access pocket on the top,
there's about eight inches of vertical space here.
Pretty much the perfect size for a quick grab pocket.
Great if you're just going through the airport,
need to take everything out of your pockets,
quickly stuff it inside of here.
Also there's an o-ring at the top, and Tom Bihn has hidden
a lot of these throughout the pack
to attach additional accessories, such as
their smaller organizer pouches, things of that nature.
We found it really nice to attach to the o-rings here,
and kind of let those organizer pouches hang out of the bag
while we're using them in day to day use.
There are a total of 11 o-rings going on across the pack,
there was one in the water bottle pocket,
one in the small middle pocket,
one in the left pocket,
one in the right pocket,
three in the bottom pocket,
and four in the main compartment.
One thing about the zippers here
is that they are YKK AquaGuard, and on this small
quick grab pocket specifically it's
a number eight YKK AquaGuard zipper.
And with that AquaGuard protection it really helps
to keep moisture out, but it can make the zipper
a little bit more stiff,
especially while breaking in the pack initially.
For me personally I was at the airport,
kind of running through the airport
holding onto the bag with one hand (bag zips)
and it is a little bit hard
to zip and unzip this pocket quickly.
It's much better to set the bag down,
grab onto the fabric on the sides,
and zip and unzip the bag.
Just to illustrate how hard this zipper is to zip up
compared to some other zippers,
we'll compare it to the Mystery Ranch Zoid Cell
we got last week in the mail.
That thing has a super smooth zip, one of the
smoothest that we've seen.
This will definitely break in with time
and it's not really that big of a con,
more of a small note.
Directly behind the quick access pocket, we have
a centered, mesh-lined water bottle pocket going on here.
We like that the water bottle pocket is centered
to evenly distribute the weight of a larger water bottle,
not a lot of bags do this.
The stretchy mesh on the interior walls
to accommodate larger bottles, or make these
side pockets a little bit larger if you want to
kind of stretch them in.
We found this to be a great place to store the
clear-windowed 3D organizer pouch from Tom Bihn
using that as a toiletry bag here.
Ideal place for it, too, since you can
take it out easily at airport security if that's needed.
Moving on to the two side pockets here,
they're really easy to access if you
swing the bag around the front of your body,
you can kind of open those up and get a great look inside
while you're still halfway wearing the bag.
Both of these side pockets are a lot larger
than meets the eye as well, so the interior of this pocket
is actually kind of this big, even though
the zipper seems a lot smaller.
So once you get into the interior of the pocket,
there's a lot more room than you'd expect.
The right pocket features a single liner pocket
with a wide open space.
We've been placing keys and sunglasses
and other small accessories inside of this pocket.
Left-hand side offers the same liner pocket,
but with three divisions in it for things like
pens, pencils, styluses, and travel sporks.
Each one of these pockets features an o-ring as well
so on the right-hand side it's really great for
keys with a key chain, and the left-hand side
we have one of Tom Bihn's
small clear organizer window pouches as well.
Moving on to the bottom pocket, again some really great
and generous space going on here, we've sort of
dedicated this to being the tech pocket on the bag.
A MacBook Pro charger will stuff
inside of this thing quite easily.
If you don't want to manage the wires, that's totally fine.
We have the side winder going on, which makes things
a lot more manageable, but if you just want to stuff
you know, cords in here, that's totally cool too.
And then there are three o-rings
going on at the bottom here,
great to include those smaller pouches.
With tech gear you can kind of separate,
organize everything out and sort of pull them out
and hang them outside of the bag
when you need access to them.
We've even found that the Roost laptop stand
fits in here horizontally,
although it does make the bag shape a little bit weird.
But that's just an indicator as to how much space
is actually inside of this pocket
compared to the smaller zipper.
So there's a ton of room
outside of the width of that zipper.
And saving the best compartment for last,
the thing that is so special about the Synik,
the main clamshell compartment.
If you're a fan of the Synapse, you'll know that
that was a horseshoe zip, kind of made it
a little bit hard to see exactly
what's going on inside of the bag.
The Synik opens up fully clamshell-style,
there's a couple of great things going on
inside of the main compartment as well.
First there are o-rings and nylon loops
at the top on the front flap of the compartment.
There is a padded bottom on the exterior
right where the two zippers end.
There are removable compression straps where they kind of
push button buckle, that's really useful
on the interior of the pack.
And lastly, there are two o-rings
near the top compartment of the straps as well.
Moving on to the laptop compartment, there is
a big improvement on the Synik
compared to the Synapse as well.
On the Synapse there was this laptop cache concept,
and it was a little bit better in thinking
compared to in practice.
With this laptop compartment
they've gone a little bit more integrated.
It's accessible from the interior, so there's
a zipper towards the top that's easily accessible.
Really great if you're pulling the bag from under your seat,
especially if you're in a middle seat
and you're kind of space constrained.
Pull the bag out, fold the top part
of this fabric down a little bit,
and then slide the laptop out of the top.
Lastly, you can use the dedicated side access zipper
to get your laptop in and out as well.
A 15-inch MacBook Pro goes in and out of here very smoothly.
The entire pocket is lined with a slightly padded
mesh material, and we think this is a much better solve
than the laptop cache that we've seen in the past.
(focused music)
At the time of this review, I've personally been testing
the Tom Bihn Synik 30 for the last three weeks
in Detroit, Michigan and Minneapolis, Minnesota,
including two domestic flights.
The main compartment was filled out with
a suit folded two times in a garment bag
at the bottom for a wedding.
The top compression strap was attached and tightened
to keep everything nice and secure.
Below that, I used a Tom Bihn Tri-star packing cube
filled with other clothing needed for the trip.
This is a great packing cube for bags like
the Synapse and Synik because
it is a little bit thinner than other packing cubes.
And once you get inside of that main compartment,
thinner is typically better
so you can hold more items inside.
Then, the bottom compression strap is used to hold in
that Tri-star packing cube and suit together.
A keyboard and a laptop stand were put into
the front mesh stretch pocket on the interior,
which I still think is a little bit awkward to use.
And there is still plenty of room inside
of the main compartment, especially towards the top
where the packing cube ends.
No issues with durability so far,
time will tell if anything does happen.
We don't expect to have too many issues with the Synik
considering we didn't really have any issues
with the Synapse, and the two bags are quite similar.
Plus, all of the Tom Bihn bags are hand-made in the USA.
Tom Bihn takes a lot of pride in their craft
and they really make quality items.
Not to mention having a great warranty to back it up
if anything does go wrong,
that they honor with people as well.
So to wrap this thing up with some pros and cons,
starting with the pros, there is a bunch
of considered organization going on throughout the pack.
The ergonomic, intuitive design
just feels really great to use.
And there are some awesome options for
customization and additional accessories.
On to some of the cons, the rounder size
isn't optimal for complete space optimization
for carry-on travel.
The interior, stretch divider pocket is a bit cumbersome.
And lastly, a small nitpick, but we wish
Tom Bihn included elastic keepers
to help manage the excess straps on the bag.
(focused music)
Tom Bihn has taken the Synapse, an already great bag
and improved it even more than they have
in previous iterations to create the Synik.
Although we have a couple of small nitpicks with the bag
the pros greatly outweigh the cons.
If you're the type of person that likes bags
with a lot of organization,
options for a bunch of customization,
and don't need a giant rectangle
for completely optimal carry-on travel,
the Tom Bihn Synik 30 is an excellent choice.
So there you have it, our review on the
Tom Bihn Synik 30.
We would love to hear your thoughts
in the comments below on this video.
Thanks for keeping it here at Pack Hacker,
your guide to smarter travel.
We'll see you in the next video.