The following review was collected and assessed independently with no input from the manufacturer. This is not a sponsored post. Have a travel item you'd like me to review? Comment below and let me know!
When I travel, I look for the smallest possible form factor to be able to shove everything in a bag and hop on a plane. I'm team #NoCheck when it comes to flying with luggage (if I can help it) thanks to my family's torrid past with lost luggage. One time I had to go on a week of no clothes in Spain when I was 11 thanks to Iberostar, but that's a different discussion.
So when it comes to finding a carry-on backpack and luggage combination, what I'm looking for primarily is storage space. Well, I've gone with the aluminum roller-bag from MVST, so I need some overflow space in the backpack that can fit under the seat in front of me. For that, I turned to a product in which I think I've seen 490,000 Instagram ads this year: Nomatic (or "Gomatic" in Europe).
What is Nomatic?
Presumably coming from the term "nomadic," simply put, Nomatic is a travel company born of the internet age. Beginning, of all places, on Kickstarter, their mission was to create a better backpack, with the tagline "the most functional backpack and travel pack ever!"
Evidently, this resonated. Nomatic ended their Kickstarter run with nearly 11,000 backers raising $2.2 million to bring their first product, The Travel Pack, to life. Since then, the company has expanded into other types of backpacks, suitcases and even travel apparel that are dedicated to the clean, minimalist lifestyle.
The Nomatic Travel Pack Review
In order to put this thing to the test, I decided a baptism by fire was necessary. For that, this thing would be coming with me on a one week trip to Ireland, a ferry trip, a train journey across two countries and a wedding. No small feat for one backpack. This allowed me to get into the features, and BOY are there features.
The Exterior
Grabbing the backpack out of its dust cover, the bag seemed much, much bigger than I first thought. Being 6'7" and 230 pounds of traveler, I opted for the larger 20 liter option that expands a further 10 liters with the built-in expander. This proved to be genuinely enormous, and not quite right for a plane as it didn't fit particularly well in the underseat storage. Only flying back in Virgin Atlantic's Upper Class did this bag feel like it really fit into the given storage space.
When you unbox the pack, you're greeted by a very handsome bag. The exterior of the bag is a water-resistant material that's soft to the touch, which came in handy when my cousin spilled half a beer on it as we were shuffling things around. It was easy to wash and wipe down, and there was no residual beer smell, a huge bonus when traveling with 11 British people at a wedding.
The backside of the bag features your standard backpack affair of a spongey, breathable backing designed to prevent sweat. The coolest part of this, however? You can actually hide the pack's shoulder straps behind this backing if you'd like to turn your pack into an actual, albeit enormous, briefcase! To me, this is a key selling point that is a business-travel tiebreaker.
Finally on the exterior, you have two bottle holders, one on each side, that are magnetically closed and expandable. Will they fit your designer Stanley? No, but they will fit a standard water bottle on one side and mini umbrella on the other!
The Interior
Unzipping the backpack isn't overly straightforward, as there are SO many compartments. Starting with the bag front-on, you're presented with two zip pockets. The top pocket is a small, exterior pocket which the video above presents as one big enough to hold your phone, though in practice it was a very tight squeeze for my iPhone 16 Pro (not even the Pro Max).
The other zipper gets you into the smaller storage compartment, which is the designated organizational area. There are 7 mesh, elastic pockets, two holders for pens and two zippered compartments, one of which is RFID blocking, perfect for holding a passport or two.
Next is the back zipper, which is the laptop storage compartment. The laptop holder is perfect for a large laptop (my 15" Dell fits with no issue), as well as a pocket for an iPad. However, there really is not an area for you to keep any headphones bigger than AirPods. If you want to bring your own over-ear or on-ear headphones, you'll have to fit those in with your other clothing. Speaking of which...
The final compartment on the interior is the actual area for packing clothing. Inside, you'll find a huge space perfect for a few key clothing items. You have an expandable shoe pouch on the backside of the compartment, as well as a mesh separator to hold your clothes and shoes in place. Beyond the mesh separator is the main area of the backpack, designed to hold your clothes and other critical travel items.
Inside this are four mesh pockets, along with two zippered pockets, for holding your smaller, loose items. I found the zipper pockets perfect for Pound Sterling coins, as well as the mesh pockets great for things like pill bottles. One of the mesh pockets comes preloaded with a hard case for sunglasses so your Ray-Bans don't get squashed in transit, while another comes equipped with a retractable key holder, which I found kinda useless but live your dream.
The Pro's of the Nomatic Travel Pack
The Size
Have I mentioned that this bag is huge? If you're a subscriber to Reddit's OneBag subreddit, you'll be in love with the Nomatic Travel Pack. It has more pockets than you'll know what to do with, and after a day or so, you do get used to the general size of the backpack.
It's Water Resistant
Aside from what I described earlier with the beer, the exterior of the bag really is a game changer. I've never owned a backpack before that was water resistant, so having this was a real lifesaver in the moist climates of Ireland, Wales and England. I wasn't worried about having this on me during the gloomier days of the trip, and it was a simple wipe down to get it back to normal under pretty much any circumstance.
The Aesthetic
I mentioned above that Nomatic is a company born of the internet age, and I meant it. Everything they do is black-on-black, matte finishes and minimalism with clean lines, and I love it. The look of this pack, along with everything else they make, is exactly my taste.
The Con's of the Nomatic Travel Pack
Ease of Use
It's an odd statement to make that a backpack is "hard to use," but genuinely this backpack is hard to use. The number of pockets, compartments and zippers required to access something as simple as your passport is a little overwhelming, especially in quick access instances like at an airport security line. While very functional from a theoretical standpoint, the actual in-practice use case leaves something to be desired.
The Zippers
Have you ever owned a Yeti cooler? One of the ones with the zippers that will only fit like a six-pack inside? If so, then you'll know what I'm about to say. If not, then let me introduce you to big-teeth zippers. While they feel sturdy enough, the zippers on the Nomatic pack (and Yeti products) require the force of King Arthur removing the sword from the stone to open. I gave the backpack to my wife so she could grab something out of it at our gate, and she physically gave up when trying to open the backpack.
The Size
A pro and a con? Absolutely. While I listed the size as a pro in the section above, that's more conceptual than anything else. In practice, it goes back to what I was saying earlier in that it looks and/or feels totally out of place anywhere else. Again, I did get the larger version so maybe the smaller version doesn't have this issue, but the bag fully loaded with clothes inside becomes a big issue on places like a plane or public transit, places you'd actually want to go with a backpack like this. This also includes places like Disney World, where the size of the pack is so big, it doesn't fit under the seat or in the mesh pockets, so I'm forced to take my Lululemon sports backpack with me instead.
Nomatic have attempted to remedy this problem with their compression packing cubes, which is just selling you a problem to sell you a solution.
Headphones?
I mentioned it above, but if you want to bring headphones with you in this bag, you effectively can't. You could install a carabiner and hang them off the bag, but other than that, you are largely SOL. I brought my Bose QC35ii headphones with me on the trip to be able to drown out the plane noise, and everytime I wanted to get them out or put them away or put the headphone jack away, I had to expose the clothing inside of the backpack including things like dirty clothes. It's really not a nice feature and one that should have been flagged in the Kickstarter process.
Final Thoughts
I dove into the world of Nomatic really thinking I'd fall in love with this bag. On paper, it had everything I needed and more for every trip. But that's just the problem with this bag - it's conceptual. No matter how many Instagram ads you see for this thing that touts the ability to "pack for one to three day trips comfortably," you just can't if you bring shoes, headphones and a toothbrush.
While the concept of the bag is fantastic, it's a limited use-case carry-all that might gather more dust in your closet than you thought it might.
Final Review: 3.5 out of 5.
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