Kriega packs, awesome!

[Watcher]

Ok, so I've been looking for a good motorcycle backpack for quite some time now to use as a commuting sort of pack and I bit the bullet and dumped the cash on a Kriega R25.  I got it a few days ago and today was my first time with it on the road. 

I gotta say, it's a hell of a pack!  I was skeptical at first of spending almost $200 on a backpack, but from what I've seen so far it's well worth it.  I was also skeptical of spending over $100 on a pocket knife when I bought my first Spyderco, but it ended up being an amazing tool well worth what I paid, well worth more than what I paid in all honesty.  Now I look at my old pocket knives like Kershaws and Bucks and Gerbers with a bit of disdain.  This Kriega pack is comparable to that, only in a motorcycle-specific sort of niche.  I don't think I'd use it much off the bike, since the straps are sort of designed with riding posture in mind, but as far as riding gear goes I don't think I'll have anything else from now on.

If you aren't familiar with Kriega and are too lazy to google it, the backpacks they sell have sort of an interesting strap configuration.  While it has shoulder straps and sort of a belly strap, all of them come together on a panel in the center of your chest.  When set up properly it hugs your hips taking the weight off your back and moves the pressure off your shoulders and onto your chest.  What you get is a very stable backpack that is very "transparent" when in the riding position.  Your arms and shoulders are completely unrestricted, and you don't really even feel the weight of the backpack since it's technically sitting on your hips and thus sitting on the bike.

It is incredibly stable.  I had it up to 75mph on the expressway with no noticeable movement from wind or anything, and I've done tight u-turns in a parking lot turning my head all the way around and counterbalancing and such without any sort of restriction or unpredictable shifting in weight or load position.  Much better than a typical backpack would be on the bike.
It also didn't restrict access to my jacket pockets like the belly-strap of a normal backpack would.  Awesome for me since I usually use an iPass, which is a little transponder for paying tolls electronically.  I've had bad luck with the sensors automatically picking them up when I'm on the bike, so I usually stop at the booth and "flash" it, so I like to keep it in my jacket pocket.  With a regular backpack it was a pain since I'd have to undo the belly strap, open the pocket, flash the iPass, close the pocket, then redo the belly strap which is a 2-handed operation.  With the Kriega on it's just unzip, flash, re-zip, all one handed.

You'd be amazed with the amount of stuff I was able to cram into it as well.  I initially was a little disappointed with the size and configuration, but I'm glad I took the time to mess around with it and figure out a system.  There's no built in organization to speak of, but I used some small Pelican dry-boxes as organizers and made it work.  It worked a lot better than I was expecting, I'm really happy about it, and since the bag isn't waterproof and I was meaning to get a Pelican for protecting my phone during rides in the rain anyway I ended up killing two birds with one stone.

I'm hesitant to go on and on about this bag right now as I've only owned it for a total of 3 days and used it once, but I am planning a more detailed review with pictures sometime in the near future.  I'll show you how much stuff I was able to shove into it, a little bit of the layout internally, and how it fits over gear and such.
To give you an idea, on the ride home from work I had it stuffed with a total of 3 dry-boxes, 2 pairs of pants, a shirt, a Columbia jacket liner, a pair of kneepads, some sunglasses, glove liners, a balaclava, some mail, a license plate, an average sized pocket knife, a small flashlight, and a small tupperware of chilli.  It was sufficiently full, but could still squeeze some small bits in.  The compression straps weren't even run all the way out...
If you frequently commute and want to take with you a change of clothes, some wet weather gear just in case, and maybe a sack lunch, the R25 is just about the perfect size.  Big enough for a journey but still small enough for the backpack to not be cumbersome.

They do make these backpacks in several sizes and all of the nomenclature is based on the bag volume, so my R25 is a 25 liter pack.  They make an R15, R20, R30, and R35 as well.  I wouldn't hesitate to buy any of them.  Considering what I was able to get in mine, the R15 would work fine as a simple commuting bag, the R20 would be that with some room for extra gear just in case, the R30 would be a good day-trip bag, and the R35 would be a good out of town trip bag.  They are also expandable with various sizes of cargo bags which strap onto the back of the packs, so if yours just isn't quite big enough you can easily rectify that.
Honestly for my use the R20 would probably be sufficient, but I like to over pack a little.  And at any rate, in my opinion it's better to have too much room and have to use the compression straps than to not have enough room and have to leave something behind...


If you were thinking about a Kriega, go for it!  Really high quality stuff.  The materials and construction are top notch, the design is excellent, and the comfort is second to none.

[john]

They do look nice for sure.  The waist strap is like on some hiking packs -which do reduce back strain and create a more stable load.  Do you know if they are made in the US or China?

http://www.kriega.us/

[Watcher]

Tag says "Designed in the UK, assembled in China."

Quality doesn't say Chinese, I'd say the stitching, materials, and QC match my US made Tactical Tailor backpack...


Having used it several times now both to and from work, going on a ride with a friend, and just running errands, this backpack is a keeper.  Solid, just solid.  Still want to do a detailed report.  Stay tuned.

[GTiRolla]

Hi @Watcher,

I've got the R30 backpack, and it's been worth it's weight in gold. I've had it approx 5 months now and I use it for my daily commute as well as longer trips (7 day approx 1400km trip) and i had my wet weather gear, plenty of clothes, tire puncture kit and it held up really well. Very comfortable with a full load once you adjust the straps.  It spreads the load very well and didn't suffer from fatigue wearing the pack.

You can't go wrong with it and I'm looking at getting a smaller one for work as the 30L bag can be a bit bulky when you just need to carry 1-2 small items..

[Watcher]

I see you are a new member, welcome!

Awesome that your R30 is working out.  Do you use other luggage for those trips or is the R30 all you use?

[GTiRolla]

Thanks for the welcome.

At the moment I just use the R30 backpack with some smaller stuff in a small tankbag.. If I do any longer trips I'd probably consider the tailpack or back pack addon.

[Watcher]

Just wanted to make a small update.  Still planning on making an in depth review with a ton of pictures and stuff.

It's been a month since I first got the backpack and I've been using it every time I ride the bike.  I've been riding about 95% of the time because the weather has been great here, so I've got a decent amount of time with it on my back.

It's excellent.  Completely excellent.  It's gotten plenty dirty and it seems like it just wipes clean with a few stout brushes of the hand.  I can't find a single loose thread on the whole pack despite it being in 70mph winds for at least a half hour at a time, at least twice a day, and for nearly a month straight.   It's incredibly comfortable, and no matter if I stuff it to the max or have just the bare essentials in it the pack seems to carry the same way and shrug off the wind all the same.  Stable and comfortable is the name of the game.

Can't recommend it enough at this point.  The price is well worth it.  The quality seems on par with my CamelBak Mule, which I've had for somewhere around 8 years and used, more like abused, extensively on the mountainbike.  That CamelBak has been dropped, dragged, thrown, and landed on in every terrestrial environment there is, overloaded, stepped on, soaked, sun baked...  Practically everything abuseive you can think of without malicious intent has been done to that bag but it has zero tears, zero frayed straps, and not a single broken buckle.  You can tell it's well used because it's scratched to hell and filthy with stains of everything from blood and sweat to horse feces (yes, horse feces), but the only materials that show signs of wear are a stretched piece of elastic and some worse for wear velcro that technically wasn't even part of the CamelBak.
Every fiber of that Kriega reminds me of that CamelBak.  Rock solid!