Fjallraven Raven 20L Backpack Review

Fjallraven is a brand known for its quality, durability, and style. Many people love the minimalist Swedish aesthetic, and if you do, why not extend it to your bag? However, while the Kanken gets featured on many travelers’ Instagram pages, Fjallraven offers designs for everyone, whether you like that open, boxy style or want something a little more organized.

If you prefer your bag to have more pockets and divisions, you might prefer something like the Fjallraven Raven 20L Backpack. It has durable, recycled materials, a comfortable fit, and a useful design, but is it right for you? We’ve been testing it in and around metro Detroit on trips to and from the office to help you find out.

External Components

Before we get into how helpful it is for carrying gear, let’s chat about the outside of the bag. It’s made with Fjallraven’s G-1000 HeavyDuty material, which is a mix of recycled polyester and organic cotton. While it doesn’t include any built-in waterproofing, the material is pretty thick to resist some moisture, and you can coat it with Fjallraven’s Greenland Wax for additional weather resistance.

There are a few leather accents on the bag: for a wrap around the carry handle, as well as on the Fjallraven Arctic Fox logos on the bottom of the bag and the left shoulder strap. They break up the Port colorway nicely and provide an accent on nearly every other available hue, with the exception of Khaki Dust, which is a similar shade of brown as the leather. The Raven 20L Backpack comes in several different deep colorways, so you will likely find one that appeals to you. It also comes in a larger 28L size if you need a little more capacity.

If you just need to connect a few more pieces of gear, there are attachment loops on either side of the bag, about an inch below the top of each shoulder strap. We didn’t use them, but if you want to attach a travel hat or hand sanitizer with a carabiner clip, you can.

You’ll also find YKK zippers scattered around the bag, with cords woven through the zipper pulls in the same shade as the colorway you’ve selected. That makes them easy to grab and dampens any noise from all the metal pulls. We’ve had no issue with the zippers themselves, and we’re not surprised to see our favorite brand of fasteners performing properly.

However, we sometimes get the zippers for the main and front compartments hung up on fabric welts protecting those areas. It happens often enough to mention, yet not so often that it should put you off this bag. On the bright side, those welts provide a cleaner look and keep water from getting inside, so it’s worth a little extra effort.

A quick jog back to that carry handle: It works well both for hanging the bag on a hook and carrying it from place to place. The leather wrap isn’t so thick that it won’t bend around a hook, yet it’s more comfortable to hold than the webbing strap it’s around. Of course, this won’t appeal to vegan travelers, but if leather doesn’t bother you, it’s a nice place to put it.

Since this is a daypack, we, of course, care more about carrying it with a comfortable harness system instead of via a carry handle, and the Raven doesn’t disappoint. It’s simple, with just padded shoulder straps, but we find it enough.

The straps are contoured to accommodate curvier body types and feature padding covered in breathable mesh fabric. The back panel has the same mesh-covered padding, which gets the job done for a 20L bag. While we miss any sort of keepers on the strap to hold in the excess, we don’t miss any other means of support, i.e., sternum straps or hip belts. They’re just not necessary on this small of a bag.

Fit Notes

We find the backpack pretty comfortable, no matter the traveler, though the Fjallraven Raven 20L Backpack fits smaller users better. Broad shoulders tend to splay out the shoulder straps more than they ought, and the bag doesn’t lay flat against your back when that happens. Smaller users with narrower shoulders didn’t have that problem and found the bag quite comfortable. It’s not uncomfortable, per se, if you have broader shoulders; it just doesn’t fit as well as it does narrow ones.

Regardless of the fit, the bag has a clean, casual look we like. It’s perfect for using as a personal item on the plane, commuting to work or school, or exploring a new place. The G-1000 material doesn’t look super fancy or too casual; it’s a happy medium that gives the bag a heritage vibe, which works for just about any situation.

Inside The Backpack

It also fits just about anywhere because of its plethora of pockets. We’ll start at the front, where you will find a diagonal zipper that opens a front stash pocket.

Normally, we’d say this is where we toss our phone, wallet, and keys—and you may—yet there are other places to put all that gear, so you might not. We’ve been using it for our AirPods, a small notebook, and a travel toiletry container, but it’s an open space that also works well for tickets, maps, and snacks.

Moving to the top of the bag, you’ll find a smaller pocket lined with soft fleece material. We put a phone and our sunglasses here because it’s soft to protect them from scratches. However, this pocket does hang down into the main compartment right above the laptop sleeve, so you’ll want to be sure not to crush anything inside when you slide your laptop into the backpack. We never had any issue with that, but we wanted to mention it.

There are two pockets on each side of the bag for travel water bottles, umbrellas, or anything else you’d like to slide inside. We tossed our phone in once. They’re wide enough for various sizes of bottles and hold even skinny ones in place pretty well. What you have in the bag will impact how easy it is to slide a bottle in here, but we could usually wedge one in even after fully packing the bag. Sometimes, it just requires a little readjustment of the gear inside the bag, but not much.

You’ll notice two horseshoe-style zippers running around the bag from side pocket to side pocket. Each has dual zipper heads and is protected by fabric welts. We’ll start with the front one, which opens a large secondary compartment.

Against the front panel of this section, you’ll find two zippered mesh pockets, one on top of the other. Inside the top one is a key clip on a leash. It’s easy to use, although you can’t quite reach a door with the key on the leash and the bag on your shoulder. That’s not an issue for us, but we appreciate having an easy-access spot for keys. We’ve also been using the top pocket for reading glasses in a case, as we usually have to take them out when we get to the office, and it’s a handy swap with the keys. The bottom pocket is the same size, though it’s slightly harder to reach as it’s below the opening of this compartment. It’s a good place for a tiny toiletry bag or everyday gear like that—things you don’t need to access quite so often yet don’t want to lose at the bottom of the bag.

On the facing side are three slip pockets: medium, large, and small, in that order from left to right. The medium is a good size for a phone or travel mouse, the larger one easily fits a wallet, and the smallest one, on the right, is good for a pen and stylus (you can fit two implements inside) or a slim battery bank. Then, there’s room remaining for other gear. In our case, we slid a tech pouch inside, but you could also use it for a travel journal or book or a travel gaming system like a Nintendo Switch.

We’ll move on to the second horseshoe-style zipper now. It reveals the main compartment, with a padded sleeve along the back for up to a 15-inch laptop. As we mentioned earlier, the top pocket hangs down above this space, but it’s easy to flip out of the way when sliding in your computer. The laptop sleeve is nicely padded, but it’s not raised much off the bottom of the bag, so take care when setting it down to protect the edge of your device.

Facing this is yet another large mesh zipper pocket for whatever gear you haven’t stored elsewhere. Truth be told, we didn’t end up using this one all that much; however, it’s nice to have if you need it, and it stays out of the way if you don’t. Maybe this is just our scatterbrained tester, but we did run into problems opening the wrong compartment—and, thus, the wrong zippered pocket—multiple times to get keys and glasses, which we had stowed in the front section. Since the compartments open similarly and the pockets look nearly identical, it’s easy to open one when you mean to open the other. Again, maybe this is just us, but we had an issue with the parallel zippers.

More space remains after you fill the pockets, and we use it for books, another pouch of accessories, and sometimes a small cooler with lunch inside. There’s usually enough room for it, depending on what else you have packed inside.

In all, we find the Fjallraven Raven 20L Backpack a great size for the daily commute, whether you just carry a computer and some accessories or you want to throw in a packing cube of clothing and a book for lunchtime entertainment and an afternoon workout. Its small size makes it a great personal item for the plane, though you’ll probably have to pull it out from the seat in front of you to see what’s inside. If you’re looking for a bag that excels at both everyday life and travel, however, it’s worth checking out.