Osprey Transporter Toiletry Kit Large Review

Taking a ton of toiletries with you on a road trip or beach vacation is one of those habits that’s easy to excuse. Clothes can be reused, and we can pretty much do most of our work with just a laptop and a smartphone. But, when it comes to toiletries, having a lot is much better than too few. A hotel’s complimentary toiletries can be spotty at best, and having to buy some at your destination is just plain inconvenient.

This is why we like the large version of Osprey’s Transporter Toiletry Kit. There’s a lot of space inside, and Osprey’s thoughtfully lined most of it with compartments and pockets. It can even be used as a sort of mini shelf that you can take with you everywhere. Just hang it using the built-in strap, and you’re good to go—sound familiar? Yep, it’s the same style as the Peak Design Wash Pouch, a highly-rated, well-regarded toiletry bag we enjoy using.

With great size comes great responsibility to pack it properly, though, so that accessibility doesn’t suffer. Now, let’s take a tour around this toiletry bag, and we’ll see how best to use it.

External Components

One of the key features that separates toiletry bags from regular pouches is the external fabric used. Toiletry bags need to be water resistant since they’ll be used in the bathroom, where spillage and splashes are guaranteed. For the Transporter Toiletry Kit, that fabric is 450-denier recycled polyester that’s DWR (durable water resistant) TPU (thermoplastic polyurethane) coated.

You get this sort of tarpaulin-like fabric that’s very water-resistant indeed. Water just beads off the material and can be wiped off easily after use. It’s not a hundred percent perfect, though, as stains from water drying up remain.

Up at the top is a simple grab handle that’s made out of nylon. The positioning is a bit weird since it’s along the top edge of the back. This means the Transporter Toiletry Kit tilts when you carry it using this handle.

Alongside the handle are two toggles. These are part of Osprey’s Swap-N-Go feature, and they attach to corresponding hardware found in other bags in the Transporter lineup. We generally like it when brands add this sort of modularity to their bags since it gives you the option to expand your gear selection further down the road.

The plastic zipper pulls are attached to their respective zippers through a paracord. Since they’re plastic, there’s no distracting jingliness to them. Additionally, the main compartment’s zipper has a corresponding pull tab on the other end to may unzipping easier. The Transporter Toiletry Kit is fairly rounded so getting the reverse-coil zipper around its corners is relatively easy.

Inside The Pouch

You get a secondary pocket at the front. It’s a simple stash pocket for toiletry items you may need to access frequently on the go. Think items like a pack of wet wipes, bobby pins, a pocket mirror, or other similar gear. We like having a secondary pocket like this as a lot of toiletry bags lack one, turning their main compartments into a catch-all.

Moreso than the pocket itself, the built-in strap inside is a very important feature. You can use it to hang the Transporter Toiletry Kit by clipping it around a solid fixture like a towel rack, shower curtain, or door knob. The strap is length adjustable, so you can have as much or as little slack as you want when you hang it.

The only downside here is that the strap is in the middle of the pocket, where it’s sort of in the way. As much as we want to make full use of the front pocket, having to deal with the strap each time makes us not want to do that. We do use it to store a handful of bobby pins, but that’s about it. Worse still, because of how the Transporter Toiletry Kit is rounded, those bobby pins get tucked to the floor of the pocket where we can’t see them.

The main compartment opens up like a clamshell. However, there are gussets at the side that stop it from fully folding out. The result is you get a more controlled opening that—when combined with the hanging feature we mentioned earlier—gives a sort of shelf arrangement. This is a similar approach to what Peak Design does with their Wash Pouch, and we really like that idea, so we’re glad to see a similar approach here.

Not that you have to hang the Transporter Toiletry Kit, though. It can competently stand on its own. That’s not an impressive feat since a lot of toiletry bags can do this. However, what’s really outstanding here is that even when it’s packed asymmetrically, the shift in weight doesn’t make it fall over.

The inside of the main compartment is highly compartmentalized. Half of it is a wide open space where we put our travel-sized bottles. The other half gets a little more granular organization, with a zippered pocket, two mesh pockets, a liner pockets. Plus, there is also a slip pocket alongside the middle divider and two sort-of pen pockets at the sides.

When you look at the main compartment in its entirety, you quickly get an idea of where each of your toiletries goes. Whether it’s a lipstick or a tub of cream, chances are there’s a pocket where it can fit perfectly in the main compartment. If anything, the Transporter Toiletry Kit has too many pockets.

In the half where we keep our bottles are two sideways-facing slip pockets. We’re sure there are users out there who have a use for these, though we don’t since our travel bottles obscure them. Still, it’s not a real problem per se since they don’t harm functionality. In other words, it’s an abundance of pockets, more than we can use, but we’d rather be in abundance than a shortage.

Space isn’t an issue with the Transporter Toiletry Kit either, especially since this is the large version. Full-size bottles can fit, albeit horizontally. You’ll need to start stacking bulky items like these in order to make them fit. The problem is that it’s fairly easy to get overeager and start dumping bulky items inside, and that can lead to accessibility issues as stuff starts to get buried.

All in all, the Transporter Toiletry Kit has both the space and organization for a large selection of toiletries. That’s good if you can utilize all of it. The catch is that it’s also a fairly large toiletry bag that takes up a lot of space. However, we think it provides some helpful organization in larger travel daypacks, like the Osprey Farpoint 40. Packing it with as much toiletry as possible leads to trickier access if you don’t load it strategically, but if you can keep those in check, the Transporter Toiletry Kit is a comfortable pick for those with a ton to pack.