Peak Design Outdoor Sling 2L Review

Introducing a lineup focused on outdoor use may not be the first thing you’d think Peak Design would do, but the Peak Design Outdoor Sling 2L shares many features with its Everyday counterparts. The general shape and visual cues are there, most notably the dimpled corners and somewhat hexagonal shape.

Take a closer look, though, and you’ll see weather-resistant coated fabric, a fairly complex harness system, and other convenient little touches for those looking for a sling to take on outdoor adventures—let’s check it out!

External Components

Judging by the looks of the Outdoor Sling 2L, Peak Design did its best to keep a familiar shape with its tapered corners and clean lines. It’s not a very busy-looking exterior filled with many creases and stitch lines, even less so than what the slings in the Everyday lineup have. This is where the approach starts to diverge.

For starters, you’ll notice that the logo is simply printed on. No leather or synthetic tabs to bear it; it’s just a simple Peak Design logo. Second, the material is much thinner, lighter, and less cloth-like. It has a very subtle grid-like pattern that reminds us of ripstop nylon. However, the fabric’s texture and consistency also somewhat remind us of X-Pac, albeit a very light version. That’s probably due to the weather-repellant PFAS-free coating, though we can’t be certain. With all that in mind, there’s a clear emphasis on lightness and weather resistance here, which makes sense given this bag’s intended use.

To round it up, the unbranded zippers have pulls that look a lot like twine. However, they’re fairly soft and have heat-shrink material at their apex, so don’t think they’re too rigid to pull on. The zippers being unbranded does automatically throw up some red flags, but these ones didn’t jam or break during testing, so we’re giving them a pass (plus, we think Peak Design knows better than to skimp out on zippers on an outdoors-focused backpack).

We’re digging the Outdoor Sling 2L’s looks. They could’ve gone all out by throwing a bunch of loops, bungees, and buckles to the outside to make it more functional and outdoorsy looking, but Peak Design stuck to their reserved aesthetics, which we like. That said, the relatively thin fabric does struggle to maintain a cohesive and clean shape once you’ve filled the bag with bulky items. This results in a rather lumpy look most of the time. Mind you, it’s not a case of being “overpacked” or cramped since there’s clearly enough volume and room to expand, thanks to the corner gussets.

There’s technically a grab handle at the top. And we say “technically” because it’s very thin and almost rivals the twine zipper pulls in terms of slimness. In other words, it’s not something we went out of our way to use; we’d rather clutch the entire sling than grab it by this handle. More interesting are the loops located between the handle’s bases. You can use these to attach the Outdoor Sling 2L to other bags as an accessory. Of course, you’d ideally remove the harness system before doing this, so let’s take a look at that next.

The harness system is also a clear point of focus, as evidenced by its relative complexity. Starting with its padding, it spans most of the entire strap to make up for the fact that you can’t shift it independently. Take a closer look, and you’ll see that the padding itself and its cloth cover are notably aerated by holes and mesh. This should help minimize heat build-up after a long period of wearing the sling outdoors, though we’ll reserve further comments on comfort for the next section.

The strap has three buckles, the first of which is a quick-release buckle on one end of the padding. Knowing that plenty of photographers carry more than one bag at a time, this feature is particularly handy when you just need to get the sling off while its strap is overlapped by a dozen other gear. Two buckles attach the entire strap to the sling itself. They’re Cam Lock buckles, and they have locking tabs at the back which hold the strap’s length adjustment in place.

All three buckles act as adjustment points where you can pull on their respective slack. This is a lot of control, for sure, though it’s also borderline complicated when you just want the padding to be in the right place. It’s sort of like having your car’s driver seat not be adjustable, but everything else—like the steering wheel, gear shifter, and instrument cluster—is.

Of course, the Cam Lock buckles also come with the benefit of being able to detach and replace them with another strap. On the other hand, these buckles are fairly tough to unlock, and we’ve also noticed this with the other Peak Design Outdoor bags. These are pre-production samples, though, so we’re holding out hope that they either break in or are easier to operate on retail versions.

Fit Notes

Getting the adjustment to feel just right takes a bit of work. Our choice of carry style remains crossbody mode with the sling at the front. With this style, we’ve primarily manipulated the quick-release buckle and the nearby buckle to ensure the padding’s spread evenly over the shoulder.

Once everything’s tightened and loosened appropriately, it’s a very comfortable fit. The padding still feels substantial despite all the aeration taking mass away, and there’s also substantial padding along the back panel. However, there’s also a lot of slack dangling from all the adjusting we’ve done. There are strap keepers to stem the tide, but we’re not quite satisfied with how much slack they can contain.

Inside The Sling

There’s only one secondary pocket around the Outdoor Sling 2L, but it’s arguably the only one that matters for many travelers: a smartphone stash. It’s located at the back, which makes the most sense since the heft of, say, a Max-sized iPhone can make the sling pull forward, impacting overall comfort. On that note, the opening is intentionally shorter than the width of an iPhone, so you have to insert your phone at an angle.

Again, this is a sensible design choice because it minimizes any chance for your phone to fall out accidentally. In practice, even when we overturn the sling, it feels like the phone we put inside wouldn’t fall out—not that we recommend tempting fate in any way. It is complemented by embedded magnets that should keep the opening closed. However, they’re quite tricky to engage once your phone is actually inside.

We have a nit to pick with the main compartment and how it opens. Having a curved zipper track isn’t a problem per se, but since the zipper itself is relatively resistive, it takes some assisting and counter-pulling to get it open. In other words, opening is a two-handed process most of the time.

The opening itself stretches very widely, granting you unobstructed access to the entire main compartment. In fact, we’d say Peak Design kind of overdid it here since the opening spreads so far that—if you grab the sling by the grab handle from earlier—gear can accidentally spill out. It’s not an issue while you’re wearing it, and the entire sling is taut enough that the front doesn’t droop too far. However, we wish Peak Design still tamed the opening just a bit here.

It’s a bit of a shame since there’s so much available space around the front area. As much as we’d like to stash more items here, over-packing it risks drooping the front even further which, in turn, risks gear falling out. As it stands, there’s no organization on the front side to hold gear in place as most of the internal pockets are located at the back. And in case you’re wondering, there’s no room for a camera cube here (though that’s kind of obvious), and you’re mostly limited to smaller mirrorless cameras.

The main compartment’s rear half allows you to organize most of your gear. Twin mesh pockets double as a divider between the main compartment’s two halves. This placement also incidentally squeezes their openings to the point that it’s tricky getting gear in and out of them. For example, we’d usually put a stick of lip balm inside them, but most of the time we forget it’s there because the rest of our gear would be pinching the mesh pockets closed.

The main compartment’s rearmost area is by far our favorite spot in the entire sling. It’s not just because it doesn’t suffer from the issues the other areas do. Instead, it’s because of the built-in key leash also situated here—and it’s the stretchy kind.

We’re not sure if there are other slings have a stretchy key leash, but some of us on the Pack Hacker team wish all of them did. It remains compressed and mostly immune from tangling when we’re not using it, but it can stretch very far when we need to unlock a door. It’s a simple idea, but one we really dig.