tomtoc Voyage-T50 Tech Backpack Review

As a brand, tomtoc puts a lot of emphasis on the materials they use in their gear. Recognizable names like YKK and CORDURA® are often featured, which is a plus in our books since we’ve generally held zippers and fabrics—respectively—from them in high regard for their durability. Yet, tomtoc’s gear usually comes at very enticing price points that often undercut other tech-oriented bags. Look closely, and you’ll see where they cut corners. Not enough to call them flimsy or shoddy, but it’s definitely something you’ll notice if you compare them closely with other pricier brands.

That might be changing, though, as we’ll see with the Voyage-T50 Tech Backpack. It still has the core ingredients of CORDURA® fabric and YKK zippers, but with an air of refinement that sets it apart from its predecessors. This makes it much more well-rounded and easier to recommend to a discerning user who puts quality first and foremost.

External Components

The primary fabric tomtoc uses here is a 420-denier nylon from CORDURA®. Not the heaviest fabric in terms of sheer denier count, but it’s certainly enough to handle the stresses of daily commutes. There are no loose threads or stray stitches, and it’s remained more or less pristine, just like the day we took the bag out of its packaging—with the addition of some pet hair. Like most of tomtoc’s gear, this all-black colorway is the only one available, at least at the time of writing.

What’s hard to convey, though, is the much better construction of the Voyage-T50 compared to earlier tomtoc bags. The fabric, in particular, feels thicker and more secure in the stitching, leading to a less saggy and more structured look inside and out. It seems like tomtoc refined their manufacturing process to really lock in the aesthetic of this bag, and we’re taking notice!

When you do interact with it, say to open it, the YKK zippers glide without much fuss. There’s nothing wrong with them, especially when you consider that there are no sharp corners around this bag. Sharp corners are probably one of the biggest enemies of zipper tracks since they put liner, piping, tags, and other materials very close to the teeth. While the Voyage-T50 has a boxy vibe, it’s nowhere extreme enough to cause issues for the YKK zippers.

As for external features, the Voyage-T50 doesn’t have much. There’s a heavy texture design around the top for aesthetic reasons and three handles to grab. The handles appear as one, but the areas around the corners are stitched onto the bag’s body to create three segments.

It’s a clean-looking set of handles. However, the handles don’t feel very cushioned despite their thick appearance. Furthermore, the central location makes hanging the bag onto restroom stall hooks tricky. And unfortunately, there is no extra loop between the shoulder straps for that purpose. On that note, let’s talk about the harness system.

The Voyage-T50 comes in at a modest 20-liter capacity and a very daypack-like size. As such, there’s “only” a pair of shoulder straps to count on for carrying it around. Rest assured, unlike the handles, tomtoc uses a very generous amount of memory foam here and on the back panel. Fine mesh covers the back panel to minimize heat build-up, and there’s a substantial gap in the middle to let air freely pass through.

Despite the Voyage-T50’s modest size, you do have the option to install a hip belt via a pass-through in the lower half of the back panel. It might be overkill, but it’s a welcome feature for those who move a lot with their backpacks.

Fit Notes

One glaring omission from the Voyage-T50’s harness system is a sternum strap. There aren’t rails or daisy chains where you can attach one, though there is a loop on each strap where you can sort of put one if you’re desperate. That said, the well-padded shoulder straps sit very comfortably already; they’re just not as tightly fitted as if you were using a sternum strap. Consequently, the bag’s weight does feel somewhat shifted towards the back.

The adjustment also feels rather tight because of the zinc alloy buckles. The straps are very resistant against these, so we really have to pull or feed the straps through more deliberately whenever we’re tightening or loosening them.

Inside The Backpack

The Voyage-T50 has two water bottle pockets, with one on each side. While we don’t have to tell you how much we appreciate having two of these on a daypack, we will anyway. One could be used for your bottle (a 19-ounce insulated travel bottle, in our case), while the other could be for a travel tripod or a folding umbrella. That said, the right pocket could be too tight to fit anything bulky if you pack the adjacent pocket inside the main compartment full—you’ll see what we mean once we open that.

As for the pockets themselves, the design is relatively simple. The fabric is made of a fine mesh, while the edges are elasticated to grip bottles in place. The back of the pockets have gussets, allowing them to expand or remain flat if unoccupied.

Next up is the front pocket, with a zippered opening neatly hidden by an upward welt. It’s a relatively deep pocket with an all-black interior, so we wouldn’t toss anything small haphazardly inside, fearing it would get all mixed up. Fortunately, there are two slip pockets on the back side where we can place slim items like a smartphone or a minimalist wallet. Bulkier items like a medium-sized power bank can also fit since the pockets feature stretchy mesh material that allows them to expand. There’s also a key leash with a relatively thick ribbon-like material (not to be confused with the thin ribbon-like ones we’ve complained about in other bags, mind you).

The Voyage-T50’s dedicated laptop compartment has to be one of the more interesting ones we’ve seen. It has the standard features we expect, like YKK AquaGuard-style zippers for weather protection, two slip pockets for accessories (similar to the ones in the front pocket), and a suspended soft-lined laptop sleeve that can fit up to 16-inch MacBook Pro.

The interesting part is the open space in the middle. Whereas other laptop backpacks will just have this open all the way toward the base, this one has a hook-and-looped portion at the bottom. If closed, this effectively creates a raised floor so that you can put something like a 12.9-in iPad Pro and not have it sink too low to reach. On the other hand, you can open this up to fit extra-long items like a cooling pad or a travel-sized keyboard.

The main compartment opens in a sort of clamshell style, stopped short by very shallow gussets at the bottom. On the one hand, this provides a wide opening without the risk of the entire front falling over. At the same time, though, it only makes us wish there was a full clamshell-style opening. To be fair, inserting large packing cubes is already easy with this setup, but it would be even easier with a full clamshell.

tomtoc says you can fit two to three days’ worth of gear in this main compartment. Since we’re very efficient packers, we can squeeze somewhere around three or four days’ worth using compression cubes and other tricks. More to the point, the Voyage-T50’s main compartment feels roomier than its 20-liter rating would suggest, making it feel like it could be a capable travel backpack for short trips in addition to a daypack.

Organization-wise, the main compartment isn’t just a bare, empty space. You have a large zippered mesh pocket on the front side, a document sleeve at the back, a small zippered pocket in the top left corner, and a bottle pocket on the bottom right. We didn’t really need the first two throughout our testing, but the latter two pockets proved very useful, with the top left pocket acting as a secure storage area for travel documents and the bottle pocket storing whatever extra beverage we were carrying for the day (we tend to do that a lot).