Topo Designs Mountain Cross Bag Review

Messenger bags like the Topo Designs Mountain Cross Bag seem like the ideal everyday companion. They’re not that big, they’re easy to carry, and they usually have a fair amount of compartments to store and organize all your gear. On the other hand, space isn’t a messenger bag’s strong suit, especially when you consider its lengthy envelope-like profile that lacks the horizontal depth irregularly shaped gear eats up.

However, not everyone needs to carry a ton of irregularly shaped gear like DSLRs, tech pouches, and food containers. For users who carry slim items like a 13-inch laptop, notebooks, a wallet, a smartphone, and tech accessories, there is more than enough space in the Mountain Cross Bag while maintaining its slim profile.

External Components

As you would expect with much of Topo Designs’ gear, the Mountain Cross Bag features a very colorful, Toy Story-esque design. The Bone White / Olive sample we have here is a mish-mash of at least four different colors. That said, the palette is a bit too beige for us to call it Topo Designs’ signature style, though it’s far from the monochrome Rover Pack Tech.

The material choices are pretty middle-of-the-road. There is a relatively light 200-denier recycled nylon ripstop around the upper portions of the exterior, while the lower panels use 1000-denier recycled nylon. This makes sense since only the lower parts of the bag will graze the ground and, therefore, will need the 1000-denier fabric’s abrasion resistance; elsewhere will do just fine with lighter fabric.

The rest of the materials include Woojin hardware for the buckles and adjusters and YKK-branded zippers. The latter comes with chunky paracord pulls knotted at the ends. They feel excessive since the zippers glide smoothly anyway, but they do add a rustic vibe to the bag that we dig, and those familiar with Topo Designs won’t be surprised to see them—like bright colorways, it’s sort of their thing.

Along the bottom of the bag is a pair of buckled straps that serve two functions. First, we use them to secure long, bulky items externally, like a travel tripod or a rolled-up yoga mat. We also tighten them to cinch down the bag’s profile. Though the Mountain Cross Bag isn’t particularly thick, some extra compression aids carry comfort.

Smaller accessories can hang out along a silver daisy chain of loops along the front of the bag or on the yellow pull tabs. With this many options for attaching gear, you really shouldn’t have much trouble finding a place for all your accessories.

Up at the top is a pair of grab handles. They feature no padding and are simply folded and stitched to make them thick. There’s also nothing to clasp the handles together, so they hang freely to the sides when you’re walking around. All of that said, they’re perfectly serviceable for carrying the bag short distances; you really should be using the shoulder strap for long-term carrying.

Like any good harness system, half the story is told by how comfy the back panel is. Fortunately, the Mountain Cross Bag actually has a back panel, not just bare fabric. The padding feels similar to memory foam and has substantial squish, which makes sense since it’s adjacent to the laptop sleeve inside. This is also important because one of this bag’s two carrying modes cinches it very close to the user.

There are two straps included: a shoulder strap and a crossbody strap. The shoulder strap is used for a more relaxed carrying style, placing the bag to the side of your hip or on your lower back—basically how you carry a traditional messenger bag. The crossbody strap is much shorter and mounts it more like a sling using attachment points on the back panel to help the bag sit diagonally across your back.

There is fixed padding on both straps, which means you’ll have to use the hardware on either side to lengthen or shorten the strap, which adjust the padding placement accordingly. The main difference is that the shoulder strap’s padding is in the center while the crossbody strap’s is closer to one buckle. This makes sense because of how the strap falls on your shoulder while it’s in each mode, which we’ll get into next.

Fit Notes

Using the crossbody strap to wear the bag more like a sling is pretty comfortable. However, because this is a hefty 17-liter bag, that weight tugs a little too much on the shoulder for our liking. The large size also makes it quite tricky to put on and take off unless we use the quick-release buckle, which we then have to reconnect every time. On the plus side, we like how the back panel eases the pressure around the shoulder area in combination with the crossbody strap’s own padding. Those with smaller frames may even feel the bag’s corner dig into their lower back, and the back panel also eases pressure there.

The Pack Hacker crew is a bit divided on which of the two carrying modes is more comfortable. However, we’ll give a slight edge to the more relaxed fit of the longer shoulder strap, as this style is less constraining and feels more in tune with the bag’s large size. On that note, it feels too stiff to hang directly by your hips’ side, so we tend to swing it around the back. Unfortunately, this also shifts the padding’s position, and since we can’t adjust that on its own, we have to change the strap’s length entirely. Needless to say, this is fiddly to do whenever you just want to position the padding perfectly.

Lastly, wearing the shoulder strap off to one side is also an option. However, some of us here had the bag completely slip off when doing this. One of our off-the-cuff theories is that some of us have naturally developed a divot around the shoulder area from wearing messenger bags that prevent this, but some of us haven’t. Whatever the reason, your mileage may vary with this carrying style.

Inside The Messenger

As large as the Mountain Cross Bag is, we were still pleasantly surprised to find it had two water bottle pockets, one on each side. Though the thick stretchy mesh is a good attempt at giving these pockets some semblance of volume, you’ll struggle to fit insulated travel bottles bigger than 19 ounces. Even then, the height of bottles in that size range feels too bulky, so we’ve mostly kept our favorite one within the main compartment. Alternatively, you can store small accessories in these pockets—they’re not exclusive to bottles.

Of course, most of your daily quick-grab items fit better in the front pocket. Instead of a zipper closure, this pocket has two toggles that slot into corresponding loops along the daisy chain above. While this allows us to take gear out faster, it’s also very open. We were always worried that small items like AirPods or keys could fall out, so we used it to store bulky items that fit snuggly and won’t slip out easily instead.

The pocket that follows that is, fortunately, zippered, which makes it better suited for smaller items. That said, though we like the bright liner, we still wish there were additional pockets inside so we could organize our accessories. It almost feels too spacious at times, and you’ll be hunting for gear if you throw them in haphazardly.

The first compartment feels more like an enlarged version of the pocket we just mentioned, with enough space to fit a notebook and a high-capacity power bank. This time, though, there’s a zippered pocket where we securely store small items and even small travel documents. There’s even a key leash, so you never have to lose track of them, although it’s a bit of a hassle having to undo two zippers just to access it. We wouldn’t mind this on a travel backpack, but we want something easier to fish out for a daily-use messenger.

One of the Mountain Cross Bag’s more notable features is its dedicated laptop compartment on a pack with an outdoorsy vibe. That said, the laptop compartment is fairly simple. While it lacks a false bottom, it has ample padding on both sides. Size-wise, you can fit up to a 13-inch laptop like the MacBook we’re using or a 12.9-inch iPad Pro.

The main compartment is fairly simple as well, which is understandable given how many other compartments there are. You only get two slim mesh pockets on the back to keep smaller gear secure. The strategy for packing here is one of two ways: you fill out the other pockets and areas first, then whatever space remains in the main compartment, or you do the opposite. This way, you can pack gear more evenly throughout the bag and keep the shape uniform, preserving carrying comfort.

This compartmentalized layout is great for organization, though you trade some capacity by slicing it up. It’s not the ideal messenger bag if you’re carrying a lot of really bulky items like large packing cubes, tech pouches, and a food container. You can fit some, not all, and you’ll probably have to remove some items from the other compartments to make it work.