Troubadour Goods Generation Leather Backpack Review

The bag you carry every day should get what you need where you need it to go, but it’s also nice if it reflects your personal style. For some, calfskin leather conveys a premium, quality aesthetic that’s hard to duplicate with another material. While that can make for a bag you must treat with kid gloves (pun intended), Troubadour Goods says it adds waterproofing during the vegetable tanning process to create a lightweight and durable daypack. We’ve been caught in the rain a time or two while testing this bag on the daily commute to and from Pack Hacker HQ, and it seems to be holding up.

So, is the premium look and feel of the Troubadour Goods Generation Leather Backpack worth the price? Let’s find out.

External Components

Troubadour Goods prioritizes aesthetics with its bags, with clean designs and quality materials used throughout. Branding is minimal, with “Troubadour” printed in all raised caps near the end of the main compartment zipper on the left side of the bag’s front.

The natural leather, tanned in the Netherlands, is the star of the show here, with a soft matte finish and a light leather aroma. It has a DWR incorporated during the tanning process for weather resistance. This is not a bag for vegan travelers, as it’s made with calfskin leather on every inch of the bag, from the zipper pulls to the shoulder straps and the carry handle. However, if you like the look and feel of leather, you’ll definitely get the right vibes from this bag.

The underside of the top carry handle has textured foam for extra cushion. It’s large enough to hold if you want to move the bag from place to place, yet it also works well when you want to hang the bag on a hook.

Troubadour Goods uses chunky OOK zippers on the bag, and, while they seem sturdy enough, they can be difficult to open and close, especially on the main compartment. It’s difficult to get hold of the bag when trying to pull the zippers around the top curve, and we find that the leather tends to lean into the zipper as we pull it instead of holding its structure to keep both sides of the zipper in a straight line. A leather welt, or flap, protects the laptop compartment zipper but makes opening that section more difficult, especially as you try to round the corners.

Duraflex makes the hardware, which you’ll find on the harness system, from the sternum strap fastener to the adjusters on the shoulder straps. The adjusters work well and stay in place to hold the straps at the length you’ve placed them, and there are clips at the end of the straps that loop back onto it to keep extra in place. However, while that keeps them from dangling, it creates a loop of extra strap you can’t eliminate. Whether or not you think that looks better than a straight strap hanging down is up to you.

The sternum strap slides along a hidden rail and includes a built-in elastic strap keeper. The buckle doesn’t click into place nor connect with magnets; instead, it’s called a Magic Slider, and you slide the male end on the strap into the top of the female end. However, that end is quite hidden on the rail, and it can be hard to see where to slide the buckle into the top when you’re wearing the bag. We find the harness system comfortable enough without the sternum strap, but you can’t take it off, so you’re left with one side dangling down your front if you don’t want to use it.

We like the cushioned back panel, which includes a vertical air channel and an integrated luggage pass-through. It and the contoured shoulder straps are lined with micro-mesh for breathability. We never felt the bag get overly sweaty during our testing period; however, it also never got very warm in the metro Detroit area while we were using it.

Fit Notes

The harness system creates a rather comfortable bag to carry daily. While some other leather bags have simple leather straps, Troubadour Goods incorporates a nice amount of breathable padding into the back panel and shoulder straps to keep things comfy. We didn’t use the sternum strap much, but it’s there if you feel you need it; we just didn’t feel that way.

Looks seem more subjective than carry comfort, however, with some testers appreciating the minimalist aesthetic and premium materials and some thinking it was a bit much. All agree that the caved-in look the bag tends to get when not completely stuffed full properly is not a look we like. Unfortunately, it’s really hard to fill the bag all the way to the top, and it ends up sagging down under the carry handle pretty much whenever you use it. We get that the leather is soft and supple, and you’d want that kind of flexibility in a jacket or coat; we’d like a little more structure to beef it up in a backpack.

Inside The Pack

There are a few different places to store your gear around the Generation Leather Backpack. To begin, there’s a rectangular front pocket for your smaller accessories. This area also suffers from the difficulty of getting zippers around leather corners, so you’ll need to use some effort to open it. Once you get inside, however, you’ll find three stretchy slip pockets. The one on the left is wide enough for a minimalist wallet and the other two are about two fingers’ wide, so you can stash a couple of pens, pencils, or stylus in each. You could slip a very slim battery bank inside; otherwise, they’re not large enough for much else.

There’s more space in front of these pockets, however, as well as a swivel clip on a leash to hold your keys, so we often toss our phone, lip balm, hand sanitizer, sunglasses, and tissues in here, too.

Against the back panel, you’ll find a zipper opening that extends to where the shoulder straps attach at the bottom of the bag. This is the laptop compartment, and it has a padded sleeve to fit up to a 16-inch device. Between the back panel padding, the cushion on the front of the sleeve, and the fact that the sleeve is raised off the bottom of the bag, we feel it provides enough protection for your computer. There’s also a second padded sleeve in front of it if you carry a tablet or Bluetooth keyboard.

The main compartment is where you’ll find the rest of the organization in this bag, whether you want to carry tech or travel accessories. The lining is recycled polyester, and there is leather trim accenting the organizational features.

Against the front panel is a large zipper mesh pocket where you can lock down tech, a toiletry bag, or whatever else you don’t want to dig for at the bottom of the bag. Another large zipper pocket is on the opposite side, against the back panel. This one is made with the liner material, however, so you can’t see inside. We still find it a handy dump pocket and use it more than the one on the front panel since it doesn’t affect the bag’s sagginess as much as using the latter can.

In front of the zipper pocket along the back side are two large, deep pockets. We find them useful for locking down a small tech pouch and reading glasses so we always know where to find them. They’d also be good places to put large computer cords and wall chargers. We find it easy to reach inside them and pull out whatever we need, even if it’s not tall enough to stick out the top.

Then, in front of the pocket on the left side is another wallet-sized elastic pocket, plus another slim one for a pen if you don’t want to use the ones in the front pocket or have more to store. Attached to the side wall, but in front of that pocket is a floppy loop of liner material. It has no bottom, but it’s designed to hold a water bottle upright inside the bag so you can bring hydration. However, while we understand the aesthetics of eliminating an exterior bottle pocket, we get nervous about carrying a bottle inside the bag, even though it’s in a different compartment from the laptop. Additionally, it’s not very easy to slide a bottle into the loop; the polyester likes to lay flat against itself and you have to open it with your fingers each time. We expect that would change if you regularly use it for a bottle, but the good news is that it mostly stays out of your way if you don’t want to use it.

There’s quite a bit of space remaining in the main compartment, even with all of the pockets packed. In truth, it’s hard to fill it with everyday carry gear unless you are carrying gym shoes and clothing, for example, or a lot of extra items. We like to toss a small cooler inside with lunch, some gloves, and a few random other items, but we still couldn’t manage to fill the bag all the way to the top, which is why that area continues to cave in. Obviously, we’re not looking for compression on a leather bag, but some sort of structure along the sides to beef up the material would be nice.

So, if you’re in the market for a leather backpack and routinely carry a lot of gear, there’s a good chance you’ll like this bag since it feels much more spacious than 18L would have you assume. However, it might be a bit overkill if you only need to carry a computer, some accessories, and everyday items like a phone, wallet, and keys.