Pioneer Carry Savant Pack

Note: this item was provided for review.

I have a hierarchy I keep in my head for the overall difficulty for making different types of backpacks, from easiest to hardest, the categories are: military, hiking, hunting, travel, edc, office. Every time a company tries to tackle an office backpack, they run the risk of making something completely absurd, ugly, and generally useless. To couple that then with travel, well that’s asking for criticism.

So when Pioneer Carry asked if I wanted to test out their Savant Pack — which is for office and travel — I had a very low bar of expectation for this pack. It’s not often a company does this well.

With the Savant Pack, Pioneer Carry has a gem on their hands, being led by the materials, and followed by the smart simplicity of the bag. This is good stuff.

Materials & Specs

This is a 20L pack with good structure throughout. It measures in at 18” x 11.5” x 7.5” and tips the scales at 2.3lbs. This is a nicely proportioned bag, where the 18” height hits the sweet spot for not being too short on taller folks like me, but not being overly long for those on the other end of the height spectrum.

Only the base achieves the full depth, as it tapers nicely back towards the top end of the bag. The width, while wide, is about as trim as you can go if you want to fit modern laptops easily in the bag. Or shoes, as this bag was designed to accommodate in the front.

This bag is 100% nylon, but it uses what Pioneer Carry calls “Mandarin 840”. Here’s what they say about this material:

Our premium super fabric is specially woven to endure the longest hauls while maintaining a professional compusure for the perfect combination of grit and grace. Woven with twisted yarn ballistic nylon for a denser, stronger weave. Featuring a DWR finish and backed with a waterproof membrane. Exceptional hand-feel and drape with a dull satin finish.

I mean that sounds like a perfect material, and I don’t disagree with a single word of that. When I first read about this, I thought they just rebranded Ballistic Nylon, but that’s not the case here at all. It smooth to the hand like Ballistic Nylon, but there’s a lack of sheen and a different weave to it. There’s a pliability to the material which is not something I would expect for a material which is this thick.

The only disappointing thing about this material, is that they are not offering it on more items — because I really like it.

The zippers are YKK’s VIzlon which are very nice and smooth, if a bit loud to zip and unzip. They have branded metal pull tabs, which can make a little noise when moving the bag around, but I’ve found no such noise when wearing the bag.

All in all, excellent materials, and well made.

In Use and Carry

After receiving, I realized that I needed to test this as it was intended: moving around with office kit. Usually those tests are intermixed on random trips to various coffee shops, but my first go at testing this bag really put it through its paces, if a bit unintentionally.

My plan was simple: drop my wife off at an appointment, head to the coffee shop a block away, and work from there until she called me to pick her up. Easy. When I arrived at the coffee shop parking lot, I quickly realized it was much fuller than anticipated. I parked in a distant stall, put the backpack on, and walked on in, only to see that there would be no chance at grabbing a table.

So I left, tossed the bag back in the car, and headed to pick up my contact lenses I had been procrastinating on getting. After that was done, there was still time to kill, so I swung by another coffee shop — this one had space, and a better environment. I ordered my coffee, setup shop at a table, and got to work. About 5 minutes later my wife texted to be picked up. I packed my gear, grabbed her a coffee on my way out, tossed the bag back in the car and was off.

I’ve tested it less chaotically since then, but that was perhaps one of the best tests I would not have thought up. When you are moving quick, feeling rushed, and feeling a little frustrated with everything — well that’s basically traveling in a nutshell. It’s life and it’s the easiest time to tell and find the annoyances with a bag.

The Savant held its own, and proved that this isn’t just another backpack, it’s been very thoughtfully designed. That design was something I had an inkling of while I loaded the bag up the first time, and it has been proven true in use.

As always, let’s look at what Pioneer Carry says this bag is:

We added nothing ‘new’ just for the sake of new. We took great care to honor timeless elements while upgrading materials and details to bring about a more evolved design built for right now and beyond. Welcome to the next evolution.

That’s a fair assessment, however I would also add that they certainly removed unnecessary features for bags and did a much better job streamlining the feature set on this than I see most do.

A quick note, something I am asked a lot, but often forget to mention since it’s not an important attribute for me, but this bag does stand on it’s own — Pioneer Carry notes that this was a core design consideration. It is tricky though, because the front is so large, that if you overload that, you laptop (if it is like mine) will not offer enough weight to balance the bag back out. So while it will stand on its own, it does not have enough structure to battle an unbalanced packing job.

The layout of this bag is fantastic. It’s divided into three sections: front, center, and back. Typically you would find that the front has very little volume, nor does the back laptop sleeve, with the bulk of the volume in the center. On the Savant this is done much differently.

Part of the ethos of this bag is that you can toss something like shoes into it, or other bulky items. Shoes are bulky, but not heavy, so putting them at the front of the bag is more common. Thus on the Savant the front compartment contains a large percentage of the bags capacity. It has four open top pockets to stash items in (no dedicated pen slots), a key ring clip, and emptiness.

I found the front compartment to be a gem. The extra volume meant that it fit all the gear I typically keep in my backpack right there, without it being an issue with pulling the bag unnaturally towards the front, thanks to the structure of the overall bag.

The center compartment opens all the way, and has only a couple inches of depth to it, and only a couple of loops at each side if you wanted to anchor compression straps for clothing. On the lid of this compartment are two mesh zippered pockets, with the topmost having an open top slip pocket behind it.

Because of this design, the center compartment resists becoming a mess of gear sloshing around. And presents a great place to store more delicate items like a camera. Fold and store clothing. Or even a great place to keep documents or books.

The back compartment remains dedicated for a laptop, and has one thin divider which holds my 11” iPad Pro quite well. It’s a nicely padded area, and doesn’t suck up any more volume than is needed.

All of that means this bag packs out really nicely. And there’s no pockets which feel like “well I don’t carry that type of thing, so what a waste” — which is refreshing for me.

I’ve been able to carry this bag for a few miles at a time now, and it’s a very solid carry. This bag being designed for commuting and travel, it has a couple of nice stand out features.

The inside of the shoulder straps are lined with a very smooth nylon, which is thinner and slicker than anything else on the bag. This gives a lot of confidence that this bag will not damage any clothing you wear it over. The straps are nicely contoured and padded as well. They are not overly bulky, and are generally clean looking and to wear.

In fact, the entire back of the bag offers no areas which I would worry about snagging, or being overly abrasive on, my clothing. It’s nicely put together.

The top handle on this bag is a gem. It’s well structured such that it stands up nicely on its own, and doesn’t collapse and squeeze your hand when you lift the bag by it. The nylon has been smartly double wrapped on the edges, and keeps the edges and hotspots to a minimum. This is a type of bag where the top handle will see a lot of use, and it’s extremely well executed.

This bag feels impressively overbuilt in all the right areas. Pioneer Carry talks about how they want this line up of bags to last a very long time, and I would be surprised if this bag didn’t put in a very long service period. All of the stitches, and seams are aligned well, and over done.

Overall

I was not sure what to expect from this bag, but it wasn’t this. I didn’t expect the bag to have this layout, or be this over built — and I am very happy it is. I absolutely love the exterior material on this bag, and hope to see it in more colors as well.

The layout is smart. This is the type of bag which will travel well — whether thats on a plane, or commuting to an office every day. It has smart org options which do not diminish from using the bag if you don’t want to use them. There’s really great access through out.

If my short stint at the coffee shop on my first run with this bag taught me anything, it’s that getting your stuff put back into this bag securely and quickly is trivial. That’s not something I can say about a lot of bags, and instantly made me want to keep using this bag.

I’m a fan.

Buy here, $329.