When it comes to finding a backpack that’s built for your active lifestyle, there are actually two different types of bags that you could possibly need. The first is a backpack that’s going to look awesome while holding all of your gear and necessities. The second is trickier: it’s a duffle bag that’s going to get you from the gym to the conference room while still looking totally venue-appropriate at both.
Thankfully, Best Buy carries a pretty wide range of bags, which makes achieving both of these an easy feat.
Three classic backpacks for a weekend outdoors
The best backpack for an active lifestyle is one that’s going to accommodate the sheer volume of things that active individuals do within a single day. Not only does your bag need to work for an afternoon hiking or biking, it needs to be able to hold your day-to-day items, too.
2 in 1 backpacks are really popular with the postsecondary and young adult crowd, and for good reason: they’re both your backpack for school and your adventure bag for the weekend. Take the Burton F-Stop Daypack, for instance. It’ll work well for basic uses like going to school or biking to the office, but it’s designed with outdoor photo shoots in mind. As a result, it’s full of padded pockets, removable storage pockets, and load-balancing harnesses. It even has a cooler pocket to accommodate an all-day shoot, and man, it looks cool doing it.
The F-Stop Daypack could easily be repurposed for use by an outdoors-loving tech geek as well, but the JanSport Digital Sentinel is actually designed for one. It features a laptop compartment, padded headphone pocket, and a tablet slot, as well as a stretchy inner organizer pocket.
Or, for active individuals who aren’t so tech-focused, the Burton Fathom backpack offers comfy wear in a military-inspired print. It still has padded compartments for things like your laptop or tablet when you’re headed off to work or school, but for play, it’s a much more “discreet” bag–you can’t really tell that it was intended for dual digital and active use. The back pocket also has rear entry access to circumvent the bag’s clasps, which is a handy feature that you don’t see too often in the backpack world!
Two sleek duffle bags for after-work workouts
If you work in an office with a more professional dress code, sometimes a traditional backpack (as wonderful, ergonomic, and stylish as they may be) isn’t an option for a dual-use work and play bag. In situations like these, the accessories world still has you covered.
A duffel bag offers backpack-like space while still maintaining a really sleek look, as long as you opt for bags with a professional-looking finish. Most of the time, that means opting for solid colours, often in a canvas or leather finish. The resulting bag can’t be taken with you on your active adventures, but if your activity is mainly confined to a gym rather than the outdoors, they’re a great option.
My favourite duffel bags at the moment that are available at Best Buy are the classic cognac Fossil Duffle Bag (it’s actually the brand’s Estate Framed Duffle) and the khaki Bugatti Capetown Canvas Duffle Bag. The Fossil bag is endlessly classic, and is truly an investment bag: it’s the kind of duffle bag that you could buy in your early 20s and carry long into your 50s, first from the office to the gym, then from home to new cities for work, and finally from the office to your kids’ soccer practices and dance recitals. It’s great for an active lifestyle, but it’s equally perfect for settling down one day.
The canvas Bugatti Capetown bag won’t last quite as long as Fossil’s leather one (just due to the nature of the materials,) but the canvas will vent a little better if you’re planning on ever putting sweaty gym clothes into your duffel bag. It does have leather closures, straps, and handles, though, so you’re still sacrificing being able to wash it in favour of being able to carry it to work as well. Could you throw your smelly sneakers into a duffle bag this chic? Well, yes. But not if you didn’t want the fashion gods to smite you in your sleep.
Backpacks and duffle bags were designed with an active lifestyle in mind, and these five picks won’t do you wrong. If you don’t want to take my word on that, however, go check out the rest of Best Buy’s selection of luggage & bags! There are even more options available there, and hey: I don’t mind being proven wrong if you can come back with another great backpack suggestion for me!
