If you're looking for a daypack that can go to school or work during the week, and then get abused at your local crag on the weekend, you need to look at the Mystery Ranch Robo Flip. It's a small pack that easily does double duty, and when the going gets tough... well, it's a Mystery Ranch, so it just shrugs it off.
The Robo Flip is named for the top fixed lid, which has a small zipped external pocket and zips 3/4 open to allow access to the single main compartment, about 1,300ci. Inside is a suspended and padded laptop sleeve for up to 15 inch screens, and on front of that a slim tablet pocket. Both collapse flat if you're just stuffing gear inside, and you could use the laptop sleeve to hold a hydration bladder if you're into that kind of thing.
For those of us who prefer bottles, there's a quart-sized bottle sleeve against the side of the interior. We've never used an internal bottle sleeve before, but now that we have we like it. There's still plenty of room next to it for books, climbing shoes or whatever, and if you don't want to use it, it too folds flat and out of the way. It's a nice flexible arrangement that lets the interior of the pack transition seamlessly between organized work/school use and stuff-it-all-in weekend day trip use. The grab handle is bombproof, so feel free to stuff it full of books and electronics.
A few more features enable light technical duty. There's a vertical center daisy chain, four compression straps and four tie down points on the top. You can easily lash trekking poles, umbrellas, tripods or even ice tools to the outside, and shove crampons into the bottle pocket inside. The lack of a hip belt means you'll generally want to keep the load light or the trips short, but there is sufficient padding on the shoulder straps to make the Robo Flip carry comfortably from car to crag, or from bike to classroom.
The only thing we wondered about was the lack of a sternum strap, but our fears were unfounded. The contoured shoulder straps stayed put and we never felt the Robo Flip was going to flip out - or off. If you're looking for a clean school/work pack that transforms on Saturday morning into a backcountry day tripper, and especially if you're the type who is harder on your gear than an over-caffeinated baggage handler, check out the Robo Flip.
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