Osprey Renn 65 Review

For a budget-friendly backpack, the Renn 65 will appease veteran and novice backpackers alike. Its awesome volume-to-weight ratio and exceptionally comfortable back panel make for a women's backpack that we recommend to anyone looking to take an uncomplicated approach to backcountry life.

Performance Comparison

Comfort

The exceptional comfort and rugged suspension system of the Renn are noticeable from the moment you strap this pack onto your body.

The adjustable Airspeed Suspension system allows torso adjustments while maintaining the full mesh back for plenty of air movement. Unlike most packs, laden with pillowy pads and rigid cushioning down the back panel, the Renn only offers taut mesh. The airy mesh sits flush against your back as your hike, but your gear sits slightly away from your body.

This is where the suspension system shines bright. Typically, packs that force the load close to your body prevail, but the lateral load-hauling architecture of the Renn allows the trampoline back panel to function well beneath heavy loads. The wider main compartment acts with the suspension system to distribute weight across your hips. The result is a suspension system that keeps the sweat at bay while making loads feel light and airy. The Renn's suspension system outperforms some of the pricier packs we tested and feels well-balanced beneath light, medium, and heavy loads.

This pack truly shines in its ability to distribute weight laterally instead of vertically. That makes the Renn extra suitable for smaller framed people since the pack's height doesn't tower over you when fully loaded. It feels like your pack weight is hugging you instead of pulling you backward. The lower center of gravity aligns with how women naturally carry weight, adding stability on uneven trails.

The shoulder straps offer ample padding and don't squeeze together, making it an excellent option for women with broader shoulders or bigger busts. The hip belt is a simple design, just dense foam padding covered in a softer mesh material that we found extremely forgiving for different hip sizes and angles. The padding doesn't extend to provide cushion for wider hips, but the webbing can accommodate curvier bodies. The lateral weight-holding design means that the load rests heavier on the sides and backs of the hips. Since it doesn't pull back at all, the webbing didn't pinch in or put too much pressure on the lower abdomens of our curvy testers. Both beginners and seasoned female backpackers will benefit from having the weight distributed low around your body instead of just stacking weight up your spine.

Ease of Use

The Renn took all the extra bells and whistles off of this pack, only keeping a few key elements you need, including a dual-entry main compartment and a pair of accessible water bottle holsters. The result is a streamlined back that provides you with the basics and is easy to use once you get used to the simplified nature of the bag.

The main body of the Renn has an optional flap to create a sleeping bag compartment at the base. It also has two sets of vertical clips on the exterior, so you can attach a tent, closed cell sleeping pad, or whatever you want on the outside. Aside from these straps, the Renn doesn't offer much external storage beyond the standard. The lack of external storage means that we found ourselves opening the lid and drawstring to get into the main compartment throughout the day. The pack's large, blank back panel led our testers to wonder why Osprey left such a blank canvas that could have been a large, stretchy pocket for our extra layers. Ultimately, the simplicity of the design won us over as we dialed in organizational systems to suit this blank slate of a backpack.

The lid on the Renn isn't removable, but the straps extend enough to allow you to move it out of the way when you need to access the main compartment. The vertical straps that attach the lid also act as an external compression system, helping to secure your load for optimal weight distribution. The brain isn't super flexible, and its opening is a bit stiff, making it difficult to over-extend this compartment to fit extra gear. The zipper is long, though, spanning the length of this compartment, which aids in accessibility.

The Renn's hydration reservoir sleeve is wide and deep enough to fit the largest of bladders, and the large, dual side pockets allow you to carry anything from 40-ounce water bottles to extra food or even a tent. The mesh pockets both have vertical slits and horizontal ones, allowing you to grab your water bottle without removing the backpack. The wide hip belt features two deep pockets for stashing various small items. While the pockets are deep, they are a little too short to fit most smartphones, though an iPhone mini fits with room to spare. The oval shape is restrictive, and the textile lacks stretch, so large phones are hard to wedge in.

Weight

The Renn weighs 3.6 pounds and has a 65-liter capacity, making its volume-to-weight ratio better than many others we tested. The Renn doesn't handle ultra-heavy loads quite as well as other packs, but most packs made for enormous loads weigh a few pounds more when empty. Most packs built for heavy lifting are lined with much more padding, making the backpack heavier, bulkier, and sometimes more complicated.

The width of the Renn is its crowning glory in this metric. From the moment you open the drawstring of the Renn and start feeding gear into its gaping mouth, it becomes obvious that this style of pack is different from the rest. Full-sized bear cans can fit horizontally, which isn't the most common find amongst this side of the pack. The lateral load-carrying style helps secure the weight in the right place and helps it feel less cumbersome as you move. Call us old-fashioned, but we appreciate that the back panel exists without fancy swivels. Even when fully loaded with gear, we love the sensation of hiking without a swivel in the shoulder padding, causing us to list to one side.

Adjustability

The Renn 65 comes in just one size and has four different preset adjustment settings on the torso length, spanning 5 total inches. Unlike some models, which have a sliding adjustment, the adjustment feature on the Renn is fixed, meaning you have to choose between one of the four present points. The same goes for the chest strap, which has three distinct settings.

The adjustments are easy to execute but not necessarily something you want to fiddle with on the trail. The chest strap and torso adjustment systems utilize tech-free loop systems to secure the settings. While we never had any durability issues with pack adjustability during our testing, the adjusters on the Renn feel far sturdier than others we've become familiar with.

Unlike many of the higher-priced models we tested, the hip belt has no adjustability beyond tightening the webbing itself. While the range allows users between 26 and 48 inches to fit in the hip belt, the padding will end up behind the iliac crest for women with larger hips. As previously mentioned, the weight distribution allows this to be fairly comfortable, but we understand that curvier women might prefer a pack with adjustable hip padding.

Should You Buy the Osprey Renn 65?

If you want a back-to-basics backpack that is super comfortable, perfectly priced, and going to be with you for the long haul, look no further because the Renn is all of those things. Trail nerds who want ultralight packs will find this pack to be too heavy and spacious, while super-haulers prefer a pack with an overbuilt suspension system and padding to match.

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