The North Face Terra 55 - Women's Review

The North Face Terra 55 is a great backpacking back for women and smaller people. Everything about this pack seems like it should cost more, but it's extremely affordable. The North Face is a major player in the outdoor market, and it shows with this budget-oriented piece of gear. It feels unfair to compare this pack to some of the other budget backpacking packs we tested.

Performance Comparison

Comfort

The Terra 55 is one of the most comfortable backpacks we tested. When hiking long days, we never experience any discomfort with this pack loaded with gear, food, and water. We didn't experience any chafing, and the frame does a great job of transferring the load onto your hips.

It has a comfortable padded back panel with an air channel for ventilation. This back panel allows air to flow between your pack and your back, so you don't sweat as much. This means salt won't build up on your back, which can also cause chafing.

It has well-padded shoulder straps and a comfortable hip belt. The padded straps and back panel work with the aluminum frame to create a comfortable and stable-feeling pack. The sturdy aluminum frame wraps around the outside of the back panel and effectively disperses the pack's weight across your back, shoulders, and hips. If you unclip the hip belt, you'll feel an increase in weight on your shoulders, which shows how much the frame is dispersing weight onto the hip belt.

The Terra 55 also has a unique load lifter design. Both shoulder straps attach to a single continuous strap that adjusts with a single buckle. The strap runs from the left shoulder strap, around the frame, and through an adjustment buckle on the right shoulder strap. When you tighten or loosen the single load lifter buckle, you're evenly adjusting the tension of both load lifter straps because they are one single strap. This is a minor detail, but it makes the pack more comfortable and easier to use.

Ease of Use

The Terra 55 performs better in the ease of use category than most other packs we tested. It has a great set of pockets that provide ample storage for all your gear and ensures everything has a place. This makes it easy to stay organized and access your gear when you need it.

The Terra 55 has large side water bottle pockets you can reach readily while you hike. The pockets are made of stretch mesh material and have a top and side opening. The side opening makes reaching your bottle while you hike easy, and the top opening — along with the stretch material — makes fitting extra water or other items in these pockets possible.

The Terra 55 has large zippered mesh hip belt pockets, a zippered pocket on the floating top lid, and an exterior front pocket. These pockets make it so you have a place for a rain jacket, maps, your smartphone, a water filter, snacks, lunch, and more.

The hip belt pockets are large enough for a bigger smartphone, plus a few energy bars. Since the pockets are mesh, they won't keep water out. But, the mesh also lets anything you keep in these pockets dry if it does get wet, and you can see what's inside the pockets easily. We like to keep a bandana to wipe the sweat off our faces in one pocket. This way, the bandana can dry while we hike. In the other pocket, we can easily keep our phone and a few bars.

It has a large J-shaped front zippered opening, so you can access everything inside the pack. It runs along the side of the pack and curves across the pack's bottom, with zipper pulls on both ends. This allows you to access both the sleeping bag compartment and the main storage compartment through the same opening. And since there are zipper pulls on each end, you don't have to open it fully just get one thing out. Also, if you don't want a separate sleeping bag compartment, you can remove the internal divider and stuff all your gear into one large space instead.

Weight-to-Volume Ratio

The Terra 55 weighs nearly 3.5 pounds. This is not an ultralight pack, but it's not the absolute heaviest, either. With a total volume of roughly 55 liters, the Terra has a weight-to-volume ratio of 0.99 ounces per liter. Not an ultralight pack, but not the heaviest we tested.

This pack is about average overall weight for a backpacking pack, but it has tons of features and is made of durable material. If it had fewer features, it would probably weigh less but then would obviously be less useful. If it were made of thinner material, it would also weigh less. But then it would be less durable and wouldn't carry a heavy load as well as it does. These are the trade-offs when considering the weight of a backpacking pack, and we think the Terra strikes a reasonable balance.

Adjustability

The Terra 55 is a relatively adjustable pack. Though it doesn't have an adjustable torso, it does come in two sizes and has other useful adjustability features to ensure a good fit for most women.

Many budget-oriented backpacking packs only come in one size, but the Terra 55 stands out because it comes in two: XS/S and M/L. The hip belt adjusts to fit an extremely wide variety of hip circumferences. So even though it doesn't allow you to adjust the torso length, you can still dial in the pack to fit most bodies.

The XS/S size we tested fits torsos from 14 and 17 inches. The M/L size of this pack is designed to fit torsos from 16 to 19 inches. This is a wider range of torso lengths than most budget backpacking packs allow for, and we appreciate that diversity. We measured the waist belt on the XS/S pack that we tested, and according to our measurements, it will fit hip circumferences from 28 to 62 inches. This is a very wide range in hip belt width, making the Terra stand out once again for its adaptability of fit.

The sternum strap is easy to adjust up and down, which is particularly important for women. It is fully adjustable to be long or short and handily accommodates a wide variety of women's chest sizes.

Should You Buy The North Face Terra 55?

The North Face Terra 55 is a great deal, hands down. This pack has all the features we want in a backpacking pack but costs much less than most other packs out there. If you're looking for a full-featured women's backpacking pack on a budget, this is an excellent option. It performs well in every metric we tested, and the price is still surprisingly affordable for what it includes. We'd trust this bag to last for years to come, across countless trails and through plenty of nights sleeping in the backcountry.

What Other Budget Backpacking Packs Should You Consider?

If you're looking for a great deal on a pack that isn't women's specific, check out the Decathlon Forclaz MT500 Air 50+10. This men's pack features tons of external pockets and an adjustable torso length. If you're looking for a more streamlined, minimalist pack, we recommend the Mountainsmith Scream 55.