Granite Gear Crown3 Backpack Review

Bottom Line

The Granite Gear Crown 3 aims to be a middle ground between traditional and ultralight backpacks. Many people don’t know if they should stick with a traditional, heavier backpack or jump into the world of ultralight backpacking. This pack tries to balance features that appeal to both camps – it’s not as light as an ultralight nor as burly as a traditional pack. We think it bridges the gap between the best ultralight backpacks and best traditional backpacks.

And fortunately, the rest of the pack offers a solid experience. When testing it out on a winter hike outside Minneapolis, we found the comfort isn’t class leading but good enough for most body shapes. A great feature is the hip belt’s ability to expand and contract in the back as well as the front, so it can change with your body over the course of a long hike. We also loved the huge hipbelt pockets, great top lid design, and cavernous main pocket. The water bottle pockets aren’t our favorite.

For a do-everything pack that adjusts to our needs, the Crown 3 is near the top of our list. It doesn’t excel at everything, but it does most things well enough to earn a solid recommendation.

How We Tested

We tested the Crown 3 on Minnesota trails during a winter when we were re-writing our entire gear guide. We plan on testing it more rigorously in three-season conditions to bring more representative testing to this review and the gear guide.

Comfort

The Crown3 manages to be comfortable enough for backpacking, landing about average in the comfort category. On the positive side, we really like the hipbelt design. Featuring a large amount of foam padding, the unique back adjustment allowed us to fit the pack to our body shape during our test hikes. This is particularly helpful on long distance hikes where people may change body shapes over the months. The ability to re-fit the pack to a changing hip shape is a nice feature if that’s something you’re worried about. 

We’re a little less excited about the shoulder straps. They have a decent amount of foam padding but are narrower than we’d like to see. In practice we find these shoulder straps feel fatiguing on longer trips if you have pronounced collar bones but nothing that is unreasonable. All packs get uncomfortable at certain times with certain weights. Though the Crown 3 has a weak spot with its narrower shoulder straps, it’s not substantially different from its peers.

The foam back panel does a decent job at being supportive while also keeping sweat at bay. It’s not as good as a full trampoline back like on the Osprey Exos or Atmos, but it’s decent. The large amount of foam also provides good support and we didn’t notice any hot spots while testing.

Features

The Crown has some great features, but its adaptability truly shines. This is not a traditional backpacking pack in many ways, sharing some features with its ultralight cousins. This includes one large compartment secured with a roll top closure, along with two huge water bottle pockets and a stretch back pocket. 

These are the staples of most ultralight packs, but the Crown manages to appeal to traditionalists with some thoughtful additions. For starters, the top lid is excellent, with a large compartment and two pockets inside. It also is completely removable for fast and light trips, so those attachment cords can function as a huge top compression strap for securing a tent, sleeping pad, or even a climbing rope. This attachment is more secure than a simple top strap or Y strap since it makes contact over a much wider area. The pocket can also clip in front to form a front pouch or even pair with the removable hip belt to form a robust fanny pack for use as a town bag or summit pack.

But what we love about this pack is the compression options. With two straps on each side and two on the back, this bag can cinch down for smaller trips or loosen up to carry an impressive amount of gear. We’ve been using the previous generation of this pack – the Crown 3 – as a winter backpacking pack for years now. Being able to strap odd shaped items on the sides, back, and top with ease means this thing can adapt to a wide variety of use cases. We usually haul a closed cell foam pad on the back set of straps, a camp chair on one side, and depending on the adventure a tent on top and a camera tripod on the other side. Combined with the 60 liters of internal room, that’s a lot of gear hauling capability.

The Crown also features a unique suspension system. Instead of using a frame, it has a single stiff polypropylene sheet across the entire back that gives a rigid structure for the rest of the pack. We’re both fans and not fans of this system. In practice we find it does a great job at standard weights, but when things get heavier, we found it was a bit too flexible. Thankfully for this generation, Granite Gear added the option to snap in an aluminum frame that increases the load limit from 35 pounds to 45 pounds. We haven’t tested this feature personally, but it looks like a great way to add strength for the trips that need it.

Durability

Though we haven’t taken the Crown 3 on a thru hike to test durability, it shares a very similar design and material selection to the previous generation, the Crown 2, which we have beat up quite a bit. That pack no longer serves as our primary summer pack, but we still use it as a winter, boundary waters, and glamping pack where we often push it hard. The crown’s 100/200d fabric is half as thick as the face fabric of the Gregory Baltoro and Osprey Aether we tested, but we’ve found it still held up well while bushwhacking through pine groves or sliding across granite. We did manage to smash the buckle on accident, but it glued back together fairly easily and will continue to be our pack of choice for adaptable adventures. 

The Crown 3 is being transitioned to a Granite Gear’s new ECO lineup, which includes using recycled nylon fabric and recycled polypropylene for the back panel. We love to see companies take a step forward towards better sustainability, so Granite Gear deserves praise for their efforts here. On top of that, they also offer an undyed fabric type that saves water compared to a traditional dying process. This comes in a flashy white color that Granite Gear encourages people to decorate on their own. As the entire industry shifts to try and better protect the wilderness we love, Granite Gear has made meaningful changes to their products.

Ease of Use

Although the Crown3 has quite a good feature set, it doesn’t end up being confusing. The hip belt uses an out-to-in cinch design that’s easier to tighten down for most people, and the rest of the buckles operate smoothly. It’s interesting to see two sternum straps on a pack of this class since that’s usually a feature found in ultralight running vest style packs, but we like how it gives more customization to the fit in the front. And thankfully, the buckles on these straps are standard, fixing an issue with the previous Crown 2 that had a difficult to use buckle that needed to be aligned well to snap into place. 

When testing the pack for water bottle compatibility, however, things went downhill. The pockets are simply too high to be used comfortably. A lot of packs fall into this trap, but the Crown 3 almost seems designed with the knowledge that its pockets would be inaccessible. We suspect this is a reason why they include shock cord on the shoulder straps to hold a water bottle, but we also found this system didn’t work that well. Even with two hands, we found it difficult to use. We’d probably invest in a water bottle pocket if we got this pack – it’s nice to see that the ample daisy chains on the front would make it easy to attach.

Should You Buy the Granite Gear Crown3 Backpack?

If you’re looking into traditional and ultralight packs but don’t know which one to choose, the Crown 3 may offer a great middle ground that helps you understand what style you prefer. It can carry a lot of gear, both internally and externally, but also shrink down to carry more minimalist loads as well.

It also comes at a decent price for the versatility and quality it offers, making it a pretty good value in the world of backpacking. It can handle the rigors of a thru hike but also do well as a casual weekend pack, making it a great all-arounder for many different environments. The caveat here is that it’s not going to truly excel at any one thing, so you might find yourself upgrading in a few years. But there’s no pack that will better help you find your preferred backpacking style than this one.

What Other Backpacking packs Should You Consider?

For other great options of backpacks that are a bit more specialized, check out our full guide to the best backpacking packs. 

ULA Circuit Review – If you’re tempted by the weight of the Crown 3 but want to go even lower and are thinking of thru hiking, the Circuit is an excellent pick – it also excels in the space of thru hiking.

Osprey Exos 58 Review – This is another pack that bridges the gap between traditional and ultralight packs with a more robust frame and suspended mesh back panel that’s more comfortable than the Crown.