London in 16 litresLondon in 16 litres

On 25 November I'm flying from Dubai to London for ten days, and I'm taking one bag: an Aer City Pack 2 Ultra. It's a 16-litre everyday backpack, the kind most people carry to the office. The challenge is to find out whether it can work as a complete travel bag for ten days of a London winter.

The idea comes from Jeremy Maluf's one-bag setup. He travels with about 12 litres, and his rules are simple: take only what earns its place, prefer things that do more than one job, don't carry two devices that do the same thing, wash clothes instead of packing more, and use the bag's own pockets before buying organisers.

I've allowed myself a bit more room than Jeremy, because I'm not trying to get to the lowest weight possible. I'm keeping the things that make a trip enjoyable for me: a MacBook to work on, a Sony a7CR to take proper photos, a GameSir controller for gaming on the Fold, and my favourite Superdry jacket. The challenge is fitting everything else around those.

This is version 1.0, written before the trip. Everything here has been physically packed and tested at home, but London will decide what stays for version 2.0.

The bag

The Aer City Pack 2 Ultra is a black, boxy 16-litre daypack that weighs 966 g empty. For its size it has a lot of separate spaces:

• A padded laptop compartment against your back.
• A main compartment in the middle.
• A front compartment with a built-in organiser of stretchy pockets and a zipped section.
• A front half-zip pocket.
• A fleece-lined quick-access pocket on top.
• A bottle pocket on the outside.

The trouble with a bag this size is that the pockets compete for the same space. Fill the front organiser and the main compartment gets tighter, and the other way round. So the whole layout below came from packing, unpacking and trying again. I know what fits where, but I haven't measured how big each pocket is, so the drawings show where things go, not their exact sizes.

Everything, laid out

Before any of it goes in the bag, this is the whole kit on the floor, grouped by what it's for, with what I wear on the plane at the end.

Where everything goes

The main compartment

The main compartment holds three things: my clothes in a packing cube, the camera, and a light down jacket.

The clothes go in a Peak Design Small packing cube, which sits at the bottom. I tried the Medium first. It fitted, but it left no room for the camera, and the camera matters more. The Small cube compresses enough to close comfortably with everything inside, and it weighs 1,704 g packed.

The Sony a7CR with its 40 mm lens (831 g) sits on top of the cube. The Uniqlo Ultra Light Down (240 g) squashes into whatever space is left. It's good at filling odd gaps, but it isn't camera protection, and I don't treat it as that.

My four pairs of socks don't go in the cube. With them inside, the cube was too full to compress, so they get tucked into the gaps around the camera instead.

The items in the cube add up to 1,660 g, but the packed cube weighs 1,704 g on the scale. I haven't worked out where the other 44 g comes from, so I trust the scale.

The front organiser

The front compartment has a built-in organiser, and it does the job of a tech pouch. I tried packing my accessories in an Aer tech pouch first. It was tidy, but it weighed 137 g and took up room in the main compartment, and everything in it fits in the organiser anyway. So the pouch stays at home.

• The middle pocket holds the Anker 140W charger (289 g).
• The slip pocket next to it holds a USB-C cable (50 g).
• The zipped section holds the small things I'd hate to lose: the spare camera battery, the SD card reader, the AirFly, a Galaxy SmartTag2, my passport and my Alpaka card wallet. The wallet's 145 g includes what's inside it: a spare SD card, a USB-C memory stick and my cards.

The GameSir controller (319 g) lies on top of all that, inside the front panel. It follows the curve of the panel, so it takes no space from the main compartment. The one thing to check is that the sticks and triggers aren't being pressed when the bag is zipped shut.

The top pocket

The fleece-lined top pocket is for things I reach for often, or that scratch easily: AirPods Pro, AirPods 5, wired USB-C EarPods and an Apple polishing cloth. The toothbrush lives here too, on its own, so it stays away from everything else in the wash kit.

The front half-zip and the wash kit

The front half-zip pocket holds the wash kit. Keeping it here keeps anything that could leak well away from the laptop. It's two small bags:

• An IKEA pencil case (258 g) with the hard things: an electric razor with its cable and cleaning brush, a comb, nail clippers and allergy tablets.
• A small cloth bag (117 g plus the bag) with the soft things: moisturiser, hair wax, a tiny aftershave spray and my asthma inhaler. The inhaler moved here from the top pocket so all my medicine is in one place.

The cloth bag isn't leakproof, so the creams still need a sealed bag for the flight. Toothpaste and deodorant are on the list to check.

The bottle pocket

The Anker 25K power bank (604 g) rides in the outside bottle pocket, in its pouch. It fits snugly, and having it outside means I can charge the phone or laptop without opening the bag. It isn't perfect, though. If I turn the bag upside down and shake it, the power bank eventually slides out. And it's out in the rain. A small tether to the bag is on the list.

The laptop sleeve

The MacBook Air M4 (1,222 g) goes in the padded laptop compartment in its own sleeve. Nothing else goes in with it. Anything hard pressed against the screen for ten days is how screens crack.

Clothes

I'm not packing ten outfits. The plan is a short rotation, washed as I go, with layers for cold and wet London days.

On the plane I'm wearing the heaviest things: the Superdry jacket (1,000 g), a Wool & Prince hoodie (780 g), Hollister trousers, a Wool & Prince T-shirt, a Buff and one pair of trunks and socks. That's 2,469 g of clothes that never go in the bag, plus shoes. The jacket isn't up for debate. It's the warmest thing I own, and the hoodie is my favourite. Wearing both means their 1.8 kg costs nothing in bag space.

In the cube: a second pair of trousers, two more T-shirts (one Wool & Prince, and one of two Primark T-shirts I bought for AED 11 each), a HEATTECH long-sleeve top and long johns, and four pairs of trunks.

That gives me layers to build up as it gets colder:

1. T-shirt.
2. HEATTECH long-sleeve.
3. Hoodie.
4. Ultra Light Down.
5. Superdry jacket.

HEATTECH long johns go under the trousers on the coldest days.

Honestly, the jacket and hoodie on their own might be enough for most days, which would make the Ultra Light Down and the HEATTECH top extra weight. I'm taking them anyway, because ten days in London will tell me for sure, and guessing won't. The one gap is rain. I own a Uniqlo shell but it isn't in the bag, so I'll find out how the Superdry copes with a wet London day.

Left at home:

• A thick black T-shirt (330 g, more than twice the weight of the others).
• A West Ham top.
• A white pullover.
• Jogging bottoms and a jogging top.
• An extra HEATTECH top.
• A boxy Hollister T-shirt.
• The second Primark T-shirt.

Charging

Everything charges from two things:

• The Anker 140W charger has three USB-C ports and one USB-A port. I looked at smaller 65W, 70W, 100W and 160W chargers, but kept this one. It charges the MacBook and the power bank fast at the same time, and the razor needs its USB-A port.
• The Anker 25K power bank holds about 90 Wh and puts out up to 165 W. It has two USB-C cables built in, so it needs no loose cables of its own.

Add one 50 g USB-C cable and the razor's own cable, and that's the whole charging setup. One short USB-C to USB-C cable is still in my car.

The camera charges over USB-C too, so the 270 g battery charging case stays at home. I take one spare battery (84 g) instead.

Photos

The a7CR takes one SD card, so carrying two cards gives me a spare, not a backup. The backup routine for the trip:

1. Shoot to the SD card.
2. Copy to the MacBook with the card reader. It has 512 GB and plenty free.
3. Keep the originals on the card.
4. Upload the important ones to cloud storage.
5. Only wipe a card once the copies have been checked.

That's why the Samsung T9 SSD (141 g with its cable) isn't coming. The laptop, two cards and the cloud are enough copies for a ten-day trip.

Games, music and films

The Galaxy Fold8 is my entertainment for the trip: games, emulators, films, reading, music and podcasts. The GameSir was bought for this trip, and with it the Fold replaces the Nintendo 2DS I'd otherwise have taken. One device and a controller instead of a second console.

I'm taking more headphones than strictly necessary:

• AirPods Pro for noise cancelling.
• AirPods 5.
• Wired EarPods.
• An AirFly, so wireless AirPods work with the seat-back screen on the plane.

I wear headphones a lot, so both wireless pairs stay.

The weight

Fully packed, the bag weighed 7,090 g on the scale. That excludes the Fold in my pocket, four pairs of socks and the short cable still to add. Adding up every item's own weight comes to 7,058 g. The 32 g difference is about right for the cloth bag in the wash kit, which I never weighed on its own. So the scale and the list agree.

The heaviest things in the bag are the clothes (cube plus down jacket, 1,944 g) and the MacBook (1,222 g). Power and charging (943 g) and the camera kit (939 g) come next, and they weigh almost exactly the same. The bag itself is nearly a kilo of that.

Another 2.7 kg goes on my body: the jacket, hoodie, trousers, T-shirt, trunks, Buff and the Fold. Wearing the heaviest clothes on the plane is what makes this work.

Every item, heaviest first

This is every item I've weighed, packed or worn. The packing cube counts once, at its packed weight. Its contents are in fig. 4, and the wallet's weight includes what's in it. The items in the bag add up to 7,058 g. Socks, shoes, the short cable and the wash kit's cloth bag haven't been weighed yet, so they aren't listed.

What I tried and dropped

• Aer tech pouch, 137 g. The organiser does the same job and frees the main compartment.
• Decathlon tech pouch, 140 g. It does the same job as the Aer pouch.
• Peak Design Medium cube. It left no room for the camera.
• Socks in the cube. The cube wouldn't compress with them in.
• Samsung T9 SSD and cable, 141 g. The laptop, two cards and the cloud are enough copies.
• Nintendo 2DS, 280 g. The Fold and GameSir replace it.
• Sony battery charging case, 270 g. I take one spare battery and charge it in the camera.
• Trio charger, 107 g. The 140W charger does it all.
• InCharge cable, 33 g. The power bank's built-in cables cover it.

Before I go

• Pack the socks and weigh them.
• Get the short cable out of the car.
• Weigh the bag one final time.
• Check toothpaste and deodorant, and put the creams in a sealed bag for security.
• Tether the power bank.
• Check the GameSir isn't being squashed.
• Check the camera is protected.
• Check the airline's cabin bag rules.
• Clear space on both SD cards and check cloud backup works.
• Walk around fully packed to see how 7 kg feels on my back.

What London will tell me

When I'm back, I'll write up version 2.0. I want to know:

• What I used every day, and what never left the bag.
• Whether the jacket and hoodie were warm enough on their own, and whether the Ultra Light Down and HEATTECH earned their place.
• Whether two pairs of trousers and three T-shirts were the right rotation.
• Whether the GameSir was worth its 319 g, and whether I missed the SSD.
• Whether the power bank stayed put in the bottle pocket.
• Most of all, whether a 16-litre bag at about 7 kg was comfortable for ten days.

The aim is a travel kit I can reuse: the same bag and tech every time, with the clothes changed for the season.