One caveat-if by backpacking, you mean traveling with a backpack, as opposed to hiking, I would stay away from ultralight packs-they are not made to take the abuse of being tossed around by baggage handlers, shoved into trunks or luggage compartments on buses and trains or run through airline carousels. Packs made out of Cordura will last a lot longer than silnylon.
Yes, second on that. When I take silnylon stuff on an airplane I either carry it on or put it inside a hockey bag to get it there.
OTOH, I'm taking a trip to Japan in a month, and my better half is going with me, knowing we'll be walking and taking trains everywhere, I know I was gonna take a backpack and she decided she would. My wife doesn't backpack at all. However, we went into MEC and I went to the "travel packs" - the cordura types, some with wheels and some without. Attempting to put these on her with 7 kg of weight in them produced nothing but complaints about how uncomfortable they were, and she hated them. Similarly with many of the men's packs.
Finally I put a Gregory Jade 50 on her, and this she actually doesn't mind. So, while not an UL pack, the Jade 50 is acutally on the lighter end of things for mass market packs. and she doesn't mind carrying a (small) load in it. She also massively objected to the heavy "travel"
packs and wanted something lighter, and as it turns out, cut for women (duh).
The moral of the story is, figure out how much you're gonna carry, and try them on. everyone is different. There is no "best pack" - just because one pack works for me doesn't mean it will work for you.
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