Osprey Exos 58 Ultralight Backpacking Pack: Weight, Price and Alternatives

The Osprey Exos 58 Ultralight Backpacking Pack is our intermediate tier pick in backpacks, with a published weight of 2 lb 10 oz and a listed price of $280.00. The trampoline back panel is still the best answer to a sweat-soaked back in the humid east, and Osprey covers it under their all-mighty guarantee. You pay for that in a few extra ounces of frame.

What is the Osprey Exos 58 Ultralight Backpacking Pack actually good at?

The trampoline back panel is still the best answer to a sweat-soaked back in the humid east, and Osprey covers it under their all-mighty guarantee. You pay for that in a few extra ounces of frame.

Best for: Humid summer hiking, and anyone who has never got on with a pack that sits flat against the spine.

A pack is the one Big Three item that gets worse when the rest of your kit is heavy. Frameless and lightly framed packs carry beautifully under about 25 pounds and badly over it, so the honest order of operations is to cut the load first and buy the pack second.

What does it do to your base weight?

At 2 lb 10 oz this item accounts for roughly 26 percent of a 10 lb ultralight base weight and about 13 percent of a 20 lb traditional one. That framing matters more than the raw number: an ounce saved on a headlamp is noise, and a pound saved on a shelter is a category of its own. Put your real figures into the gear list builder and the same item will show you what it costs against your list rather than against an average one.

Published weights are taken in the manufacturer's favour: usually the smallest size, usually without the stuff sack, stakes or guylines that come in the box. Expect a real-world figure an ounce or two heavier and weigh it once when it arrives. A $9 kitchen scale is the cheapest useful upgrade to any gear list, because it stops the spreadsheet lying to you.

How does it compare with the rest of the backpacks?

Every item below has been verified against the retailer listing, and every weight is the manufacturer's published figure for the configuration named. Sorted lightest first, so the trade between weight and everything else is visible in one pass.

Lighter alternatives: Zpacks Arc Haul Ultra 60 at 1 lb 5 oz, Hyperlite Mountain Gear Southwest 55 at 2 lb 0 oz, Granite Gear Crown3 60L Backpack at 2 lb 3 oz. Heavier but more capable: Naturehike Rock 2.0 60L Internal Frame Pack at 3 lb 5 oz. Weight alone never decides this. The lightest option in a category is usually the one with the narrowest window of conditions it works in, which is exactly the trade the roundup spells out tier by tier.

Does this weight include the lid and the frame?

Pack weights are quoted for one size, usually the smallest, and often with the lid, the framesheet or the stays removed, because those parts are removable and removing them makes the number smaller. A larger torso size can add several ounces. More importantly, a pack has a design load: frameless and lightly framed packs carry well up to roughly 25 lb total and progressively worse above that, and past about 30 lb the load moves onto your shoulders. Total means base weight plus food, water and fuel, so check the loaded number rather than the base weight before deciding a light pack will work.

What does the weight saving cost per dollar?

Gear upgrades get argued in adjectives. They are better argued in a ratio. Against the heaviest priced option on the same shelf, the Naturehike Rock 2.0 60L Internal Frame Pack at 3 lb 5 oz and $129.99, this item saves 11.0 oz for about $150.01 more, which works out at 2.1 grams saved per dollar spent.

Use that number the way you would use any ratio, which is as a sanity check rather than a verdict. Anything above roughly 5 grams per dollar is excellent value in this hobby. Under about 1 gram per dollar you are buying something because you want it, not because the arithmetic told you to, and that is a perfectly good reason as long as you know which one you are doing. The ratio also ignores everything that is not weight: durability, fit, repairability and how well an item works in the conditions you actually hike in are not in the numerator, and any of them can outweigh the whole calculation.

Which complete kits use it?

This item appears in 2 of the complete gear lists on this site, which is the most useful context a single product page can give you: not what it weighs in isolation, but what share of a finished kit it accounts for and what the rest of that kit looks like around it.

Every one of those kits lists every item you need to actually go, with a per item weight and price, a running total down both columns, a section on what you can skip, and an upgrade ladder priced in grams saved per dollar. Each also loads straight into the gear list builder so you can swap this item for something you already own and watch the total move. That is usually a faster way to decide whether a purchase is worth it than reading another review of it.

Who should skip it?

Anyone whose conditions sit well outside what this item is built for. Nothing here is a universal answer, and the honest failure mode of a gear list is not weight, it is a piece of kit that was chosen for a different trip than the one you are taking.

Going lighter must not mean going unprepared. Shelter adequate to the actual conditions, insulation, rain protection, water treatment and a way to call for help are fixed costs on any list. If a lighter version of this item means cutting into one of those, it is the wrong purchase however good the spec sheet looks. You are responsible for what you walk into, and the forecast is not the conditions.

Related reading

• Our full backpacks roundup, split into beginner, intermediate and expert tiers
• Pack volume by trip length
• Frameless versus framed packs
• Gear list builder: see what this item does to your own base weight
• Base weight calculator
• Six complete example gear lists, every item priced and linked
• All verified gear specs, A to Z