Red 60L Getaway Kitbag review: a versatile, roomy dry bag that will see you through plenty of aquatic adventures and weekends away

Meet the reviewer

Rosee Woodland

Rosee Woodland developed a taste for adventure at a young age, growing up in a home where camping was the default holiday, and good weather was a vacation bonus rather than a necessity. After bike-packing the length of France in her mid teens with her family, she started to undertake solo forays in her 20s, usually without the benefit of much technical gear at all. Happily, the years she later spent as a mountain biking journalist eventually gave her an appreciation of decent kit! These days she loves a water-based adventure, and is an outdoor swim coach, and a keen free diver. She has a soft spot for Northern Ireland's Mourne mountains, and can also be found hiking and kayaking in Pembrokeshire and the South West of the UK.

Red 60L Getaway kit dry bag: first impressions

Dry bags used to be pretty simple affairs, but as interest has grown in wild swimming and paddle boarding, there’s been an influx of designs with higher specs and better thought-out construction. That’s not to knock the original roll-top dry bag design. But if you’re going away for an extended period then it’s helpful to have a dry bag that’s more accessible, and the new kit bags from Red certainly fit into that category.

All three bags in the range use the same tough Armour Tech fabric and have very similar features, so I’ve reviewed the 60L version here, but there’s little difference between them other than size.

With a roomy main compartment, an outer and an inner pocket, there’s everything you’d expect from a standard holdall here, but where this bag really stands out is in its carrying functionality.

If you’ve ever loaded up a holdall you will know that lugging one even a short distance can be a lop-sided affair. But the Getaway’s padded straps convert easily to backpack straps, complete with chest clip, and there’s even a drag handle if you really have stuffed the thing to the limit of its generous capacity. Other clever features include rope pulls on the zips, an emergency whistle on the chest harness - something we always love to see, and a changing mat included with the bag, which folds out to give you something to stand on while getting changed - a thoughtful touch.

Red 60L Getaway kit dry bag: in the field 

 As a wild swimmer, I can end up with a surprising amount of kit on weekends away. My swimming wetsuit is bulky and its smooth surface means it tends to unfold itself the second I’m not looking. I was able to get it into the Getaway bag easily, along with all my other wild swimming gear, and various essentials for a long weekend break. To reduce the bulk of all that, err, stuff, I then used the compression straps at each end, which allowed me to flatten the bag somewhat, and take up less room in our already overflowing car boot!

Once we’d arrived at our destination I realized that I could transfer my swimming stuff to the simple 30L Red dry bag I had with me, and use the Getaway bag as a waterproof container for everything I wanted to keep dry in our tent, as I was pretty sure it was going to stay a bit damp the whole time we were there (sadly I was right). However, despite freezing nights and a humid atmosphere, everything I put in the Getaway bag stayed bone dry. And when it came time to pack up and go home, I moved all my now soaking swim kit and wetsuit back to it, using the backpack strap configuration (I felt like blowing the emergency whistle it was so heavy now) and traipsed to the car and stuffed it in, on top of our very absorbent sleeping bag! After a six hour drive, despite the inside of the bag resembling a swimming pool, no water had leaked out at all. Just to make life more interesting, once emptied of my wet gear I stuffed a towel inside it and dunked it in the bath. Again, no water got through from the outside to the inside. As far as I’m concerned, it had definitely passed the test!

Waterproofing

The Getaway uses a TPU-coated fabric called Armour Tech for the outer to protect your belongings from the elements (or your other belongings from the wet things inside it). This is a sustainably-produced fabric made from recycled plastic bottles, and is designed to be tough and puncture resistant, lengthening the life of the bag - an important part of reducing its environmental impact. The seams are welded too.

The airtight main zip, which runs the full length of the bag, is guaranteed to IPX7 diving specs, which means it should hold up even when submerged (in water of up to 1 meter/1 yard depth). This can make it a little stiff to use, but the rope pull on the zip helps to make this more manageable and they have got easier to open and close the more I’ve used the bag. There are also two outer pockets, with the same type of waterproofing and a mesh bottle pocket. 

 Harness and handles 

 A lot of thought has gone into the carrying system for this dry bag. There are two standard holdall straps that can be attached together with a simple velcro wrap. However, these straps also convert into backpack straps, complete with adjustable height chest straps that also feature an emergency whistle. The straps are padded, with mesh outer on the inside, allowing air to flow through and reduce the amount of sweatiness when using them. They also have attachment points for carrying extra loads.

There is also a grab handle at one short end of the bag, allowing you to simply drag it along the ground if it’s literally too heavy to carry.

• How Advnture tests products
• The best dry bags