Gear Review: Black Diamond Speed 40 (2009*)

Black Diamond Speed 40 Backpack

The 2009 Speed 40 (and its counterpart, the Speed 30) are the current editions of Black Diamond's outstanding 2005 Speed daypack.

New to the feature set with the Speed 40 is floating, fully-removable lid, as well as a suspension that appears borrowed (albeit modified) from Black Diamond's larger but also-outstanding Quantum backpack. The addition of the Quantum's robust Y-Rod suspension plus a floating lid would seem to make the Speed 40 a sort of Shangri-La of backpacks—big enough for overnight and technical loads, yet light enough to remain in the daypack/ultralight category.

Black Diamond Speed 30 Backpack

Speeding on Mt. Baldy's Summit

Sadly, this is not the case. The Speed 40 is not the same pack as the original in key performance aspects.

What I loved most about the original Speed was its simple yet effective suspension. A single stiff frame rod plus framesheet made the first Speed a load-worthy workhorse.

It remains my go-to pack for carrying skis on big day tours. The '05 Speed carried big loads upright and comfortably, with little rearward torquing and little to no bleed-through to the shoulder straps. In comparison, the new Speed 40's frame is noticably softer. Heavy loads quickly overwhelm it, driving the weight onto your shoulders, as well as canting the pack backward.

My guess would be that in taking the Quantum's robust Y-Rod suspension and modifying it to shed weight, Black Diamond went a little too far. That, however, doesn't really explain why the loads seem to sit so much farther to the rear with the new pack.

Frankly I don't get the position of the load-leveler straps on the Speed 40's shoulders. These are routed in such a way as to be functionally useless. Luckily, you can with some effort re-route the straps so that they will pull the upper half of the pack forward (as they're supposed to), but I remain shocked the pack ever shipped that way in the first place.

Even if you still wanted to carry skis on the Speed 40, the straps have been redesigned to make it all but impossible—unless you rig your own custom diagonal-carry. A-frame carry has been ruled out by the fact that the compression straps no longer have release buckles. Okay, sure, the original Speed was never designed to carry skis in the first place. But it did—and did so extremely well.

Really, the signiture quality of the new Speed, from my point of view, is the loss of must-have functionality from the original model. Alternately, if you'd never used the original Speed, you might find the Speed 40 useful in limited contexts. In particular, if you need to carry a lot of gear but not a lot weight (I'm not sure how that exactly adds up), the Speed 40 does a nice job, with 40 liters of capacity at only 2 pounds, 9 ounces in weight (small/medium measured).

That said, there are lighter packs in this size with much lighter frames, or frameless designs entirely, which offer essentially the same load-management abilities. More damningly, there are lighter packs with much better frames. So much of the original Speed's potential remains here just barely unrealized. And there are new ideas that show considerable potential as well. But I have to say it: overall the new pack is heartbreaking. The 'improved' model is a backwards evolution *(replaced by 2012 Speed).

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