Best disc golf bag

We looked for an empty weight, external dimensions, a rain cover and a putter-pocket count across all five bags. We found none of those on any of them. What every single listing publishes is a disc capacity, and two of them publish something about a cooler.

We have not carried these bags round a course and will not claim to have. In a category this thinly documented the ranking is a ranking of published capacity against price, with two tie-breakers.

1. Published disc capacity per dollar. It is the only comparable figure in the category, and it is also the figure that decides whether the bag is still useful in three seasons.
2. Does the cooler come with a number? Four of the five say nothing quantified about drinks. One publishes a can count and a can size. That is the only cooler claim on this page you can check.
3. What else is in the box? A mini marker is required to mark a lie and is the thing beginners most often turn up without. Exactly one bag states it includes one.

Nothing here is scored on durability from experience, because we have none to report. Where a listing states a material or a construction claim we have recorded it as a claim.

A starter set is three discs — a driver, a mid-range and a putter. That is what the hub page on backyard disc golf recommends buying first, and it fits in a tote bag. So the case for a 22-disc backpack is not about now.

What happens, if the game takes, is that people start buying discs by flight number and by plastic type — the same mold in two plastics behaves differently, and that is the point at which a collection goes from three discs to fifteen without any single decision to expand it. A 10-disc bag is a ceiling you will hit; a 22-disc bag is one you probably will not.

The counter-argument is real too. If you are buying a disc golf bag as a present for somebody who has never thrown a disc, the cheapest shoulder bag here costs about a fifth of the HIMAL and will hold their starter set three times over. That is covered in more detail on our disc golf gifts page.

Three things decide whether you like a disc golf bag, and none of them is published by anybody: how it sits on your back when it is full, whether the straps dig in, and whether the zips survive a wet season. We are not going to invent an answer to any of them.

What we can tell you is that the one figure everybody publishes — capacity — is also the one that goes wrong most expensively, because a bag too small is replaced and a bag too large is carried. Buy for the collection you will have, not the one in the box.