I was really excited to use our Deuter toddler carrier for hiking, for the first time. We actually got it before our daughter was born, because we wanted to be cool parents who took their kid hiking.

Would you ever guess that we didn’t pop our toddler in our Deuter Kid Comfort Venture until she was 16 months old? By this time, she was well into crawling and being independent, so actually, she had a great time sitting above my shoulders for a nice view of a spring hike.

In this review, find out about if I recommend the Deuter Kid Comfort Venture as one of the best baby carriers for the outdoors, and if it’s one to consider. Is it Deuter’s most value-driven kid carrier package, like Deuter says?

Key takeaways you’ll learn in my review:

  • See which features I thought were the most beneficial.
  • Explore my photos of using this kid hiking carrier, to see how it worked out.
  • Read the conclusion to see if I think the Kid Comfort Venture carrier is worth it.

Deuter generously provided us with the Kid Comfort Venture so that we could write this review. All experiences, photos and opinions are our own.

Quick summary: Deuter Kid Comfort Venture Carrier

If you’re reading this review, you already know that a “hiking baby carrier” is like a backpack for a parent. The precious cargo inside is your child, who you’ve taken hiking, or to the zoo, or even to a day-long event like a concert when walking might get tiring for them. Of course, many families take their child hiking carriers on vacation and travels.

We’ve used a lot of front-style baby carriers like our Baby Tula Explore carrier when our daughter was a newborn until toddler. These worked until she got too tall, and her head would hit our chins if she was front-facing. She also wanted to be fiercely independent, and eat her snacks.

The Deuter Kid Comfort Venture lets her get a view of our activities all while holding (or dangling) her milk bottle and eating some fruit at the same time. This hiking carrier sits firmly on my hips, with great structural and functional support that makes it very ergonomic.

I’ve seen comparisons of this basic-level toddler carrier from Deuter compared against the more luxurious ones like the Kid Comfort (most expensive), Kid Comfort Pro and Kid Comfort Active. I think if you start off with one that works just fine, like this one, you won’t know what you’re missing (like me).

Let’s get into what I liked.

Features I like, enjoy and appreciate

Safety

Becca buckled our daughter into the Kid Comfort Venture for a “test drive” in our neighborhood before we even took it to the nature reserve where we met friends to go for a hike. The use of the baby sternum strap and tightening straps was intuitive, especially if you’ve used as many backpacks as Becca has, over the years.

So, after buckling the sternum strap across our daughter’s front, and securing her in with tightened straps, Becca also tightened the side panels so that they narrowed in just a little bit

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Photo of Becca Siegel and Dan Gold

Did our daughter stay secure? We actually got off to a rocky start. A few minutes into the hike, Becca saw that her legs were uneven, and she had to be shifted. Take this into account: there doesn’t seem to be much of a way to keep the child from slipping in the seat.

Ergonomics

The ergonomics of the Kid Comfort Venture are pretty straightforward, but note: there are lots of straps and options.

The main ones to know about are the padded hip belt. I tend to wear these (from my experience in years of backpacking around the world) at my hips, whereas Becca prefers to wear backpack hip belts ON her hips, to support weight. Regardless, I found that the 5 lbs 13 oz of the product weight, plus my 18-pound toddler, felt solid and balanced with the hip supports.

There’s also an adjustable sternum belt for the parent/wearer’s use. I buckled this, and it supported the weight much more gracefully across my chest. You’ll want to try this if you’re walking up and down hills, for balance and diversifying where the weight of your kid goes.

I tightened, and then loosened, the compression straps on the backpack straps to get the fit right. Becca tends to wear backpack straps much tighter than I do, to get the weight of her pack at the top of her back, whereas I don’t mind the weight more at the middle of my back. With my daughter in tote, however, I wanted to make sure we were steady.

Total weight

At a dab under 6 lbs, this hiking carrier weighs what I expect it would. Now that I know that several of the other hiking carriers from Deuter weigh closer to 7 lbs, this seems like a good deal, and optimal.

Things I didn’t like, or didn’t use

I didn’t use every single feature of this kid carrier, simply because I don’t have a use for all of them (yet).

Loading the child in

This will happen with use of any baby hiking carrier. Getting your kid in and out isn’t the most graceful (or maybe we’re not experts at it). To get our daughter in, I sat on a curb, while Becca put in our daughter and strapped her in. To get her out, we did the same thing.

If you were hiking along with your toddler or child, you’d use the aluminum frame kickstand for this.

Listening to my toddler babble during the entire hike

I’m just kidding, I love listening to my toddler babble her sounds. Using a kid hiking carrier is a new experience for me as a parent because I usually don’t have my daughter positioned at my upper back, sing-song-ing her baby sounds into my ears.

The fact that she was so close to me made this extra loud (it was only to mention because I was having a full conversation with another dad).

The “Vari-Quick” system

This is Deuter’s name for an adjustment system of where the backpack shoulder straps are placed. This Vari-Quick (or Vari-Slide) system allows changing the positioning of both straps, to suit people of different heights. It comes in handy if Mom is going to use the carrier, and then Dad, if Mom got tired.

We haven’t used this yet; basically, if Becca and I are hiking together with our toddler as a family, I’m going to be the one wearing the hiking carrier the entire time.

Bottom storage pocket

Becca carried a travel fanny pack as a waist pack, and hand-held our daughter’s bottle and a water bottle for us. We could’ve used the pocket under the child seat for these things, but maybe next time. As it happened, our toddler didn’t even want the food we brought for her; she wanted the snacks that the other toddler we were with had.

Is it worth it?

If you’ve done your research, you will quickly see that these toddler carriers for hiking often don’t come cheap. Most of the high-quality ones retail above $250, and often top out at $300 for a well-rated model.

The New York Times rated the best 3 kid carriers for hiking, and two of the top three were Deuter carriers. Those two are the middle-of-the-road and upper-tier Deuter carriers. The Kid Comfort Venture is agreeably the most competitively-priced of all the Deuter hiking carriers, and I think that is a great thing.

Is there a reason to go up a notch to the more outfitted Kid Comfort, Kid Comfort Active, or the creme de la creme Kid Comfort Pro (which is at least $100 more)? That’s up to you, and the level of activity (as well as wear and tear) you plan to put into your hiking carrier.

I plan to use our hiking carrier as long as our daughter likes using it, or will put up with being carried in it. Then, I’ll be using it for our second kid, and maybe even a third. The Deuter stamp of quality seems to mean a lot, and with that lifetime warranty, it’s worth it.

Where to buy it

There are a few buying options:

I recommend buying it on the Deuter website at the product page. This way, your carrier comes with a lifetime warranty, and what this means is that Deuter will repair your product no matter when you bought it, no matter what the reason is, and for FREE, forever.

I’m surprised to see the Deuter Kid Comfort Venture on Amazon for a few dollars less. Sure, you could save a few dollars by getting it on Amazon, but you won’t get the Deuter Lifetime warranty, and I think it is pretty valuable. You’ll get free shipping anyway, because Deuter ships anything over $50 for free.

And if you want to see our thoughts on another Deuter product we keep in the house and for trips, check out our Deuter UP Seoul backpack review. You may even want to use it as a diaper bag… like we did!