The 4 Best Beach Bags of 2025
Top pick
This canvas bag, with its simple and durable design, will last a lifetime. Thanks to its lack of smaller pockets, you can easily shake out sand.
The L.L.Bean Boat and Tote is made in Maine of heavyweight, 24-ounce canvas, which helps it weather the elements (though it isn’t water-resistant) and allows it to stand up like a bucket even when empty. In this bag, your valuables will stay hidden from prying eyes as well as protected from sand and splashes. It features a reinforced bottom and overlapped, double-stitched seams made with nylon thread, which will resist rot better than cheap cotton thread.
The Boat and Tote comes in four sizes—small, medium, large, and extra large—and each size gives you two options for the handle length. The large bag we tested, which measures 15 by 17 by 75 inches and holds about 35 liters, shipped with that size’s standard 8-inch handles, long enough to fit over a shoulder and freeing up your hands to carry umbrellas and coolers. But it’s a tight fit; if you plan on stuffing your bag to the brim, opt for the longer, 14-inch handles to accommodate the bulk. They extend all the way around the bottom of the bag and are rated to hold 500 pounds.
The bag has no additional pockets and no zippers, but that isn’t a bad thing. Pockets fill with sand. And as Wirecutter founder Brian Lam discovered after trying—and casting aside—six different zippered bags, zippers, unless specifically designed for salt-heavy environments, oxidize and seize up quickly in ocean air. (But if you still demand closure, the Boat and Tote is also available with a zippered top.) This bag is protected by L.L.Bean’s somewhat limited satisfaction guarantee for a year.
