****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I absolutely love this bag. For those of us that are into EDC, we all have had a situation where our EDC bag, while useful for, well, every day, does not quite work as well for traveling due to its compact size. In my opinion, 25–27 L is an appropriate EDC size for a grown man. However, sometimes you just need a bigger bag. I am so happy that direct action made this bag in 30 L. I took this bag on a four-day trip to Puerto Rico, and although I had a couple pouches clamped onto the outside, the bag itself was big enough to be my ONLY bag on the trip! This bag was good enough for that trip, which included some extended hiking, and it was also small enough that I was able to carry it on the plane without anybody noticing it or saying anything, which saved me money, technically it's probably just a little bit too big for the whole "personal item" category.The belt on this bag is phenomenal. It's very comfortable and there's extra MOLLE webbing on it. It should be noted that the belt does look a bit ridiculous for the civilian world, but it can be removed very easily.One thing I didn't like? Despite all of the MOLLE webbing on the outside, there was, shockingly, no MOLLE webbing on the inside. There needs to be some kind of way to hang pouches and equipment built into the inside of the bag, it got kind of annoying on my trip having to dig through my bag for the different pouches that I had instead of having them all organized on built-in MOLLE like I can in my 5.11 bag. I had to spend $40 to buy a removable MOLLE frame insert, witch, while not terrible, is still not perfect.However, this is still an awesome bag. Here are my closing thoughts:1. It's big enough for a person to travel for 3-4 days with no other bag, as long as the person knows what he's doing.2. It's almost, but not quite, too big to be an EDC bag. If this were my EDC bag I would definitely takeoff the hit belt, it's an awesome hit belt but it's kind of ridiculous looking.3. It's too big to be a gym bag that will fit in a standard gym locker.4. It definitely has a tactical look to it, but removing the hip belt eases this quite a bit. Still, there's no getting around it, it looks overly tactical.5. As addressed before, I wish it had some interior MOLLE webbing, either in the main compartment or the front compartment. Overall though, the organization aspect of the front compartment is decent.6. The reason I'm using this bag instead of my 5.11 AMP 72 is because of one thing: exterior water bottle holders. As much as I love 5.11, they never seem to grasp the concept that people LIKE having exterior water bottle holders, which can also double as shoe holders.7. This is really splitting hairs now, but I wish the bag was actually 1-3 L bigger.8. I wish there was a few more Velcro patches on the outside for morale patches, but I was easily able to buy some extra Velcro patches that are compatible with MOLLE webbing.9. I use this bag for coaching, for going to the gun range, for hiking, and for traveling. It's big enough to travel for 3–4 days, as noted above, but I wouldn't take this if I was trying to sleep in a tent or camp for an extended period of time, it's not quite big enough to hold a tent, food, all that stuff.I've only had this for a little bit over a month. I love it. I wish it came in a few more colors, and I hope that Direct Action considers making an even bigger version of this. We all know there is no perfect tactical/assault pack, but this one comes pretty close.
