Fits a TON of Stuff... Which May or May not be What You Want
I purchased this backpack when I was looking to upgrade the sling-style camera backpack I had been using for several years. Not only had I amassed more gear that was getting cumbersome to fit in my older pack, but my older pack had also proven uncomfortable over the course of long hikes due to the sling-bag configuration that put all the weight on one shoulder (and couldn't be swapped to the other). This bag was a real contender, which is why I enthusiastically purchased it, believing entirely that "this was the one!" Well, I gave a shot for a week and here are my impressions. For one thing, it holds a TON of stuff. It holds so much gear, in fact, that I felt sort of overwhelmed by all of the storage areas. Even with all the gear I was loading in there, which was already quite heavy, it still seemed like big sections of the pack were vacant. That made me question what I would ever do with the extra space: it's not like I'd be bringing the kitchen sink on hikes. Don't get me wrong: if you have so much gear that you don't think you can find a bag that will accommodate it all, give this bag a shot: it might just surprise you! But if you're like me, you may end up feeling like all of this storage space is overkill for your needs and the sparse amount of gear you have sort of gets "lost" in all of the zippers, pockets and slots. I had to do too much digging to get at everything. As far as materials and craftsmanship, the bag looked perfectly sturdy to me, and held up fine during my tests on hikes. I can see how certain seams were maybe not heavily reinforced and therefore perhaps prone to succumbing to early wear, but I certainly can't attest to that either way. I did feel that the bag straps lacked both width, to distribute the load over a broader area, and sufficient padding. This didn't make the bag unusable for hikes -it was still 10x better for long hikes than my sling-bag- but I felt like they could've done a bit better in this area. Ultimately, I made the decision to send it back primarily because I felt like it was overkill for my needs. Instead, I got a big Lowepro bag with less bells and whistles, but which exposed the entire contents of the bag just by opening one zipper. It's done me well. Ironically, though, a little over a year after sending the bag back, I started toting GoPro gear in addition to my DSLR and now I sort of wish I still had this bag, as it would allow me to carry all of my still photography and videography gear in a single bag with excellent organization and no overcrowding. One of these days I may just purchase it again and keep it this time!
