Manufacturer: Maxpedition
Item: Monsoon Gearslinger
Price: $129.99 ($138.99 For ACU)

If you haven't heard of Maxpedition, where have you been?  They make a wide array of useful bags, pouches and accessories that can supposedly take the abuse of the rigors of the outdoors.  Looking at the Macpedition items that I'm reviewing, I believe it.  Call me careless, call it making good use of gear or call it abusive...I'm hard on most of the things I own.  While I can't yet make any claims regarding how durable their bags are, I'll give you a report as I spend more time with my newly acquired Maxpedition set.  This is going to be a part of my replacement of my current EDC Oakley bag.

I need my packs and bags to be functional, built well and well thought out.  I carry a lot of gear (firearm, extra magazines, DSLR gear, small emergency items) and due to the weight and amount of items I carry, I need a pack to not only carry the weight without failing (camera gear alone is $6000+), but also for it to carry the weight wisely and comfortably for an extended amount of time.

I'm impressed with the quality and quantity of the storage on this pack.  Not that I know the ins and outs of every single pack out there and all of the technical stuff, but I always assumed that packs over 1000ci equated to the size of one of those huge North Face or Kelty camping packs.  Where was I?  Ah...storage.  See the picture below with the blue thing in the pack?  That, my friends, is a 15" Sony VAIO.  No, I didn't have to shove the thing in there.  The laptop fits comfortably and zipped up easily without looking like a stuffed trash bag.  Now that's roomy, although I plan to carry a 10" Eee PC instead of the fullsized Sony.  The laptop fitting into the Maxie was the last thing I expected.   The pack isn't tiny, but I suppose the taper made me think it was smaller than it actually is.

Let's face it.  Guys like to accessorize just as much as girls, be it a Blackwater BW-15 to go with a GLOCK G35 or a Barrett in 50BMG to match a SureFire light.  This pack is no different.  I love the MOLLE attachments.  It has the appointments throughout on the strap, face, side and waist.  Maxpedition offers a wide array of MOLLE mountable accessories and pouches to compliment this bag, including the TacTile and F.I.G.H.T. Medical pouch.

True to the claim of "Hard-Use Gear", the stitching looks solid.  Even when wrenching to get a TacTie through the MOLLE, it stayed intact with no trauma to the bag or anything.  Zippers are heavy duty YKK.  The paracord is a huge plus, especially with the knot at the end.  There are gong to be times when you don't want to take your gloves off.  The knots give you a nice positive "grab" with zipping and unzipping.

The back compartment lends itself to housing a 100oz Camelback bladder.  The strap has velcro tie downs to secure the tube.  Me, I'll opt for the disposable 100oz BLACKHAWK reservoir.  Review on that to come.

There are pouches on each side of the pack, both are pretty spacious.  Facing, the storage on the left was designed to fit a 32oz big mouth Nalgene bottle.  I think it'd make a good spot for my scanner, which swims in there.  The cinch will help keep it from taking a dive.  The storage on the right is pretty spacious and again, the scanner swims in it.  Nice!  No cinch on that side, so the scanner stays on the right.  Unless I get the CP-L which is a scanner holder which would look pretty nifty on the strap.

The little additions are nice too.  Necessary?  Maybe not, but I see the benefits and they work for me.  MP3 headphone passthrough that leads from an internal player pouch is something that really works for me.  I can't tell you how many times I thought I might have trashed my Zune by 1) having it fall out of my shirt pocket or 2) having it in my pants pocket only to have the earbud wire get caught on something.

After using it for a few days, another point that I like is the strap.  The inner part of it has a textured rubberized material which kept the pack from walking all over the place.  The nice 4.5" wide strap (tapering down to a still wide 3") really helps the load feel comfortable.  Mind you that this is with the 15" laptop, 5lb+ camera, bottle of water, flash, scanner and 2 full magazines.  It stayed in place, even without the waist strap, which can be rolled up and tucked out of the way.  Another cool thing...there's a thin pocket on the inside of the strap as seen in the lower left picture.  It's big enough to put a few credit card sized items in there.  After spending a few hours with the Monsoon, it stayed cool (temperature wise cool as well).  There are three islands that seem to help that along.  I thought it would be uncomfortable with a lot of walking, but nada.  I personally didn't even notice it was there.

The main compartment is covered by a buckled flap.  This may sound odd, but it's a nice clip in that it's a well made clip.  The tolerance between the 2 parts is nice and close, unlike a lot of the crap out there where there's a lot of movement to and fro.  There's no need to worry about  bumping one side of the clip and having the whole thing come undone.  Sure, the 2 cross straps would hold it together, but Maxpedition wouldn't skimp and do a Mickey Mouse job.  When the buckle clicks to lock, it's very positive and you know it'll stay put.

Dropping the drop down outer flap reveals a velcro strip mesh compartment along with a key clip, making your keys relatively accessible if need be.  This is on a zippered flap which drops to reveal the main compartment which is the bulk of the storage.

(Discuss Here)