Patrol MOLLE US Army Assault Pack Tactical Rucksack Backpack Bag 50L Black

This is a well-made small pack. As reviewers here say, it is suited to school and college kit, and would be excellent as a small overnight or flight bag, providing space and protection for a laptop or a camera kit.

However, I bought it as a military style, 50 Litre backpack, capable of carrying significant weight and fully integrated with the MOLLE system. I intended it for short summer trips including significant walking, at least 20 miles per day. The size is about 30L, to be generous; the harness and waist belt are far short of military reqirements for comfortable weight carrying; there is no chest strap; and the MOLLE strips are mostly decorative. For example, The side strips have only three openings and only the middle one is sufficiently wide to take standard straps. This limits attachments to tiny knife sheaths and the like. A couple of small pouches could be added to the back of the pack, but the harness will discourage putting significant additional weight there.

It is a nice pack, and in black, quite elegant, so I will pass it on to my wife who will almost certainly find it useful. However, how long will people keep advertising this as a 50L? - or is this just a brand name?

I bought this for my son, who cycles to school with an incredible amount of kit. This holds it all securely in a very flexible layout. Most importantly, it is a very high-quality product that will hopefully stand up to the rigours of school. The zips are chunky and well sewn, the stitching throughout is very well done, and the finishing is excellent too.

The straps, whilst well designed, lack a chest-level crosspiece which my son claims is not an issue but is something I prefer. The bag is so well designed though that such a strap can be fitted with no fiddling and therefore I do not regard this as a fault in any way.

The compartments are well though out and spacious, and the bag folds flat quite neatly as well. The bag is covered in Molle loops, so just about anything sensible can be attached.

All in all, this is a very rugged piece of equipment and will stand up to a lot of usage and a thorough battering.

I highly recommend this piece of equipment.

This is a very good pack. I wanted something that would enable me to organise my kit so that everything could be easily and quickly accessed. This pack achieves this perfectly with the two main sections, two front pockets and various internal net and zip pockets. However after using several times I've found a couple of small but annoying drawbacks.

Firstly I found the shoulder straps are not as comfortable as I've come to expect from packs from outdoor specialists such as Lowe Alpine. A 50L pack with plenty of scope for accessories via the MOLLE straps can obviously become a fairly weighty pack and one that you may not want to carry for a whole day. It's by no means terrible and does have the waist belt (which can be detached) for long periods with heavy loads but it seems it could have been better without adding much if any expense.

The second relates to the 6 compression straps. This is a very deep pack so when not fully loaded the compression straps are very useful. However 4 of them pull in from the larger of the 2 front pockets, flattening it. For me these pockets are great for quick access to small items and delicates (like my 2 bananas that got totally squashed). Doesn't make sense to me why they aren't all from behind the front pockets like the other 2. The pocket is not large enough to require compressing and doing so makes it a pain to use.

I'm maybe being harsh on what is a seriously good bit of kit but when something seems to have had so much thought go into the rest of the design it's frustrating. It still seems to beat anything else out there for the price though.