Bushcraft Equipment: Maxpedition Xantha

Description

Products & Kit I use and recommend below.

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Video Transcription

hi guys it's Mike here from Emma Sookie bushcraft and in this video I wanted to show you the Maxpedition exemplar this is a fairly new pack for me that I've owned for about two months now and I wanted to share with you some of the experiences I've had with it in the two months that I've owned it whilst practicing bushcraft hiking and doing various other things and really just review the pack have a look at its pros and cons some of its key features by the end of the video you should have a pretty good idea of who this packs for whether it's right for you so if we just have a look at the pack at face value you can tell straight away that it's made by Maxpedition looks very much like one of their packs as it is and it has their branding you know pretty much all over it and it's of a very good build quality I was very impressed when I opened it I had a look at the build quality of this pack they do use a lighter weight webbing and they do on their other packs you'll notice that on the kondal - which was the old pack I used the webbing was very starchy this material here was a lot firmer and more robust and on this pack it seems to be of a slightly looser weave and it's much more flexible and much floppier and that was something I didn't really like off the cuff because I like my expedition's products because they're very rugged and one thing I do like is is sort of a tight weave on webbing you know and things should just be really robust so they can take a lot of dirt and also shed dirt well we just have a look at the pack here and I've spin it around you can see this is the front of the pack you have a little bit of a velcro there - male on the front just here as well and I spin this round I see that we have a sort of you know water bottle Nalgene bottle holder just there with a drawstring that basically allows you to kind of tighten up on the top of the bowl to stop it dropping out we have a compression strap just there as well so you can obviously put things in or compress that water bottle holder completely

if we spin that round again you can see we've got this sort of egg cut padding on the back there which is really nice and comfortable this is an internal frame backpack it's a kind of Maxpedition entry into internal frame backpack sin it as a large kind of plastic shapeable plate with a metal bar down it and it is very comfortable on the back I must give it credit for that it is very comfortable although I hear it's not particularly comfortable if you have a larger gent or lady and because apparently this padding here doesn't go all the way around in the right place but for somebody like me he's got a fairly slim build it is very comfortable and it goes around my waist quite comfortably but overall the back of the pack you can see they're quite comfy I'm just really looking at it at face value we will talk about the key features specifically just so you get an idea of the pack you can see you've got another water bottle holder just over this side here and I have my cooking kit in there again with a drawstring for the compression strap need to have two compression straps around the top of the pack and see them here and here my use compression straps very rarely when things are pretty empty and they're flopping around everywhere they are useful you know to kind of cut down on all of that but generally I don't really use them too often we do have a grab handle at the top that nice firm grab handle and there isn't too much webbing anywhere around here in terms of male there's just no male around here this pack is really like a kind of backpacking sort of backpack it's not like a tactical pack like their other packs if there's possessively qualities of a tactical pack but it's more of like a standard backpacking backpack but just made with Maxpedition products Isis generally the feel that I've got from it from using it and it's a fairly good weight as well materials are very solid and you've got a little bit of padding here quite comfortable these could be a bit thicker really terms of width personally you've got a bit of male down the straps here so you can hook things on you do you do have a sternum strap there that you know how keep it taut in well you know a lot of people don't really use these too often anyway yeah it's a pretty good pack terms of first impressions you know build quality is very good and you know it does live up to max positions kind of hard use product at a glance you'd also have some straps at the bottom and again I I never find these big enough on a lot of their backpacks the kondal - I had to extend it myself but this is pretty good for like a foam roll mat a tarp all in a wool blanket something along those lines but in the winter if you have a really big sleeping bag you will have to extend these if you hope to get it on the base of the pack so when I first bought this pack I went out for a bit of a hike around about three miles and it was fairly fully loaded because I wanted to see what it could do and I fancied getting out because it was a really nice day and the first thing I noticed was the current set up with this kind of waistband here would loosen as I walked and I'd be walking along and then I'd start to feel a lot of weight on my shoulders and it got very uncomfortable I couldn't really work out what was going on and then it's wigged you know these are loosening up basically and the way they worked before is you basically pull them like this outlet some pigeons getting a bit comfortable that's what happens when you sit still everything starts to fly around you and you blend in but yeah you start to pull these straps and everything tightens up and they would just gradually loosen so what I did is I took the old webbing off of the condor 2 or borrowed borrowed it and just put it on and developed a slightly different system where you just pull normally onto the buckle so instead of it looping through the buckle and coming back onto this adjustment strap and tightening there I just have it normal normally like it is on a buckle just like this you know so you're just pulling it like that and tightening it and it hasn't come loose since then but I was pretty disappointed but I had to do that on a pack that I'd just bought and

it's not really something you want especially with the cost of the pack is this not cheap you can see on this waist strap here you've got two little pockets I keeper ferrocerium rod and one just so I've got a hand I can use it with my neck knife strike a number if I really want to or produce some fire I'm on the go don't want to take my pack off so you know you can put little things in those pockets but you can't put a huge amount in in them really they're not very big and you have to make them big if you really really wanted to put significant things in there personally I think they should have just left this as male so you could have put what you want on there and you know tailored it to your two requirements really but that's really the waistband and you know it's a it's okay you know it's not too bad and fairly useful a little bit of extra storage if we look at the side of the pack here you'll see obviously I've got the water bottle holder here which I've had to modify myself again but if we unzip first and here you've got like a secret pocket there in here I usually keep my knife for my backer laplander when it's not a noose on my belt or in my pocket but again you know you've got quite a lot of space in these pockets here yeah they're not too bad but the problem with them is is if you have anything you know of a significant bulk in the core of the pack they become unusable I have that experience the other day when I did some wild camping packs a lot of cold gear for you know the winter no warm sleeping bag wool blanket all this sort of stuff extra clothes you know hats all this kind of you know bulk basically and even took my water proofs and you know these pockets because I'm usable and also that bulk starts to eat in to the water bottle holder so if you have the original water bottle holder that comes stock with the pack you know when you pack it out in the inside the pockets just become very very tight and you almost have to pack those first before you pack the core of the pack because if you pack the you know the core pocket with all your bulky gear you won't be able to get much in there so you have to do this first then that and it kind of makes putting them back in a bit tricky if you haven't taken that bulk out so again that's a little bit of an issue there you can see I've extended mine I've extended mine by stitching a triangular piece of cord or a fabric in off an old dumped patch that I had old Mac splish and dump pouch that was kind of coming to the end of its life it was sort of four or five years old and it's been used pretty heavily but that's just made them usable when the core of the pack is now full so I can have a big sleeping bag in there and all that sort of stuff and these pockets are still fairly large to take the bulk of whatever I want to put in them so that's just a small change that I had to make again they could have just made these pockets a bit bigger it wouldn't cost them much else and it would just been an extra two inches of material and they could have saved a you know quite a lot of complaints really on that one you have a hidden pocket the other side too so you can see it's pretty much mirrored in terms of its design you know everything I show you they'll be on one side it'll be on the other side so it is a mirrored pack again really male could have been added to this site and you could have put your own canteen holder on the side there or maybe just male on one side and the canteen holder on the other and that probably would have been a slightly more accommodating design for those of us who like to tailor things to our needs but let's have a look at the front so the front of the pack you have some male maybe you want to put a med kit on there it's usually what I would put on there I do have a med kit at home but it's not on here at the moment it's actually just in the side of the pack because I've got a pretty empty pack today but yeah you can put a med kit on there and you know you can access that pretty much straight away if need be and it's a clever item really to have on the outer of a pack to be accessible in situations where you suddenly need them because they're always fairly unexpected when they crop up but you have a front pocket here and that opens up it has a number of different compartments in now I mean at the moment I've just got a maintenance kit in there because I wouldn't really need anything else today we have a webapp

pocket here you can see that it used to be stitched so it was in two halves so it ran like this and there were two little pockets but I usually like to put other things in there like that not fishing and sort of hunting kit like a slingshot maybe even some ammunition or something like now sandwiches or whatever you want to put in there I just find the two little pockets too small for anything I own so I uh threaded that stitch there and you know made it a little bit bigger but the pockets are fairly big and you do have this patch here too which can zip up it has like a keyring holder on I've never really used those but in here I put my field Journal when I write about mushrooms wild edibles you know medicinals things that I'm learning out in the field and notes and experiences that I have that I don't really want to forget you know because you may do when you get home field Journal goes in there and it can be accessed fairly quickly but this is a fairly large pocket you could put all your tools in here I mean I've got my ax on my belt as I do my knife and maybe you want to put your ax in there this is a grandpa spritzer wildlife hatchet again this pouch it becomes pretty unusable if you bulk out the core of the pack so when I put a huge sleeping bag you know in the core of the pack there's no way that this will fit in there you look at the width of that it's fairly uncompressible because there's lots of stuff in there now that wouldn't be able to go in there so I'd have to move that up just there because that bottom part would get bulk down sleeping bag so again I wanted to happy about that and yeah it's a bit of a shame really but again if we unclip these compression straps and we have a look at the top of the pack let's say you can see if we unzip that just there I've got a hygiene and med kit in there this is actually a glasses pouch and you know kind of intrudes on the inside of the pack but you know that that's not a bad thing that's just its design you can see it there you know it flaps around inside but it doesn't take up a huge amount room and you can always kind of thread it over the top of stuff but yeah you could put whatever you like in there something going on access quickly I've just got a little bit of a medical kit in there at the moment things I need to grab quite quickly and you can see the orange tag there I should mention the zipper pulls - they're not original zipper pulls that come with the pack this is a snake knot and I generally use this on zipper pulls on my kit just because I find it easy to grab you know and it doesn't kind of slip out your hands

but let's have a look in the main compartment at the top of the pack here I should mention you have like a security popper that goes through your zipper pulls and just stops things being torn open real fast although you know out in the woods you probably really don't need to use that kind of thing but in the urban environment maybe you're sitting on the tube or something and maybe it will come in handy so if we have a look inside the back here this is the main compartment and we've got a large zipper pocket mesh pocket just here you can see that just there you can put any manner of things in there and I suppose for those of you watching and you own your own kits or are looking for a pack you can pretty much visualize what you would do this if you bought it just by having a look at it we have a large pod or packages here you can see you can get pretty much your whole arm in wealth up to the elbow obviously so it extends the whole length of the pack and it's a fairly large inner compartment it's about 30 liters this pack in terms of capacity and that's quite an important thing to mention and it's obviously made of Macs petitions you know ballistic nylon features all the same things as their other packing terms of build quality although it does feature that looser webbing which I mentioned which um you know is really just nitpicking it could be just as good might just be a slightly different design but it was nice that the older product that I use the kondal 2 was so robust you know using it well over three years you know in many different contexts it was a it was a solid pack and bit small though for me nowadays I like to carry other things other than just the bare minimum when I go out but yeah I can get my snug pack softy full sleeping bag in here as long as I can press it small enough but it does intrude a little bit on these outer pouches which is why I've stitched that extra material in there to make them usable but the secret pockets unfortunately they become completely unusable

unless you're putting documents in there maybe you want to put you know like a hunting permit in there inside a plastic waterproof slick I usually do put my shotgun certificate in there my license and stuff when I go get me they do a bit of shooting I've got my documents in there because they're just flat so you know there are things you can put in there but it becomes very limited and it's a bit unfortunate really but there we go that's a brief look at the Maxpedition exam there is a safar which is I believe a 27 or 28 litre pack and it's just slightly shorter than this and this is the exam for the 30 or 32 litre version of that pack so you've had a good look at the pack and its key features and I've shown you some of the modifications I've had to make really to make it suitable for me and I'm really a more usable pack by its design I think um you know the sort of waist strap issue has been sorted now I think he also did a recall as well so if you contacted them and said you one of the people you had a problem with the waist strap they would source it for you free of charge and obviously pay your shipping and things like that and also you know the water bottle holder I mean I don't think they've obviously addressed that that's just part of the design and unfortunately if you overload the pack on the inside and you know because it is just fabric after all it's going to flex it's not like a box that things are confined to a certain space you know they do intrude on each other as do all backpacks really in some form or another

I just think really that should be taken into consideration an extra material added you know to make it more usable pocket to really on the outer but I've done quite a lot with this pack of I've used it for two months so you know this isn't certainly like a review where I've just been given it and I'm just telling you about it I've used this pack for two months and I really to try and make it work for me you know did a lot of hiking as I say I've done quite a few miles in it fully loaded been out on numerous campouts use it for work doing camp outs and courses and such and you know really been at home as well sort of trying to get it to to kind of configure it in a certain way that works for me but it just hasn't quite stuck this time and you know it it cost me quite a bit of money as well to actually at this pack over from the states I I paid full whack for it as I do with pretty much all my kit and yeah a bit of a shame so that's just the way it goes isn't it yeah it's just that I wished yeah I don't really have the money to just go out and buy lots of stuff and and know what it's going to be like until I've used it so in this case you know I really love the kondal to was pretty much using it for three years solid but I wanted something a bit bigger and more comfortable on the backs just to accommodate you know more equipment really that I enjoy taking out with me these days and yeah this this really I thought this was going to be the one but it's not I will give it credit where it's due it's it's really well made fantastic pack if you are considering it you know do look into it a bit there are other reviews out there and some people might be getting on really well with it it's made to a very high standard stitching is excellent it repels water very well it's incredibly comfortable to wear and perhaps if you've got something like a condor 2 and you know you're just looking for something a little bit bigger a little bit more comfortable there's no reason why this would be a good companion for you it's just I was after something a little bit different for me anyway and this hasn't really fitted the bill but that's just my opinion it's just my opinion really there are a few things that I haven't mentioned about the pack really and that's that the zips have like a flap that goes over the top of them so when you are in rain it does repel rain quite well and I did forget to mention that and you can fit a water bladder in there as well you can put a water bladder in there and it's got little pockets just here where the pipe can come out either left or right hand side of the shoulder strap so you can put a hydration kit in there and you can unzip the pack as well and actually take out the back plate so there's like an inner pocket whether you can see that there

you unzip that and this whole sort of spine type system just can come out I mean you don't want to put that in the washing machine because I do wash my Maxpedition packs they just chuck them in the washing machine when they get really dirty mainly after you know a good year of use really don't watch them all the time but see they don't really hold dirt too easily it generally knew for a long time so you know you can chuck it in the washing machine take all the bits out that you don't want wash and you know probably hold up to that very very well as there are other packs d because it is a a good material but I think there was a pack I was I was really interested in buying and I almost bought it before this actually had it in my hands and I was offered it at a pretty good price and that was the carry more Special Forces Predator patrol pack in 45 litre the square one a lot of male around it and I've really been eyeing it up I know quite a lot of people out in the field who are a real expert to use that pack and really rate it highly but I will give it a credit it's incredibly comfortable on the back and I'll show you it I'll put it on now and you can see how it conforms to me so I'll just pop this on you can see how it sort of fits on you I'm about 5-10 and I have a fairly slim waist so you know it fits pretty snug for me and I've done these up fairly tight you can see the padding on somebody like me really comes around the hips and I think some of the larger chaps are complaining the thermal bigger loud so were saying that it's not comfortable you know if you're in a sort of quite rain there because these Pat list padding just doesn't really doesn't really work so that is something to bear in mind but you can see the sternum strap isn't really necessary if you have the waistband up nicely and really depends on the weight obviously it's super light at the moment but very little in there you can see it fits quite high very very comfortable allows me good access of stuff around the back there like my ass slingshot my knife and there you know it's a very comfortable pack and I've done a lot of hikes in it I will give it credit for that not had any problems with comfort and you can see there it's it's nice fits really well you know you've got the rain cover just there out the way as well it doesn't interfere with the back of my head provided you fit it you know in the right way you can just see it's a decent comfortable pack you know conforms to the body very well it's the internal frame aspect of it is excellent I think you know if you're sort of using some of their other packs and you like their packs and you're happy with the size of that pack because they do make fairly small packs you know you just want something a little bit more comfortable it's a great option for you but if you're looking for something felt big to do one job does all you know see you want a pack for all year round and maybe you want to go out in very cold conditions and need to carry all that extra gear with you it's probably not the right pack for you to be fair guys I hope that helps you know in terms of like a review and an overview of this pack it's just my opinion you know there might be a lot of guys out there who absolutely love it and having a really good experience with it so it's worth going and checking out other reviews and not just listening to me because this is just my experience with it but yeah I hope that's helped and Adi thank you for watching and hopefully I shall see you in another video very very soon so thank you again guys and take you