Sunday, October 19, 2008

A review of The Karachi Outpost by Crumpler

What I carried around this weekend.

In short, It's a great camera backpack. And an OK notebook backpack.

Pros:
- looks good / doesn't look like a "camera/notebook bag"
- even fully loaded has proper straps to distribute weight
- re-configurable to just notebook, just camera bag (as pictured) or plain old backpack
- nice colours (this one being black/gray and the other brown/tan)
- extremely well padded, armour like even.
- excellent security for travelling (opens from the inside only requiring you to remove the pack)
- seems to be well made
- water resistant (not tested)

Cons:
- smaller divider pieces have Velcro at the ends but you can’t Velcro things to them
- excellent security means less convenient to get at your stuff
- curved shape (which make it look good) means space not as usable on the sides
- expensive considering it's made in china like a lot of it's competitors.

I've had this bag for a few years now. It's starting to show it's age slightly in the straps. Overall, considering it's use, it's holding up very well. The stitching and materials look in great shape. I generally use this bag as the hauler bag. When I need to move a lot of stuff (as pictured above). It does not make a good assignment bag due to the way you need to get into the bag.

The Karachi Outpost by Crumpler

Competition: The only other brand I have experience with is Lowe Pro. I have own(ed) a few of their products and have spent many hours in camera shops testing them out (to the dismay of store clerks I'm sure). The packs I specifically looked at are the CompuTrekker AW and the CompuTrekker Plus AW.

Colour: gun metal/black/mid grey
Model: KO-01A (2033)

2 comments:

Steve said...

Dude, is that seriously all your gear? All I have is a camera, two extra lenses, and a Flash I'm going to stick in storage soon ... that's it!

FYI, I use a Roots camera backpack. I like how it's not a typical camera bag brand, so its purpose isn't obvious. It's also fairly small ... probably half the size of yours. It worked well for me in Europe last year, and I'm still extremely happy with it.

Paul T. said...

That was not all my gear at the time. Some of the gear in that photo got stolen.
You can see notes for each item in the flickr photo.