- In this video
we're going to be reviewing the
EVERGOODS Mountain Panel Loader 30.
Now this isn't necessarily a travel backpack, but
when two guys come together from Patagonia and GORUCK,
it definitely catches our attention.
We're curious to check it out.
I'm Tom the founder of Pack Hacker
and we do travel gear reviews like this all the time.
If you're new here, consider subscribing.
Without further ado,
let's jump right into the MPL30 from EVERGOODS.
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Hopefully you like black because
the MPL30 only comes in that color.
For us personally, that's plenty,
but you're not going to get a lot of
other color variety options like you
would see in other packs.
The exterior of this pack is covered
with a 420D high tenacity nylon
with the one by one plain weave
and polyurethane coating on the back;
which is a technical way of saying
that the pack is durable, abrasion resistant,
and worth the weight.
There are a couple other areas that
are made out of 500D nylon as well.
We've generally found this fabric
to be very durable in our testing,
although it's not completely dust proof.
But again, it's black;
not a lot of packs are.
The overall shape of this pack is very ergonomic -
between the curve straps in the front
and the curve frame sheet and the
shape of it in the back, as well as
the kind of wedge look on the bottom.
It has an overall kind of aggressive look to it and
definitely fits your body well.
It's super comfortable and looks slick.
It's also highly compressible.
So on days when you're not carrying as much,
say you take out a bunch of packing cubes and
leave them at your hotel or AirB&B,
you can actually compress the pack down
and it has a lot lower of a profile
that if it's completely full.
That's definitely a plus in the aesthetic department.
The pack uses Duraflex plastic throughout
on these compression straps as well as the buckles.
Also, nicely there's the EVERGOODS
logo underneath this two by two inch patch area
that we have on the front of the pack.
This is a reflector patch that they've included but again,
anything with velcro will work here.
EVERGOODS is super into the details
and they do a great job at openly
sharing this for people that want to get this information.
They sent us a three page, very detailed
PDF on all the materials and we
were super excited to look into that.
EVERGOODS definitely put a lot of
thought into the details of the MPL30 and it really shows.
Starting off with the compression straps.
EVERGOODS put a lot of good detail into these.
First of all, it's attached behind the main panel
opening of the backpack.
You don't have to clip it, un-clip anything,
as you're getting in and out of the pack.
Really great feature and it kind of
compresses it right before that zipper.
Another thing that they have are
these elastic keepers on the side.
If you do have excess strap going on,
it's pretty easy to just quick roll it up.
You just put it over and boom,
you don't have a bunch of excess strap laying around.
We also notice that this feature
exists on the Patagonia Arbor Pack,
so it's definitely cool to see the
inspiration from Patagonia and GORUCK
and kind of how those two came together.
You can really tell with this pack
how they've been influenced by each of those brands.
These sturdy strap panels on the sides
here offer a pretty good carry for short distances.
They offer a decent amount of padding and firmness,
but not too much to where it feels squishy.
Again, those are going to be good
for just quick carries whenever you need it.
And saving the best for last,
the harness system on this thing is absolutely killer.
I mentioned before that the pack
has kind of more of an aggressive look.
Well this frame sheet is slightly curved
that contours to your back, so it
fits really nicely and kind of just hugs you.
When you initially put this thing on,
it does feel like it's kind of giving you a hug.
These pockets on the sides where the waist belt is
kind of conform around your hips.
Then the straps as well kind of curve
over the front of your body.
Definitely feels great and for me personally,
at six foot two around 180 to 190lbs, it works well for me.
It fits me super well.
Now, it wouldn't be a Pack Hacker review
without a couple of gripes.
We're going to get into those now -
little nitpicky details that we noticed.
Starting off, the sternum strap isn't entirely attached.
It is adjustable which is good but,
it's not fully secured though so there's
a very slight, slight chance it
could pull out without you knowing it.
There's no way of really fastening it to the side.
Although it's really great that it's adjustable.
Also with the waist strap,
there's really no way to store these.
I've seen a couple people stuff
these into the side pockets here.
Not necessarily what they're intended to do
but it'll work in a pinch.
And that specifically from EVERGOODS
is kind of part of the design.
They wanted to create a trail pack
and they kind of went all the way and did it all the way.
Another thing is with the shape of this pack,
you can't necessarily stand it up straight
because the bottom is angled and EVERGOODS again,
intentionally did that.
They shaped it in this way so that
more weight would be distributed to your hips.
When you're on the trail or whatever,
it ends up being a lot more of a comfortable carry.
This can get annoying in the coffee shop
if you want to have it sitting up
next to you with your stuff in it.
You're going to have to have it lay flat. But again,
EVERGOODS went aggressively in one direction with this pack.
One other thing with the harness is that
the wing tips aren't necessarily good for everybody.
If you have a wider set or you have a smaller frame,
there is a chance that they could
kind of poke you in the back rather
than contour to your body.
Definitely just keep that in mind.
I've personally found this system to be great.
I like that the pockets are back here.
You could quickly access them and
you kind of can feel around in there and grab what you need
and I do love the overall harness system of this pack.
Big fan of it.
There's a bit of a hole on the top of the harness here
and what that's for is that you
can thread a hose from a water bladder
right through the strap system,
so you can access it whenever you need it.
The back panel of this is great.
It conforms to your body and has
a bit of a chevron pattern going on here
which is reminiscent of a turtle shell.
Due to the shape of this pack,
we don't necessarily need load lifters on it.
If you have a more square travel backpack
with a flatter back panel,
you're going to want to get load lifters on that
so you can pull that weight closer
to the top of your body and to your back. But
in the case of the EVERGOODS MPL30
and the way it's been designed,
it kind of ergonomically curves to your back and fits you.
You don't necessarily need load lifters,
or something like that, as the weight
is already evenly distributed with this pack.
Moving onto the last exterior feature of the pack.
We have these grabbers here on the main panel of the bag
so it's easy to just grab those,
quickly rip open the pack.
Boom, you can get in and get out and get whatever you need.
One thing that I did find that's
good with these too is it creates a slight security feature.
It's definitely a hack;
it's not really what it's intended to do. But
you can weave the zipper pulls through here
and create a little bit of a more
challenging way to open your pack.
You could even tie it around that
loop or something like that.
It isn't necessarily fool-proof but
for somebody quickly coming by
and just wanting to open that main compartment
and get to your stuff quickly,
it's going to deter them a little bit more.
It's definitely good in that aspect.
There are two exterior pockets in this pack.
The one on the top here is good.
It just opens up.
It's kind of a nice compartment.
You can fit quick-grabs, anything,
whatever you need to put inside of here.
It sort of just opens flat and it's a nice way to access it.
Move on to the other pocket.
This here, you can access from the side.
What the intention is here is that
you're wearing the MPL30, you flip your bag around
and you have it in front of you,
and then you can access that pocket.
One of the gripes that I've heard here is that
a lot of people wish that it was
on the other side of the pocket.
For this one you kind of have to --
let me just put it on real quick.
When you put it on here and then you flip it around,
and then you can get into that pocket here.
You can grab whatever you need out of here
which is pretty good.
Some people say that they would
prefer to be wearing the pack like this
and then they would want to whip it around
their right hand side, 'cause if
this is your dominant hand if you're a righty,
that feels a little bit more natural.
Open it up with the left hand and then
be able to dig around inside of there but,
the zipper is at the bottom.
It isn't necessarily designed for a righty or a lefty.
You definitely get used to whatever
mechanism it has but again, if we're being nitpicky,
that's something that I've definitely
seen a lot on the internet.
It doesn't really bother me personally
or any of the contributors that were taking a look at it.
It's something we noticed.
A really great thing about these two pockets here
is that they are leader independent of the pack.
What that means is if you load up
that main compartment of the pack,
which we're going to get to in a second,
just hold on ... hold your horses,
it doesn't cut into how much room
that you have in the entirety of the pack.
Kind of works well as three compartments
that sort of independently compress themselves.
As you're putting more and more gear in here,
each compartment kind of compresses itself
and doesn't eat into the leader capacity
of the other compartments.
Both of these pockets here have the
YKK #8 zippers.
They're really high quality zippers.
Of course we've got the #10 Racket Coil zipper,
an industry standard for quality on this part.
One of the great things about this main clamshell
is you can almost use it as a top loader as well.
The way that the zipper is shaped,
you can really just kind of fold down that front
and get access to the view of the
inside of the entirety of the pack.
That's really nice if you just
want to quick see what's going on inside.
Of course it also fully unzips as well
down to a main panel here.
There's a decent amount of room inside of here.
Again if you have packing cubes,
that's going to be the way to go here.
Just allow you to organize your stuff a little bit better.
There's not a ton of additional
organization inside of this main panel,
which is totally fine for us;
we're packing cubes people.
Just a note - the lining here is green,
and all the zipper pulls are green
to make it a little bit easier
to see your black gear when it's inside of the pack.
Not to be confused with the black
zipper pulls and the black material on the outside.
It's important to note that the
liner on the inside is the same
exact material, just a different color.
So it's that 420D high tenacity nylon.
We've got the stash pocket at the top
which perfectly fits a passport, even within a case.
Inside of it here we've also got a
clip for keys, anything that you might want to put in there.
That's definitely good.
We move onto this mesh pocket here.
It's a bit of a funky shape.
It's sort of got this wedge trapezoid
kind of shape going on.
We found that to be kind of interesting.
Of course with the shape of this pack and the ergonomics,
a lot of this stuff isn't going to be an exact rectangle,
but just note that when you're packing it.
You could fit a little bit more at the top
in this mesh pocket then you could towards the bottom.
There's also some nice detailing here
with the EVERGOODS information,
which is just nice to have.
They definitely do a good job at branding
and it's also subtle.
There's not a huge logo on the outside.
If we take out all of the packing cubes,
we can give you a good look of the clamshell inside of this
thing and the main compartment.
There's a bit of a loop here,
which is going to be good for a water bladder or hose.
Again you could kind of put your water bladder here,
you thread that hose through this hook on the top,
and then you pull it through one
of these two sides that we got going on here.
So you can thread that hose through
towards the front of the strap
so you can have it hanging next to you at all times.
There's a bit of velcro here and
what that is is it's for the frame sheet.
Don't use that as a pocket.
Lastly at the bottom here we have
an elastic part that again is going to
be good for the water bladder. Or it can hold --
we tested a MacBook Pro up to 15 inches,
the older model as well as the new retina model.
It'll fit that nicely and there's
some corner holes here where the sides can poke out of.
That's just a nice additional feature
to have with this pack.
At the time of this review,
we've been testing the MPL30 for
a couple solid months across trips
from New York City to Detroit, California and Minneapolis.
During those trips and almost daily use during them,
we could say that the pack has overall held up
and we have no complaints on the durability at all.
The only thing that we will say is
that it just ended up picking up some dust
and that's about it.
Again from a travel perspective,
it's more designed for a trail
than it's designed for one bag travel
so just keep this in mind.
You're definitely going to be able
to fit more into a more square-shaped backpack,
although you can fit a surprising
amount in this and it feels really good to carry.
To wrap this up with some pros and cons -
there is a lot of well thought out,
ergonomic, comfortable design going on with the pack.
There's some great thinking around the user experience
with the strap keepers, the compression straps,
and the overall curved and ergonomic shape of the pack.
Also, EVERGOODS use excellent materials
and build quality is high.
For some of the cons -
the hip belt is not hideable other
than stuffing it into the wing pockets which is not ideal.
The sternum strap isn't fully attached.
It also doesn't fit well on every body type but again,
when it fits it works super well.
Although not necessarily categorized as a travel pack,
the MPL30 has been a super slick companion and a joy to use.
The pros greatly outweigh the cons
and we can't wait to see what they come up with next.
Hopefully they'll do something with a travel bag soon.
Thanks for taking a look at our review
on the EVERGOODS MPL30.
Be sure to head over to packhacker.com/newsletter.
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Thanks for checking us out.
We'll see you in the next review.
Joy to use.
A joy to use compression straps.
Wow!
190 lbs depending if I've eaten any
cake this month or anything like that [laughing]
It's your little secret logo area.
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