Patagonia

Black Hole Micro MLC Pack

Severely misses the mark, yet over-built

Familiarity:

I've used it once or twice and have initial impressions

I bought this as a "personal item" travel bag that could be an outdoor bag. After one trip, I realized something: Patagonia tried to build this one for everything, but really made it good at nothing. It's made of heavy outdoor gear materials, but isn't a piece of good outdoor gear. It's made like a brief case, but isn't good for carrying "briefs" (not the stinky kind). Here's why: (1) The materials are heavier than they need to be for something like this. Sure, some parts of it will last forever and will survive airport cattle chute life. But why? It's not a good piece of outdoor gear, and its customers aren't outdoors-people. (2) It's made of waterproof materials, then it has a #12 zipper around the perimeter that's permeable to water then has no storm flap over the zipper. Raft-grade materials with a giant water-permeable zipper openly exposed to the elements? Whoever at Patagonia thought that up is missing a few wires. (3) The interior is deeply inefficient. The laptop flat and office organizer panel is bulky and needless and not removable. Sure, I used it for organizing pens, battery packs, etc, and I even put a large iPad in the organizer panel. Worked great for that. But it's bulky and can't be reorganized. (4) The lack of a hip belt makes this useless for any outdoor excursion. If you're carrying a rain jacket, a passport, and another light jacket, great -- this one's awesome. If you're visiting national parks and are doing Ranger Rick hikes around the land museum, sweet ... done. But if you're carrying a water bottle, an SLR, a lunch, and some base outdoor gear, you're then too heavy for a two-strap school pack for putting on some miles. In all, the layout of this pack is perfect for the urbanite. It's urban gear in wolf's clothing. It's great for doing airports with some light personal-item gear. But it's not a worthy piece of outdoor gear that can cross-over to things like being rained on, or carrying more than a widdle jacket for a widdle walk around Jellystone. After one trip with this pack, I realize it's not what I needed. It's a near miss. The clam-shell style design is a true innovation and trend-setter. For randomized searches by airport security theater, it's PERFECT. But don't mistake this as a pack that doubles as outdoor gear. It doesn't. It's made of heavy outdoor-grade materials, but doesn't make real use of those materials and the materials serve no function in the whole system of this pack. Overall, I suppose that summarizes Patagonia as a brand these days, but there it is. Don't get rained on with this pack -- it might as well be made of cotton duck canvas. Don't carry more than a few kgs with it since it has no load-carrying traits. It's not a piece of outdoor gear -- it's a piece of public transit gear that looks like outdoor-grade gear.