2 versipacks

I’m still looking for the perfect way to carry my gear anywhere I go. Maybe the perfect backpack, or the perfect camera bag, or laptop bag, maybe none of those exist, but there are some cool ones out there, so I wanted to share with you about the few ones I think are pretty cool.

First of all, let me tell you that I’ve been a fan of Jansport forever (at least since I was in high-school). All of the backpacks I’ve owned during the past 14 years have been Jansport. The reason? they were built to last forever, they looked cool, and simply because it was the popular brand when I was in high-school (again, that was more than 14 years ago).

I wanted to try a few new ways to carry my stuff, and I wanted to try new brands. For now, I’ll talk about two Maxpedition’s versipacks, which I thought were cool, and now I think are pretty awesome and useful. So here we go:

Maxpedition Colossus Versipack

I’m quickly becoming a big fan of Maxpedition’s products. Maxpedition is a company specialized in tactical bags and accessories; their bags are rugged and amazingly well built. It’s the type of bag you’d carry with you into a war zone (maybe you won’t survive, but your bag will).

Anyway, I wanted a bag for my DSLR (Canon 60D), but my main requirement was that it had to be a camera bag that didn’t look like a camera bag. I actually own a couple of Lowepro bags, and they are pretty cool (maybe I’ll talk about them in another post), but when you’re walking around the city, sometimes you don’t want people to know you’re carrying a camera (where I live, it can be an invitation to thieves to pay attention to you).

The Colossus Versipack was exactly what I was looking for: it’s not too big, not too small. It’s the right size to carry a DSLR with a decent zoom lens. It’s padded, so it’ll protect your camera, and it looks cool. For the most part, it looks cool, but it’s also a bag that won’t stand out, so you can carry it without worrying too much.

The more I use this little tank of a bag, the more I’m amazed with it. It’s so well built, it almost feels it’s bulletproof.

Buy the Colossus Versipack at amazon.

Maxpedition Jumbo Versipack

This one seems to be more popular than the Colossus Versipack. It also has two additional models (the E.D.C and the L.E.O versions). I, however, decided to get the classic one. The main reason was simple and maybe a little dumb: the classic version has a pocket to hold your bottle of water (or vodka, or whatever you drink).

This versipack is slightly smaller than the Colossus (which is still my favorite); it isn’t padded, but it’s very well constructed, and it’s material (ballistic nylon fabric) is strong and durable.

This is the bag I use when I need to carry a few things (my bottle of water, maybe a notebook, glasses, a small camera). I just drop the stuff in there and away I go. I don’t know if you’d define this as a man-purse. Maybe it is, maybe some people will see it as one, but even so, let me tell you that at least this man purse is manly. You’ll look more like a messenger than like an ambiguous fashionably sensitive hipster.

Maybe the one problem with this bag is that it’s small (a lot of times, I wish I could carry a lot more stuff in it), but it serves its purpose quite well: a bag to grab with every day carry items.

Buy the Jumbo Versipack at amazon

That’s it for now. I was going to write about my other bags/backpacks, but I ran out of time, so I’ll leave that for another day.

Do you have any maxpedition bags, or similar ones? What is the one bag you carry with you all the time, and can’t live without?