This is a review of sorts of the 40l kit bags from Mountain Equipment.

These kit bags are super durable and generally very well designed, but with more attention to detail they’d be even better.

I’ve used two of them, and both have design flaws, and that’s what I’m focussing on here. There are plenty of other reviews of the features.

Carry handles

The original version shown below has the normal pattern carry handles.

The problem with these is that the webbing is stitched flat at an angle of 90 degrees to the rest of the strap. It’s only flat against the hand if you pull straight up on it, like this:

Given you carry this thing by joining the handles together and carrying in one hand, the straps are pulling at around 45 degrees to vertical, so the flat stitched sections always have a tenency to rotate outwards. As such it’s not very comfortable to carry.

The new version has a different design:

The carry straps have a funky multiple-fold design which doesn’t really make any sense, but the key point is that the flat handle section is not stitched at 90 degrees to the strap as before, but instead it’s parallel to the strap.

This has over-corrected the problem from the previous design by about 45 degrees, so the tension goes through the edge of the stitched flat handle. Not comfortable either.

Shoulder straps

The old one has a length adjuster in the middle which is uncomfortable because you get the plastic buckle in your shoulder if you happen to want the strap at that length. I also can’t help but think the plastic snap-gate carabiners may not be that durable. Perhaps they are.

The new design has a strap which adjusts at both ends via a very nice looking double D-ring type adjuster. It’s easy enough to remove though slightly slower than the carabiners, and there is no annoying buckle part-way along the strap. However, while the strap is thinner (which seems like a bad move for comfort), the shoulder pad isn’t, so it doesn’t centre properly on the strap. This seems like a silly oversight.

My suggestions

Carry handles

I don’t see that the handles could be sewn flat at 45 degrees, but they could be stitched into a tube shape with some padding in the middle, and I think that would be a winner — avoiding the hard edges of previous designs. I mocked up the idea with some seatbelt webbing.

I appreciate that the bag is mostly carried by the shoulder strap, or lifted for short periods by the carry handles or end-panel grab handles. So it’s hardly a deal breaker, but if you’re going to design something, why not design it to be the best it can be?

Shoulder strap

Make the shoulder strap on the new design wider like the old one, so that it fills the pad.

Appeal to Mountain Equipment

Mountain Equipment, if you’re reading this, it would be great to see my design ideas implemented. If you’d like to send me a version 3 prototype to test, please get in touch :)