 Hello everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense, and today we're gonna do a review of the DG3 pack from Crossfire. So I first found out about DG3 a couple years ago when I saw one of Brent's videos. I really liked it, and so I ended up getting one. And I used his discount code. So if you end up buying a DG3 pack, use Brent's discount code, because saving money is always good, and these are kind of expensive. This is the DG3 pack. This is what they call their 55 liter three-day pack. I have a bunch of extra pouches on it. Obviously that doesn't come with it. However, I'm just gonna go through the pack. I've had it probably now for six-ish plus months. I have some time on it. I have some use on it, and so I feel like I can actually offer you a helpful review on it. Overall, I will say I really like the pack. It's been very durable. It's held up. It's held pretty much everything I need. I really like its expansion capability, which we'll talk about. And I would recommend it to you as the short of it. It's made out of, I think, 1000D Cordura. I mean, it's tough. And one of the things I really like about this pack is that you can't see, but they did cover it in Mali. You can't see because I've used all the Mali to mount pouches, but they have Mali up the sides. They have Mali down the front. This thing has Mali everywhere. I've disappointed they didn't put Mali on the lid. I really wish they would have put Mali on the lid. I would absolutely use it. On the outside here, on both sides, it's the same. So they have a pass-through pocket right here. And that can go all the way down into the bottom pocket right here. So if you had something longer acts, trekking poles, whatever, machete, you can fit that all the way through. The bummer about that, because it's a pocket, this can kind of get a little loosey, but once you strap it up, everything straps down pretty tight. That's the same on both sides. On the back here, it's a big field of Mali. And then they do have this central zipper right here, which can zip down and zip the whole pack open. I have utilized that a little bit. It's nice to be able to have that feature to kind of totally lay it out. It's kind of a pain when it's packed up and you got a bunch of stuff on here to fold it back up. So I don't use it too much because of that. However, it's nice. And if you didn't have these pouches on here, it would probably zip up and down a lot easier. The pack itself is based around this plastic frame here. Frame does a great job of helping distribute the weight. I have carried this in more of like a 24 hour loadout and honestly, the pack was just too much. It was too much of an overbuilt pack to really justify carrying that little of stuff because it just carries the weight super well. So I would highly recommend to have at least 48, 72 hours worth of stuff before you graduate up to this pack, just cause that's really what it's built for. And there's all kinds of different ways to adjust these cordings and these routings. I highly recommend you watch the videos on Crossfire's page. I won't be able to do it justice as well as they do. And they talk about being able to move your attachment points around to these different loops here that you can attach the actual shoulder strap to and different ways to route it around the frame. It's super helpful to be able to play with that and experiment with that. And it's a very well thought out. The top carry handle here is very solid, no complaints there. The padding itself is super generous, a big fan of the padding and the kidney pads are great. One of the things that they designed this pack to do and it does very well is it rides above your belt kit. So when you're wearing belt kit and sustainment gear and webbing and stuff like that, this rides high enough that it's not bumping into your butt pack or whatever. And I really like that. This did come with a waist belt but I of course took the waist belt off because I don't really utilize that in the way I'm envisioning using the pack. But if you want, you can have the waist belt on. It's a super generous waist belt. It works pretty well. On the bottom, they put Mali. So again, if you wanna attach a bed roll, whatever, you can do that. It also does come with, and I don't use it, but a little helmet pocket that will attach into these loops on the bottom here. It will attach into those and then it folds over. Again, I have all these pouches so I can't utilize that feature. But if I didn't, you could easily store your helmet on here which is pretty cool. Again, I'm not gonna utilize that bottom Mali just because I wear it with belt kit and then it would interfere with my belt kit. But you could put your bed roll down here if that was for you. The compression straps are great. So they have a set of compression straps here on the bottom to connect up. And then they have another set of compression straps here in the top to connect up. And then of course they have compression straps from the top down to connect up. So you can get this thing really compressed and tight. I really do like that feature. A big fan of having tight packs with no loose ends. On the compression straps themselves, they have these little magic velcro foldies so you can roll up your extra strap and then velcro it down so you don't have big dangly cords everywhere. That's great, huge fan of that. The version of the pack that I got has the detachable lid. So it will completely detach and the whole lid comes off. Now, that's cool. They do have a version, their original version, their Gen 1, it does not have a detachable lid. Would recommend the detachable lid. I did email them and talk to them a little bit and they said that they are gonna have different lids at some point so you can kind of have the lids to swap out. I hope that happens. That'd be pretty cool. It'd be interesting to see what kind of other options they come up with. The cool thing about this lid is that of course it will buckle to itself and then you could extend this out and kind of use this like a little day pack or whatever. A little satchel. That's kind of a cool little feature. I haven't used it, but it's a nice half. On the lid they have a velcro here for name tapes or whatever and then they have a little reflective portion there so if you're doing a night ruck or whatever you can have that exposed so that it reflects better obviously. The lid itself has a bunch of hidden little pockets, a lot of which I don't use and I probably won't be able to show you very effectively. But in this top lid here it's not terribly big but it's all the way around this stitching here if you can see that. And on the inside they do have two kind of dump-ish pockets or excuse me, they have one dump pocket and then two kind of pen pockets right in here if you're able to see that. In the main pocket here they have a couple different options. So they have this, if you can see this reflective here that is actually another pocket. It's a fleece lined pocket. So if you wanted to put something, you know, glasses I don't know, whatever else in there you could do that. I don't really utilize that too much but that is a fleece lined pocket right in there. And then the main pocket in there is a big main pocket with access to this bottom mesh pocket. You can access it from both sides. I usually just access it from the bottom here but this is just a big mesh pocket so you can easily see what's going on in there. And that's the lid. Big fan of the lid, like I said my biggest drawback on the lid is they didn't molly the top of this lid. They put molly everywhere else in this bag and I love it. But this is definitely a place where I wish this was mollied. So at least if I wanted I could put another pouch on here or I could lash something to it. I just think they missed out by making this slick. So I zipped this bag open so hopefully I can show you a little bit better what's going on the inside of this bag. But basically they have two pockets right here and here on each side. So it's mirrored on each side. And then they have this detachable mesh pocket on each side. Again, same thing on the other side. And this is just a little mesh pocket that you can detach. It's Velcroed in at the back here. Not sure if you'll be able to see that. And then it's lashed in with these buckles. It does come with this one water sleeve pocket. You have a bunch of other spaces here to be able to put in more pockets but it doesn't come with those. The original DG3, the Gen 1 came with three of these which is cool. I was a little disappointed that this one doesn't come with three of them but it is what it is. This pocket works great for a water bladder. They had one for a radio pouch and another water bladder which again, would have liked to have had those extra options that came with this one. But for whatever reason it doesn't come with that. Other than that, it's just a big empty cavern that you can fill with all your stuff. On the top here where the water hose comes out there is a big zipper. So these all Velcro back and then you have a big zipper here. It's a two way zipper so that you can route different cords, radio antennas, water bladder hose, whatever. And then you can just Velcro up the remainder so that it stays closed. Like that feature works out pretty well. So that is it. That is the DG3 pack from Crossfire. I like I said, I've had it for six-ish months taken it out, used it, blah, blah, blah. Highly recommended, big fan of it so far. The prices just did increase. When I bought this, this was around $300. I think now it's up to $400. For $400 it's pushing the limit of if it's worth it or not but I will say I'm very happy with it. I really do like it and in general I would recommend it. So I hope that's helpful. Do brave deeds and endure.