 with Citadel Defense and today we're going to talk about the first tactical Ascend messenger bag. Now this is my has been my EBC bag here for the past couple months and I've really been enjoying using it so I thought I would share it with you. Overall it's a really good bag I think they're going for about a hundred bucks right now and I really have enjoyed it and would recommend it to you. Couple cons which we'll talk about here but overall high-quality bag. So on the outside here you have this little field of velcro that's also Mali. This is really decorative Mali and by that I mean I don't know you could put a pouch there if you really wanted but I think it's mostly just for decoration because it looks cool and so you can have a little patch on it. Got their logo and a little rubberized thing right there. They have these two identical huge dump pouches up front so on this one I typically carry stuff like an extra knife, my phone charger, my headphones, just some random you know stuff that I need to access a lot all in there. Over here this is my medical so I carry out I got his really bandage in there. I'll pull this all out so you can see and a tourniquet and some gloves and another trauma bandage all in here and there's still room in here. You can still stuff quite a bit more in there. That's just what I happen to have in there. These are just big big pockets which is nice to be able to dump in anything you might need. Right here this is that typical kind of fleece line sunglasses and glasses pouch that goes in the top bags. I still keep my glasses in my case because that's just how I like to roll but again a generous generous pocket. When you get over here to the handle it is I think you'll be able to see this here but I mean they they did they did a lot of stitching in here this is a heavily reinforced handle you could even put tie something through a couple of these loops if you really wanted you can definitely attach something there. On the back of the bag do that next it has a luggage loop so it's going to feed it through your luggage if you're going through airports a lot. This pouch I really like so first of all this is double zippered which is cool you can access it from either side. That opens up and it's just a pretty simple drop pouch back here right now I keep I have a couple of seats in there right now I keep the cross body strap in there which I'll talk about that in a minute but the reason I like this pouch is because like I said if you just open this up it's the dump pouch but this velcro portion here you velcro this open on the back wall I think you should be able to see that here is a field of velcro so this is where you could attach your concealed carry or something now this does not have velcro on it but this is a G17 with a TLR one and a holster and that will easily easily fit in there and you could match that up so you could you could put it easily a full-size handgun maybe two in there but the thing I like about it is if you utilize this feature you can have this zipped up and if for whatever reason someone were actually unzip this which I don't know why they're unzipping your bag but even if they did that they wouldn't immediately know that there's a gun in here it's a very hidden compartment and I just like that feature a lot I think that's well designed well thought out and and just a really really cool feature on the sides of the bag you have these two identical pouches so first of all they give you a little bit of molly here now this is a little bit more functional I think you could really attach a pouch to that if you wanted and get about a functional side pouch but they're gusseted and zipped so they can expand and I will say so it has this kind of where I would call a thin mesh a little elastic top and when I first saw these I thought they were pretty weak thought they were gonna shred I thought they weren't gonna work that well but I've been carrying my one liter water bottle on this side which again it easily swallows that for a couple months now and there's no wear there's no tear it's holding up just fine so you know apparently they work and you can carry two water bottles or whatever you want to do and if you don't need them what I like about them like I mentioned is that you can zip them up and so it holds flush to the bag I think that's a well thought out design on the body strap itself it's very thickly padded it's got these two kind of stick points that are supposed to you know stick to your clothing wherever that works pretty well doesn't do a lot of slipping on my shoulder I do like that it's a free float pad so that the the bag can still move on the pad a little bit I like it when bags do that I think that's a good design rather than it being melded to the pad and pulling on the pad if you don't have it perfectly centered on your shoulder I think that's a well thought out and good design there for the for the straps themselves these are completely removable if you want you can pop that off and you could slide this whole thing out and take the whole cross body strap off I have not utilized that feature but if you want to and you just want to utilize the handle you could do that that's a cool idea the cross body strap I did not have attached right now but like I mentioned it was I store in the bag but this thing slides through one of these two little loops down here on the ends and then of course the other end attaches back to the cross body strap it's everybody back to the main strap itself via this little loop thing here you can attach from either side I just don't use it that often so I just store it away in the bag if you like it that's cool okay opening up the bag here you have these two buckles on the front and they're protected with this elastic cover which is kind of nice I I don't think you're an accident I activate these buckles but it's nice to have cool elastic cover thing there you do have the option of closing this with Velcro so if you'll see here on the cover this is just tape because I wrote my name and phone number and email there in case my bag gets lost and you don't need to know my name and phone number because you're a creeper so what I like about this is it has these Velcro covers so you can cover these up or you can expose them and what these will do is they'll tuck away right in here like this so they can tuck away just in there like that and then when you close the bag it will attach via Velcro now I didn't like that because I got sick of hearing that sound so I usually just will leave these closed but if you want to close the bag via Velcro you can what's cool about that is you close it it'll Velcro shut and then you can easily pick it up by this handle here just on the Velcro alone the Velcro holds so that is a nice feature so like I said you open this bag up and then you got two large kind of dump pouches here which I right now just have a little mini worthless multi-tool in my watch because I took that off the other day and a little no pad this is just stuff that I keep in here again tons more room you could really pack those out if you wanted now here is where we're gonna get to one of the cons of things I don't like as much about this bag right here on this side you have a couple of holders for pens which is great little pocket here a little pocket here and a nice decent pocket in the back but the con is is that up here is your key fob holder thing it's just this nylon loop now the bag comes with this first tactical kind of key fob thing which is great I love it I use it all the time I leave my keys on it but the way it attaches in here is this hook attaches this nylon loop and it's just because it's a soft loop it's just not as easy to attach I would have liked to have seen a hard plastic loop here that would have just made that easier on and off and because it's buried a couple levels in the bag I just never use it I usually get to work and I'll throw my keys either my coat pocket or or in something else and I won't usually store them in here because it's just a lot to get in here now look I technically could access this pocket from a closed the from the bag being closed I could technically access this pocket fumble around in here find the keys and take them and go right but then I still have this open pocket I gotta zip that back up it's just I just don't like the way that that works that being said it's perfectly functional if you need to store your keys for a while this can definitely work for you so I can mentioned a couple pockets here a couple holds a couple pens and stuff like that on the other side it's ever so slightly different they have just a couple wider pockets over here and then again that big back pouch that's wide open over there so slightly different design I like it in general they have a hard point key fob here and you could say Dylan why is use that one but again it's the same problem it's very deep inside the bag and I don't like that again I just want to emphasize this is a big bag there's still tons more women here that I don't utilize that you could utilize if you really need to another feature I really like what this bag is this pocket right here again this is a double zipped pocket which is great and this is just really a great document pouch so if you have papers or books I have some file folders in here now those will fit great if you have anything you want to protect from getting bent I suggest you don't put it in there because it will bend with the bag so that's why I tend to leave some folders in there just a hard side a little bit so my papers don't get all wonky on me but that is a really cool feature of this bag I think this is a great pocket I use it all the time I'm getting into the main compartment here the main compartment again it's huge I usually will stuff my lunchbox in here when I go to when I go to school when I go to work I'll stuff my lunch bag in here so that's really nice I really like that feature I like to be able to stuff everything in here that I carry for the day so right now I have my winter gloves I just got home from work and I came up here to do this video so I have my gloves in there it has these very these three large dump pouches up front which I really like here is a max addition pouch this is a great pouch I should do a review on this at some point but that goes in my center one I got a little medical pouch here with some vitamins and some listerine just stuff that over there and then in this one over here I just got my pair of mechanics gloves so again tons more room those are not full it's just what I keep in there right now in the main compartment again you've got a big open spot so I got a couple books I'm reading a couple papers and a notebook some batteries because I bought some batteries today and a pouch for my Leatherman that is in here for whatever reason okay so again it's a very large I think you'll be able to see that there main compartment I mean you can you could probably fit an SBR in here for sure if you took it apart but assembled you could it would probably fit it's a large large bag they do Velcro again on that back wall which I really like and then there's another pouch here so this this will Velcro shed if you want and you can put your computer this is a padded compartment for your computer if you want to carry a work computer I think a 17 inch would fit I don't have one to test but I'm pretty sure it would fit in there it's a big big compartment and then again they have two big drop dump compartments right here for one I keep my prayer journal and that one and this one I don't keep anything right now but massive massive bag now I did look it up all the zippers are YKK zippers the bag itself is a thousand and five hundred dinier nylon I am guessing that the thousand is all the exterior because it's a very very tough material material and then of course Duraflex buckles so I mean all the the big name boys are there right and all the high quality stuff is there and you can beat the tar to this thing and it's it's gonna keep on ticking it really really is a great bag that I would recommend what I like about it is also its potential greatest fault which is its size the fact that it's huge I love the fact that I can just put whatever I want in here for my day and it's gonna fit and I can have it in one bag I don't have to carry multiple bags I hate carrying multiple bags that being said this thing will get heavy so if you commute on the bus or on the train or something like that this thing will wear even with this nice nice thick pad just given the fact that it's so big it can pretty easily get heavy and way on you so if you got a lot of walking to do I don't know if it be necessarily best bag for you you might want to look at like a backpack or something like that but we're just in the car for just short walks and being able to carry everything you need to the office and back this is hands-down your bag it I like the fact to that you know if you wanted it has a pretty professional feel you know there's not a lot of Molly hanging out a couple little decorative points here and there but nothing that's like it would make it look out of place in like a boardroom or something like that it just looks like a smart modern messenger bag and in that sense it can fill a lot of roles for you and doesn't necessarily have to be it's not necessarily the most tactical look but at the same time it's got a little bit little just a little hint of tactical flair it's kind of like a pop punk back in the day you know it's not full punk but it's got a little edge so you're interested so that's it that's the ascend messenger bag like I said I really enjoy it I've been using it for a couple months I'm gonna continue to use it until I wear it out which I'm sure it's gonna be years from now so other than that do brave deeds and endure