DIMS: Approx 17" L x 13" H x 6" D
There are lots of messenger bags these days so it is always interesting to see how each place approaches the design concept. The Jack Bag Gen2, perhaps would be classified as medium sized, and has some tactical capabilities. Not sure if it was meant to be discreet looking... It doesn't scream military, however the exterior is not plain enough for covert use. For starters there is a big embroidered logo that says TACTICS with a target based symbol and then the PALS webbing on the side is not the lowest key. That aside, the bag has some good design features.
The shoulder strap is simple and comes with a non-slip pad. Tri-glides are used for size adjustment and the webbing is sewn on with an embroidery style variant box stitch. The exterior front pocket opens with double zippers. Inside is a sleeve pocket party with a plastic lanyard. As you can guess it is good for small papers and other thin admin items. The main flap can be secured with a SRB, which comes with a nice integrated velcro strap to manage the slack. When not using the SRB, the main flap is also held in place with a fairly small piece of velcro. It may not be big, yet it is all one needs to keep the flap in place and allow for easy opening. One side of the Jack Bag is a mesh bottle holder while the other is an accessory pocket. The bottle pocket will accommodate most personal sized containers. There was a small quality control issue where the mesh was ripping out in some places on my Tan bag sample, however all was well on the black one. Other than that the materials and quality seemed solid on the bags. Back to the accessory pocket, it uses dual zippers and has PALS webbing on the exterior. Folding sides are in the interior to assist in keeping goods inside even when the pocket is fully opened. Now I like PALS webbing as much as the next tac guy, but it may have been better to leave it off this side pocket in the spirit of a more discreet look. I don't really see myself adding another pouch on this side as it would make the bag a little awkwardly long and may negatively affect ease of use on the accessory pocket. Up on top of the Jack Bag is a zipper to get access to the interior without messing with the flap. Having a zipper at all is great, but the zipper length is a little short. Only smaller items will fit through the opening and it tends to take both hands to really open up the hole to be able to see items inside. I know the bag isn't super big to begin with, but I think this zipper could be longer without negative results. The back side has a grab handle and a large sleeve pocket with velcro closure. Good thing the handle is there as the pocket is a little difficult to open if not grabbing onto it. Perhaps a pull tab would make things easier for one hand operation.
Behind that back sleeve pouch is a pretty sneaky compartment for some CCW action. There is access on both sides for ambidextrous capability which use velcro closure and have webbing pull tabs. Unfortunately the tabs are pretty small compared to the force needed to open the area if fully sealed. Making a larger pull tab and adding some 550 cord would help a lot as speed and ease is quite important in this area. The interior comes with an adjustable holster which is nice, but the setup is a little janky. The holster itself is harder than it should be to wrap around most pistols and didn't really have enough wrap length to go around my Glock 19 (not exactly huge). Not that much velcro connection was available to keep the wrap sealed. The retention snap is a plus to include, but the female snap side should have a stiffened extension to make releasing easier. As an odd decision, hook was used on the interior of the compartment for mounting which is abrasive to your hand and your weapon. Loop would have been a better a choice and more of it than a thin strip to allow some holster angle adjustment.
Moving to the interior, a cool feature is that the main compartment can be sealed with dual zippers. This is good if you have smaller items inside and want to guarantee security. If you don't need it, no worries, just leave em' unzipped. With the flap up, an admin panel is accessible which has some sleeve pockets, pen areas, a zippered mesh pocket, and a large double zippered pocket. In general these are good divisions, but if pens are actually in the pen slots they make using the large pocket zippers a hassle due to getting in the way. It would be better to have the pen slots to a far side rather than in the middle. I also may recommend the padding be on this side rather than in the main flap as it would give the main compartment a little more rigidity. As a result I think it would make functionality a little easier so one doesn't have to move a floppy side out of the way all the time. Probably a good time to note the other sides of the bag are padded which appropriate and functional. The core main compartment interior is simple with the addition of a padded laptop sleeve area. The compartment itself is nice, however the security strap kinda sucks where there isn't enough velcro area for adjustment. It will depend what you put on in there, but offhand I wasn't able to tighten the strap as much as I wanted.
The Jack Bag isn't crap, but it isn't amazing either. It isn't full on tactical nor civilian, so it may mostly interest civilians that just happen to like some extra tac-like features. All that said, I think with some changes such as more loop velcro, pull tabs, and generally making it look more discreet, it has some potential for a mean Gen 3.
