Shortcomings with the 5.11 Rush 12

It's has been a little under four months since I acquired the 5.11 Rush 12 and I've come to realize some of the shortcomings which I've failed to see earlier. Using the pack on a daily basis over these months has changed my perception a little for the worse.

First, and also my biggest gripe with the 5.11 Rush 12, is that it has absolutely no ventilation to speak off. The Rush 12 simply features four slightly raised panels at each corner of the pack which touches your back. Slightly meaning it's not nearly enough to raise the pack off your back in a way meaningful enough to allow any air to flow into the area. As such, carrying the bag is akin to carrying an oven. I've perspired immensely whenever I carry it with both straps on. This is further made worse by the weather in tropical Singapore; hot and humid all year round. A short walk of a couple hundred meters will often leave the back of my shirt drenched in sweat. I now resort to carrying this pack on one strap whenever it's a sunny day outside; not the best of solutions given my usual load. In my opinion, 5.11 should seriously consider incorporating mesh ventilation panels in future revisions of their Rush packs.

The rubber patches found on the side in contact with my back could also be done away with. I think they are largely unneccessary since they don't really help the pack in staying still against my back. These also abrade away at the clothes I'm wearing and mine have shown serious signs of wear from just normal everyday school use.

Next, I can't say I'm the biggest fan of the strap which incorporates a neck yoke system. It does indeed do it's job of distributing some of the weight onto your neck but for the most part the yoke simply gets in the way of comfort.

Over on the other side of the pack, the compression straps aren't the most effective straps as there is only a pair of them, situated in the upper half of the pack. The bottom of the pack is usually where most of my items end up, making the placement of the compression straps at the upper half of the pack quite a poor decision indeed. At the very least, I think the compression straps should be situated right in the centre of the pack, but the best solution would be of course to have a pair of compression straps, one serving the upper portion and another serving the lower portion.

I'd also like if 5.11 made a size in-between the Rush 12 and the Rush 24. The Rush 24 is much too large for me at over 32.7 litres of capacity, yet the next smaller option is immediately the Rush 12 which is over 11 litres less at 21.2 litres. A pack at 25 litres so would be the perfect size for me, and could well exist as a Rush 18.

Recently though, there seems to be a bag which overcomes all these shortcomings; a pack from Helikon-Tex's Direct Action line known as the Dragon Egg. It's 25 litres in capacity, has a meshed ventilation system to keep things cool, features normal straps that doesn't have a neck yoke nor does it have the rubber patches and has compression straps across the upper and lower part of the pack. It looks really nice too, barring two problems; it's constructed in 500D Cordura and also there's the rather hefty price of around EUR115. I'd have preferred 1000D or 1050D nylon construction, althought it's already 1.4kg with 500D construction so I think 1000D would have been unnecessarily heavy. I'm not too sure about the paracord handle but I think I'll assess that when I have the pack itself.

So that's it for today's post, thanks for reading!

Review of Casio G-Shock DW-5600E-1V - Simplicity Done Right

Greetings readers, it's been a long time since the last post. The reason for the absence? Getat, and the less said about him, the better. The watch from Getat did eventually arrive around three whole months after I placed my order. To top off the quarter of a year waiting time, the watch arrived completely dysfunctional; the movement just doesn't start ticking no matter how much it has been wound.

Alas, I wasn't too motivated to write about my very poor experience with Getat and it'll certainly be my last time dealing with him. I like the way the watch looks and thus have chosen not to send it back to Getat for a refund which God knows how long will he take to process. So for now, it'll be just lying around on a shelf till the day I decide to bring it to a watchmaker.

That is all I'll say on Getat in this post, because today we are here for something else; to cover a new acquisition I've made in the last couple of days. What exactly have I procured?

Why, the venerable classic, Casio G-Shock DW-5600E-1V of course.

 Long have I yearned for a digital watch to accompany me on runs and visits to the gym after the straps on my Casio F-91W broke. Since then I've been using analog watches to cover these duties but analog watches simply cannot do the job as well. Using a countdown bezel on a diving watch is after all, not the most convenient nor accurate method to measure rest time between sets. It didn't serve well for timing my runs either, which is why a digital watch had to be had. Without further ado, the technical specifications of the DW-5600E-1V:

• Shock resistant
• 200 meter water resistance
• Electro luminescent backlight with Afterglow
• Multi-function alarm 
• 1/100 second stopwatch
• Countdown timer with auto-repeat function
• Auto calendar (pre-programmed till year 2099) 
• Accuracy of ±15 seconds per month
• Battery CR2016 
• Approx. battery life: 2 years 
• Module 3229
• 48.9 x 42.8 x 13.4mm / 54g

 The DW-5600E-1V is held as the quintessential G-Shock by Casio themselves. It is the latest iteration in the evolution of the square-shaped DW series that begun with the DW-5000C, released over 31 years ago. To start off, let's discuss the size. The DW-5600E comes in at a perfect size in my opinion, large enough to have some wrist presence yet not being stupidly large. The size is considerably bigger than a F-91W which I liked a lot since the F-91W always felt a little too tiny for me.

The watch wears very comfortably, partially thanks to being just 54g in weight due to the resin construction. Now, I'm used to wearing watches made of metal since just about every other watch I have save the F-91W is metal. Coming to resin is therefore a big departure for me and I have to say, it is pretty nice. The DW-5600E doesn't feel poor in quality or durability despite the resin construction and you feel that this watch can actually survive a beating more than watches made from metal. There is a YouTube video here of the watch being thrown off seven stories and it continues to function so yes, this watch is likely to outsurvive the person wearing it. The resin strap is decent enough, being sufficiently pliable and comfortable. The buckle though is where I felt an improvement could be made, since it was just a stamped buckle which is really thin and felt quite cheap.

Reading the time is a breeze, with a LCD display that is relatively large and has great clarity and contrast of the digits from the background color. Viewing angles are excellent but not at the level of OLED displays; one would have difficulty reading the time from angles nearing 90 degrees. I don't see this as a major disadvantage though since turning your wrist or your neck by just a little will always ensure you can get a clear view of the display.

As is standard with most G-Shock watches, the display is covered by a mineral crystal which will do nicely in protecting the display. The raised bezel assists with keeping scratches off the crystal unless you happen to have an impact very precisely landing on the crystal. Sapphire would have been a nice addition but keep in mind that the DW-5600E is one of the cheapest in the G-Shock range and it would no longer be so if it had a sapphire crystal. The choice of mineral crystal is more in line with G-Shock ideology as well since it is harder to shatter. The display is backed with a bright electro luminescent backlight that makes for easy viewing in low light conditions. It glows with a nice green color and serves the purpose very well indeed.

The face of the watch is flanked by four buttons, namely the adjust, mode, start/stop and backlight button. All the buttons are covered by a lip which protects the button from being depressed should you drop it. The adjust button is markedly more recessed than the other buttons in order to prevent accidental adjustments in the course of usage. Changing between modes also produces the signature 'beep' sound. The beep produced when going back to the main screen which displays time is higher in pitch than the beeps produced when accessing other modes. This gives you an auditory indicator that you're back to the main screen. Little touches like that show the amount of thought that Casio has put into their watches.

Over on the back, we have a backplate that is held down by four screws. Usually, only the higher-end or older G-Shocks have screw down case backs. Since I'm no G-Shock collector though, the case back on the DW-5600E suffices for me as it still commands a very respectable water resistance level of 200m.

Timekeeping has been on point so far, with no deviation in the two days I've acquired it from a website I used to set it against. Further testing is required here to see the deviation in a month and in a year's time.

The Casio G-Shock DW-5600E-1V is a simple digital watch with extreme durability, and it is for that reason why it is such a great watch. It isn't addled with twenty alarms, thermometers, altimeters and barometers, just plain and simple timekeeping with functions such as a countdown timer, an alarm and a stopwatch, all of which I see as being rather useful.

This watch is one of few that has been approved for use in space by NASA and I can see why. It is the epitome of simplicity, of form meeting function, of durability meeting intuitivity. Then you add in the price; the DW-5600E can be had for about USD$42 on Amazon. Now it's a brilliant watch with a brilliant pricing. This is the watch I'd take with me if the world is going to be a zombie-infested, post-apocalyptic world tomorrow. On that note, thanks for reading and stay tuned!