[Picture Heavy] 5.11 Rush 12 – One year wear and tear

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[TLR] Very durable pack, would buy again.

Hey guys,
One year ago, after browsing this exact category of the forums, I’ve decided to buy a 5.11 RUSH12 to use as an EDC/School pack. I’ve checked the date of the post I made when I got the bag and it is timestamped to the 10th of September 2015, so that’s one year and two months ago.

Now, before I dive into the pictures I want to point out that I’ve been carrying the bag EVERY single day since I got it, now, I’ve taken it on one-bag trips in the country, abroad, weekend overnights, hammocking trips in the woods, urbex, school, everywhere I went, this backpack followed. And here are some pictures to back that statement up:

Now please excuse the quality of some of this pictures, but what I’m trying to say is that I haven’t baby-ed this backpack, at all and that I’ve never had a backpack look this way after one year of intense usage.

I think the most impressive part is the bottom of the pack: it lays on the floor daily at school, in the dust and then it went in ponds leaves and mud and all it needs is a good brush and it’s all new.

This is the list of things that went wrong with the bag during this year:

The worst one is on the right strap, or the right side of the harness/yoke: The stitching came undone and I’ve tried burning off the ends a couple of times, but it kept getting worse and worse and I had to stitch it myself (beware of crappy stitching, is the first one I’ve ever done).

The second thing that happened is that the zipper cord frayed a lot due to the intense usage(probably normal wear and tear after 1 year), you can see that on the main pocket I’ve already broken through the cord on one zipper(luckily I noticed when it happened and I managed to save the zipper plastic head) and the other pull is coming loose too, I really have to make new zipper pulls, but I can’t find a style that I really like.

Apart from those two main things, I’ve had a few threads coming lose here and there, but I’ve managed to stop those by burning the ends, so far.

As a conclusion: I’ve never expected this backpack to be so durable and I can say that if this backpack disappeared tomorrow(which I hope it doesn’t, because I freaking love it) I wouldn’t even look back at the price I paid on it(which btw was almost double, because Romanian and European taxes tend to do that) and I would buy another one right away.

Hopefully this thread answers some of the questions of you guys that are still on the fence about buying this pack or not.

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