The Brooks Review

Category: Articles

  • SureFire E1B-MV Backup

    I ran into a small issue a few months ago. While going through TSA in Seattle my bag was flagged for additional screening. It was the first time in quite a while that I had this happen, so I was really curious as to what it was that set it off. Luckily, the TSA person was super nice, and she explained there was a dense metal cylinder that they wanted to inspect. I knew what it was, it was my Reylight Brass AA light.

    That’s a beefy light, and she took a look at it, flicked it on and rightfully commented: “that’s a nice flashlight”. Goddamn right it is. But she also told me it was likely to get flagged more and more often now as it looks like it could be a gun part. Well, fuck. I had traveled with it before without issues, but TSA is constantly changing, so I was not surprised to hear this, and knew I should probably pull it from my travel kit.

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  • Digital Distraction

    I’ve written before about what now seems to be more commonly accepted knowledge: digital devices in classrooms, even if used for notetaking, leads to worse results and more distractions.

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  • Tool Roll from BOND Travel Gear

    Note: this was provided for review purposes from BOND Travel Gear.

    Tools rolls are one of the neatest looking items you’ll see on gear sites. They roll up small, and then unroll on the workbench to an accessible system for getting at what you need. What’s not to like? In practice though, most tool rolls don’t live up to the hype. They often become quickly bloated, oddly shaped, and generally are more hassle than they are worth. One recent exception to this is the small tool roll from Triple Aught Design, but it is very small.

    And then I saw this tool roll from BOND Travel Gear and I was intrigued, because it seems like that small tool roll, but blown up to scale. What sets the BOND tool roll apart is that it doesn’t roll, it folds. I’ve found that this is a key difference, so given that, I’ve been testing out this tool roll on a bunch of trips.

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  • Thin Devices

    I saw a comment the other day about ’thin devices’, where the author was complaining about the compulsive drive of tech companies to make devices ever thinner. This is not the first time I’ve heard this, and can usually be heard each time an iPhone comes out with an ever thinner new model.

    The reason for thinner devices is rather obvious and is two part. The first reason for this drive is that thinner devices seem impossible. Go and look at either a new iPad Pro, or MacBook (Pro or not) and tell me they are not impossibly thin, and that’s even before you consider the amount of things you can do with these devices. If you are reading this on an iPad, stop and take any and all covers off of it and hold the device in your hands — really look at it and feel it — and you will immediately know the truth.

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  • Triple Aught Design OP1

    In the world of MOLLE laden products there’s no shortage of “admin pockets” or pouches if you prefer. A quick search on Amazon will give you a plethora of options, but one of the best out there is Triple Aught Design’s OP1. I’ve long stayed clear of it as I thought it was either too small or too large depending on the reason why I was looking at it.

    I picked one up a few months ago to give a whirl, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by it.

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  • Piorama A10 Adjustable Bag

    Note: This bag was sent to me from Piorama as a review sample.

    It’s been hard for me to miss knowing about this bag, it seems that the A10 Adjustable duffle bag is everywhere I look these days. It is an intriguing bag too: expanding to double the size, with both a shoulder strap and a backpack strap setup. I’ve also not read any bad things about the bag, so I jumped at the chance to test this bag, and test it I have.

    So far it’s been on three trips with me, and I’ve sent it through the bag hell which is checking it for a flight. Even after all of that, I still have a bag which looks nearly new, so let’s talk about this bag.

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  • The Tablet World

    There’s been a lot going on with tablets in the past few weeks, with a new Microsoft Surface Go coming out, as well as Samsung’s new Galaxy Tab S4 Tablet. Let’s take a look at all of this.

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  • GORUCK Kid Ruck Impressions

    I got a KR1 – Kid Ruck in last week and had a chance to take a look at it. (Also, you might want to hurry, there are fewer than 40 left at the time of writing.) This is not a review, but rather my initial impressions of the bag, since I won’t have had enough time with it before the school year to weigh in on it more.

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  • Small Triple Aught Design Pouches for Bag Organization

    One of the sets of organizational gear I picked up was smaller and more unconventional pouches from Triple Aught Design. Specifically the BC4, BC8, and S2 pouches. The first are designed specifically to carry the battery cases that Triple Aught Design sells, and the latter being made for a flashlight. These aren’t really made to hold general items, as much as they are for specific items, but that doesn’t mean they can’t hold other things.

    I’ve been playing with these as possible quick access and organizational pouches on the internal MOLLE webbing of my GR1s, so let’s take a look at these.

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  • Road Trip Packing: Gear Additions and Subtractions

    As I mentioned in my post last week, I wanted to follow up with what worked and what didn’t on my road trip, so here’s a smattering of gear related thoughts, both mini-reviews and thoughts on what I should and should not have packed.

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  • Pre-Road Trip Planning and a Select Look at Stupid Things I Insisted on Packing

    What follows is a random selection of notes around my thinking of packing and prepping to leave for a road trip with my family. I’ll follow this post up after the trip to see how accurate my guesses were about stuff. Do note that most of this I know is unnecessary, but it became a rather interesting thought exercise for me, and so I chased it down. I also have intentions of doing many longer road trips, so planning this out for this first smaller one seemed like it would help in the long run, and eliminate ‘what if’s’ as well as helping better inform future endeavors.

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  • The Pull

    My grandfather on my father’s side would go on drives for seemingly no reason. Often he loaded up my grandmother and would drive around the Olympic peninsula. That’s roughly 5-6 hours of driving. He’d do it in a day, and at least a few times a year. He’d also drive anywhere he could for vacation, flying was a last resort for him.

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  • GORUCK Field Pockets

    Looking through the archives here, I realize that I have never fully written about the GORUCK Field Pockets before. I’ve been on a bag organization kick, which I’ll have a longer post about later, so now seems like a really good time to codify what these Field Pockets excel at, and where they stumble.

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  • The Vortex Core

    I have, generally, done a very poor job resisting the pull of smaller and smaller keyboards. I really like mechanical keyboards, and I truly think that the Vortex Pok3er platform is amazing. The rabbit hole gets deep, I’ve added custom GMK Carbon SA keycaps (about $180), a matching short braided USB cable ($20), a walnut wood case with wrist rest integrated ($50). Yeah, it gets expensive.

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  • iPad Productivity Report — 7/16/18

    It’s been a while since I wrote an iPad Productivity Report, but here we are with a fresh set of characters. Some big things have been going on in iPad world from rumored new device sizes, to software releases and announcements. Let’s dive into it all.

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  • Massdrop x Ferrum Forge Gent

    It has been a while since I’ve reviewed a knife which is made to be an everyday carry blade. The reason has been simple: I found the Chris Reeve’s Small Sebenza 21, and it is perfect. I do mean that, I’ve been using that knife a lot, and it really is perfect. But based on some very strong reviews I picked up this Massdrop collaboration the ‘Gent’ to see how it stacks up.

    The Gent is (as far as I can tell) “produced” by Massdrop, designed by Ferrum Forge, and made by WE Knives in China. It’s basically super weird, so from here on out ‘Gent’ is what we are calling this knife, but do know there’s some stuff around how it got made.

    The long and short of this knife: had I found this before the Small Sebenza, I would have crowned this the perfect knife. And given the price, it would not be absurd to make the argument that it is a better everyday knife than the Small Sebenza — as much as it pains me to write that.

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  • Complex Controls and Complex Decisions

    Down the rabbit hole we go.

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  • Camping With Kids – Gear Thoughts, Season 2

    Last year, a friend mentioned that he thought it would be fun if myself, a mutual friend, and all our kids went camping. That’s 3 dads, and 5 kids, this year from 4 to 8 years of age. All of us have varying levels of camping experience, and we all brought along a ton of gear. I made a short video about this last year, this year I’ve decided to write up some thoughts on the highlights of the gear I took, and some items we needed.

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  • iPad Office Apps, and MacBooks

    It’s no secret that I love the iPad and think most of the world can easily get by with it as their only computer. However, most of the world doesn’t agree, and none of this is to say it isn’t without its challenges. Having said that, today I am going to look at the sorry state of iPad office apps, and why in the hell anyone would by a Chromebook over an iPad.

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  • WESN Microblade Review

    Lurk around the knife subreddits enough and you will start to see a ton of custom knives — typically these are one offs which someone made for themselves. One day I saw this knife, which originally was a concept, then it was brought up as potentially a production blade. This knife then made its way to Kickstarter before being available for everyone.

    The thing about this knife is that it’s not like anything else out there. They label it “microblade” for a reason: the cutting edge is 1.5”. That’s about half of the length of a standard sized everyday carry knife. Further, the entire package, weighs just one ounce. It is very small.

    The WESN Microblade is truly a unique knife.

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