Remote Equipment Charlie 25

I picked this up during the deep sale that Remote Equipment ran over the holidays. I’ve been curious about the brand and have always been torn between the offerings. I went with the Charlie as it fit the capacity I am most likely to use, and I I love the way the Multicam looks on this bag.

Since picking it up, it’s been used heavily for all sorts of adventures. This is a really good bag that doesn’t have anything particularly unique about it, except that everything it does have is executed really well. That culminates in a bag I kept using, didn’t really see a need to stop using, but one which doesn’t have a huge wow factor.

Materials & Specs

The bag is made from ECOPAK which is a less expensive X-PAC derivative material which is a 100% recycled content, but slightly less durable. It’s an outright better material than X-Pac for bags. There’s two variants depending on your color choice, shown here is the Multicam — which is EPLX600, EPX400 is used in the base on black parts of the bag, with EPX70RS as the lining.

This is an interesting mix of materials. The EPLX600 is 240GSM and is a 600D polyester face bonded to the material, but it’s not X-PAC so there’s no diamond grid on it — this is a tough materials. The EPX400 is an X-PAC material with the diamond grid, but bonded to 400D material at 305gsm — this is a very durable and robust material and is why it is used on the high wear spots for the bag. The lining, EPX70RS, is a very light weight offering of X-PAC at 148gsm, with a 70D face material. The materials on this bag are overkill, yet smartly applied.

Remote Equipment is serious about bags, so they spec out the webbing and hardware they use along with the YKK Aquaguard zippers. It’s all high quality, no corners cut.

The bag is rated at 25L on the small end, expandable (by letting the lid rise upwards) to 30L or more. It measures out in base configuration around 20-21” x 11” x 6.5”. All of this comes in just a tick under 3lbs.

The materials, fit and finish, and sizing is fantastic here. It weighs a lot less in hand than the actual weight indicates, as it is balanced quite nicely.

In Use

This bag is simple: you have a top lid with a pocket on either side (outside and inside) which leads to a top loading (cinch opening) backpack. That main compartment has a center zipper running down it to splay the bag open. There’s a mesh pocket for flat items, a couple of side pockets at the top, and some hidden pockets behind each mesh pocket.

The bag is very fast to get in and out of. The top lid can be adjusted to allow for expansion, or removed completely if the mood strikes you. Again, there’s nothing here which is “wow”, but it’s all done really well such that there’s very little drama to getting in and out of the bag. You can cheat the center zipper down without opening the top lid to get at stuff as well. Flip the lid open and get at all your stuff. You can cinch it all down at the top and sides to help compress the bag. The water bottles pockets are large, and work well. There’s a lot of straps, but they mostly keep to themselves.

The first thing I noticed about the bag is how good it looks. I’m a huge fan of Multicam, but I don’t have many bags with it because I don’t love a military vibe. This bag walks that line. It doesn’t look overtly tactical to my eye, even though it is camo. The lines on the bag are clean, and well broken up with black instead of a matching coyote or other coloring being used. I dig the way this bag looks.

There’s three spots on this bag which need improvement:

The top lid uses the same material as the rest of the bag, and because of that it has more structure and rigidity to it than it should have. What this means in practice is that it doesn’t always easily clamshell over the top of the main compartment like it should — as it doesn’t have the flexibility it really needs for that. It also means that using the top pocket can be a squeeze since the material is less pliable. Making this out of another material (500D) would be better, or at least revising the pattern here to make there be less doubling up of the material.

The top lid attaches with four webbing straps. In the front there’s small side release buckles which function well for opening and closing the bag. At the back the lid attaches with two nylon g-hooks to the back panel of the bag. These are a nightmare and should be banned from this type of use. They were constantly popping off the bag when I was getting in and out and I was losing my mind. I solved this quickly by using some elastic webbing and sliding that over the g-hook to “lock” them in place. I recommend doing this if you buy one of these bags, or swapping these for something else entirely, though the fold and stitch on the ends of the webbing seem to make it nearly impossible to feed through the ladder lock on the g-hook.

Lastly, the two device pockets inside this bag are crap. There’s no dancing around that. My bag is less than a month old and the top edges of these pockets are already sagging as they seem to be sewn up not pulled tight. That sag means that anything you slide into the bag tends to catch on these pockets and stretch them further. These pockets are also quite small and don’t hold a ton. There are better solutions for this problem, and it’s a shame this is what is on this bag. It could and should be better. Or remove them entirely.

Those are my only three complaints about the bag. I used this bag fully loaded. It rolled around the back of my car on a road trip. It held clothes, speakers, and a bazillion iPads as we sought refuge at a friend’s house who had power for us to charge up with. It was stuff, unstuffed, and stuffed again. I took it out working with me several times. It beared the brunt of my kids diving in and out of it.

It’s a good bag.

The top lid holds what I need without fuss. The mesh pocket on the bottom of the top lid offers more secure, but still quick to access storage for things like a wallet or keys. The two interior mesh pockets are easy to use, and sized nicely. The bag pulls open and cinches back down fast.

This is one of those bag layouts where it can handle a very wide variety of tasks without any drama. But you do need to bring your own organization to it.

Carrying the bag is a little different of a story. It’s comfortable to carry around town, and fairly easy as well. At 6’-3” I felt as though I was pushing the upper bounds of the sizing for the straps. The bag wears high on your back, and there’s no yoke adjustment for it — it’s one size fits all. I am guessing it fits 5’-8” to 6’-1” really well. Anything outside that will be less than ideal. While that’s fine for average use, heavy loads will likely suffer for me with this.

The end result for me is a bag that is comfortable to carry as long as I am not wearing bulky layers. Put on some thick layers, and the bag feels to small in the straps.

Even with that, I have no plans to sell this bag or even to not use it. I used it for weeks straight even though I had other bags here needing testing time. I couldn’t be bothered to swap from it. That’s a big deal.

Overall

This bag looks good, is versatile, and easy to use. It’s the type of bag where I can see packing for a weekend away in it, and also using it to go on a short hike. This bag handles a lot of things well, and doesn’t complain when being stuffed full of the most random things my kids can think of.

It’s a really good bag, and it’s just shy of being great.

Buy here $269 (sale is/was $161.40).