This is my very first trail running vest, so I don’t have anything to compare it to. So I’ll break it down into my personal pros and cons.
Here are the pros:
1. It's perfectly sized for small females, I’m 5’2 and I didn’t want a massive vest. This one is ideal.
2. It doesn’t move around AT ALL. I was concerned so I watched some reviews and a lot of the experts mentioned that there’s nothing worse than a bag that’s moving around all the time. This one stays put for the whole run.
3. It doesn’t make you overheat. I did a 15k with this on in 30 degree weather in the UK, through some trails that felt like rainforest climate and I wasn’t sweating any more than I would have with no vest on.
Here are the cons:
1. The straw/tube is LONG. Like it's almost extra long. What happens is you start your run with some of the tube inside the bag, then after. A few drinks it comes out and goes back to being long, so you can keep pushing it back inside the bag - which can get annoying on a long run. I recon if they chopped 5-7cm off of it, it would be perfect. I’m not sure why it needs to be this long, so what I did was - I attached a little bit of velcro to the inside of the bag and the tube and now its pinned in place at a length I want it to be and doesn’t come out of the bag any more than I need it to. A cheap and simple solution that works.
2. The front pockets are essentially like shorts pockets - they don’t close. This is more of a personal thing but I would like to put my iPhone in there (which fits perfectly) but its an open pocket and it might pop out. Again this can be solved with a bit of velcro. I understand people want easy access to the pockets for food on the run which is probably why they are left open, but I’m super conscious of things falling out - so I velcroed that bit too :)
All in, it's a great vest. Small tweaks would maybe only make me happy, and not the larger running population so I’m super pleased I bought this for my first bag!