Review: Wingnut Assault Pack

By Jason Miles

I love the big Wingnut Hyper pack I tested a few months back. You can get loads of gear in it, enough for a proper day (or night) out on the bike, it’s dead easy to use and if you strap it on properly it’s incredibly comfortable. And that’s the big selling point – the weight sits on your hips rather than pushes on your shoulders, so if you’ve got a Wingnut pack that’s simply too small to put loads of stuff in and get heavy, what’s the point?

I didn’t know, but I was sure that it would all make sense eventually. 
The Assault is the Hyper’s newborn baby sibling. Its ‘just-short-of-five-litre’ luggage capacity with room for a 1.5 litre reservoir sounds dinky – and it is! It’s tiny! In fact, it’s not much different than three jersey pockets and a bottle. But jerseys with pockets and bottles might not be your thing, so the Assault might tick a couple of boxes.

But then there’s no internal organisation, apart from the sleeve for the reservoir so when you reach into the pack via the ‘handy’ side pockets, you’re probably not going to find what it is you’re after because everything occupies the same space and gets mixed up. Where the bigger Wingnut packs have external mesh pockets for often-used gubbins and sweetie wrappers, the Assault offers nothing of the sort.

Overall: This ‘bumbag with loads of straps’ might be useful if you want a bottle/pockets replacement or you want to carry a half brick with you. Wingnuts are ace, but get a bigger one than this.


Review Info