Mechanix - Love or Hate?
I'm a firm believer that if a company says that it's line of gloves is (sic) "devoted to protecting the hands of military, police and SWAT professionals... designed to perform in a range of high-risk scenarios and environments" then you should be able to hold them to account for this.
I had a pair of M-Pact gloves that lasted the best part of two years. It was abused in those two years too. Exercises, courses, battle PT. They were bomb-proof. Razor wire finally claimed them, and I had no hesitation in replacing them like for like. However, all an unnamed store in Tidworth had were the new TrekDry ones in Multicam. A week later they were gone. Bearing in mind I was an instructor at an ATR at this point, and was hardly demanding the world from them! Another pair of original construction M-Pacts I found on Amazon lasted a long time, including PSBC and Ex WESSEX STORM and it was time to retire them.
You guessed it, cotton-wool construction is all that is left. They lasted 3 days. On a teaching exercise in CHDV. I literally opened a few ammunition containers, pointed at defences and used them to keep my hands warm. They disintegrated.
It appears Mechanix have gone for the 'TrekDry is life' approach, unless you go for full leather M-Pact, which seem to only be available in the states. I could be cynical and say that they've made it big so why should they care? I mean, my pair of M-Pacts on Tom Clancy's: The Division have lasted me ages, and my character on BF4 took on Russia and China in full comfort. Or maybe their TAA compliance has opened them up to US Government departments, and we all know that so long as it's cheap enough then they've got guaranteed business from the Big Man. Maybe they genuinely feel that the TrekDry material is the best option for its customers but have dropped a bollock in testing. Maybe I, and my peers, are using them wrong?
Regardless of the reasons 90% of the dedicated Mechanix wearers in my Battalion have moved away from them. Why would I want to pay the better part of £30 for tissue paper gloves?
So Mechanix, we've seen you can offer a variety of different products, your M-Pact gloves alone come in 23 different versions, before we start messing about with colour options (from http://www.mechanix.com/search?keywords=M-Pact), how about give us the 24th option. Proper, oldschool, robust construction. Charge me the full £30, not £25.99. If they're worth it, I'll buy them. The largest consumer base you have is not the SF/Operator community. It's lowly grunts like me, and the majority of the people reading this. We don't have the luxury of 'in and out' jobs or a kit allowance, we buy this stuff out of our own pockets and need it to last us a decent amount of time and take a lot of punishment. Which is exactly why you managed to capture the majority of the British Infantry. Don't forget that "Hand protection is our mission. Feel confident knowing when orders come down, your Mechanix tactical gloves are on duty" and maybe you won't lose us all to the up and coming suppliers.
This Kit Pest Review article was written by Samlongshankswatt. Hopefully you enjoyed it and if you have any thoughts or comments related to this article then leave a comment!
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