My 2022 EDC Travel Essentials Kit

this is my 2022 travel essentials kit this is designed to get me out of trouble when away from home let's have a closer look [Music] okay so this kit is designed for traveling say on a work trip or holiday or vacation but it's not designed for hiking or camping i have a different kit for that which focuses more on things like fire lighting and survival a video on that one to follow this is all about problem solving in an urban setting and what's important to me is that this kit is compact and lightweight while still being genuinely useful i'm much more likely to carry this if it doesn't take up too much space and it's not too heavy i really like kits like this because it makes it much easier to pack and also you can be sure you have everything you need so say when traveling for work i will grab my tech kit toiletry kit or dock kit clothes pack laptop and this essentials get me out of trouble pack and then i know i have all the things i need the total weight of this pack is 582 grams which is about 1.3 pounds not too bad i would say when you see what i've got in here this is a maxpedition mini pouch a well-known pouch in the edc world and it weighs in at 90 grams which is a little over three ounces in terms of dimensions it's 10 centimeters by 15 by 2.5 which is four by six by one inch but you can see it's actually much thicker than one inch it's at least two inches so it will expand width wise when it's packed out like this it's made from a ballistic nylon with a teflon fabric protector it has molle webbing on the back and it has this substantial grab handle on the top and it has high strength zippers of which there are two in the uk it costs about 22 pounds including tax and in the u.s about 25 and i'm going to provide links to everything i talk about here in the description underneath this video okay now for the good bit let's have a look [Music] inside as you can see it's pretty packed out and the reality here with these packs is if you put something in every loop there's a good chance you won't be able to close it afterwards so you have to really think hard about how you position each thing in here to get maximum use out of the space available so first thing here is a multi-tool i love a multi-tool it's a toolbox in your pocket and it comes in really handy for all sorts of things this is possibly the most important thing in here and for me the minimum features really need to be a knife pliers screwdrivers both flat head and phillips and in my case scissors i really value having scissors in a pack like this and if it can be built into the multi-tool then all the better preferably it needs to be affordable as well because this is for emergencies only if you put an expensive multi-tool in here you're not really getting the value from it and lightweight and compact and if you factor all those things into the equation then it starts to limit your choice massively also in the uk we have another issue and that is that if this knife has a locking blade then technically it's illegal to carry it without good reason so ideally for uk carry and some other countries it would be better if it had a non-locking knife and if you factor that in the equation your choice is severely limited there's only one multi-tool i know of that meets all those criteria that is knife pliers screwdrivers scissors lightweight compact and non-locking blade and this is it the only problem with this which is a leatherman pst2 is that it's no longer made the pst-2 was launched in 1996 it was an evolution of leatherman's very first multi-tool and it stopped production in 2004 so i can be pretty guaranteed this is over 20 years old the great thing about this multi-tool is it's compact and lightweight in fact it only weighs 150 grams with this multi-tool you have a great selection of tools you have a file can open bottle opener a great three-dimensional phillips screwdriver as well as three flat head screwdrivers a pair of scissors and a blade which also has a serrated edge for cutting through fibrous materials and it's pretty much unique and it's a shame in my view that they don't still make it today so this is the perfect tool for this pack but if you can't get hold of one of these then there are a couple of other options the first one that springs to mind is this this is the leatherman bond and this is actually a very recent multi-tool from leatherman and i've done a separate review on this multi-tool so check that out if you want to know more this is also reasonably lightweight at 164 grams and fairly compact although not as compact as the pst2 but it doesn't have scissors so if that is a priority for you as it is for me then you might need to look elsewhere and if i didn't have access to a pst2 then my choice would be to go for these two items instead here we have a canipex cobra plier this is the smallest they do at four inches but it's still hugely capable and the jaw opening is absolutely huge and you can grip onto all sorts and it works really well and they come in bigger sizes a lot of different larger sizes but in terms of size and weight this is a great option and it sells for about 20 pounds not cheap for a single tool like this but you really get what you pay for with this can ipex cobra plier the other thing i would carry to complement that is this this is the victorinox alox pioneer x has a great pair of scissors in here and a knife and screwdriver bottle opener can opener and an awl and super quality really capable and if you want to know more about the pioneer x i've also done a separate video on that too next here we have a flashlight or torch and for me this is a super useful essential piece of kit imagine you are in an unfamiliar building maybe at night and the fire alarm goes off and there's no light and you need to get yourself out then this is the sort of thing you're gonna need and i know what you're thinking i've got a phone therefore i've got a light therefore i'm okay but take it from me the phone light is nowhere near capable enough to find your way out of a building in a hurry you need something with more intensity of light and something with a beam maybe you're up for a walk and the light fails more quickly than you think and without street lighting and without moonlight you can find yourself in a position where you can't even see your hand in front of your face so i would always want a reasonable flashlight or torch with me in a kit like this and this one is perfect this is the nightcore nu25 it's not new it's been around for quite some time and for the size and weight it's super capable and i should say i have slightly modified this one this nightcore nu25 normally comes with a thicker head strap but for a pack like this there isn't room for that and it does also add to the weight this is a light that's often used by the ultralight backpacking community and i've borrowed this idea from them this is shock cord you can get it online easily it's elasticated cord and these clamps here are very cheap and also easy to get hold of so the total weight of this head torch is 35 grams unbelievably light it's about 1.23 ounces and for something this small this compact and this lightweight it is super capable let me quickly run through the features it's got a ratchet on top so you can alter the angle it has a beam light and also a flood light the floodlight is great for reading or lighting up an area with even lighting and obviously the beam is for illuminating something more into the distance having a head torch is super important because it keeps your hands free to grab stuff open doors etc and also the light beam follows your head movement so a headlight for me is the perfect emergency option it has three brightness levels and then a turbo level that turbo level is 360 lumens which is loads of power it will drop down after 30 seconds because the heat will start to build up and then you can leave it a few seconds and then fire up the turbo again however the general high brightness mode is 190 lumens with a beam is pretty bright as you can see and that will run continuously without any drop down for five hours the mid level is 38 lumens still enough light to get you around and that will run for a full eight hours that's pretty much all through the night and then we have this really low one lumen level but it will run for 160 hours continuously and you could leave that on as a nightlight even so that is really super useful and then we have the light here this is a high color rendition index so it's a natural white light it's 20 lumens in brightness and will run continuously for 6 hours and 15 minutes and then if that wasn't enough you also have a red light in here the red light is 13 lumens which is quite bright great for preserving your night vision or to avoid disturbing others there's also a low light level of 0.9 lumens which will run continuously for 68 hours and then there's a flashing red light as well and that is useful for if you are on a very dark road maybe cycling or maybe just walk in you can have a flashing red beacon to warn people that you are there and then in addition to that we also have a beaker mode with a high intensity white flash to alert others to your location and also an sos mode where or flash sos in morse code you've also got a lockout mode where you can avoid accidental activation of the buttons while it's in this pouch which is really good to see and also battery check function where you can see if the battery is above 50 or below or below 10 in terms of charging the battery in here is 610 milliamps and it charges in around two hours but the really useful thing is you can charge it and use it at the same time and not all lights allow you to do this but if your light is running low and you desperately need it and you have a power bank with you you can plug that in charge the light and use it at the same time which is a really useful thing to be able to do okay what else do we have in this kit well we do happen to have a 10 000 milliamp hour power bank and this is the smallest and lightest in the world it's my favorite of all the power banks i own because it is so compact and lightweight it has usb-a and usbc and you can see the charge on here through these leds it's from nightcore again same people who make the flashlight this is called an mb10000 i believe i'll put a link in the description below this video but this is the sort of thing that is essential as well this will charge your phone a couple of times and it will also charge that flashlight and maybe some other devices you have with you so clearly the phone is one of the most important things to keep going in a challenging situation for obviously communication but also navigation so in my case you'll always find a power bank of some description then you need some cables to go with that power bank and i've just got here three short cables they're all usba on one side i'm not particularly worried about super fast charging i'm quite happy to have the power bank attached to the device whilst i use it so what i have here is a lightning for my mobile phone a usb c and also a micro usb the usbc can be used to charge the power bank because really i want to keep the power bank as charged as possible at every opportunity so if there is a way to charge the power bank then i need to make sure i've got a cable that will allow me to do that these are 10 centimeters long each which is about four inches so i would just go for something that size and just make sure you've got a cable for all the essential bits of kit you want to keep charged okay then link to that i have a mains charger believe it or not in here and that's particularly difficult in the uk because we have these enormous three pin plugs partly because our voltage is 230 volts so it can kill you but it does mean that trying to get a compact three-pin uk plug can be quite a challenge and in other countries you have all sorts of other smaller options available to you so i would suggest that you pick the best one for your own needs the one i've got here is one from a company called mew i'm not sure if it's still available um but there are other options but what's clever about this is that it unfolds like that it will charge the power bank and it will also charge my phone and charge the headlights as well but there are other options this is another one i found that i'll provide a link to again very flat and the three pin plug pops out of there so that is a similar type of solution the benefit of this one is that it has usb a and usb c so you've got a little bit more flexibility in what you can charge the reason i'm not using this one in this pack is that it's a little bit bigger and space is super tight in here already okay next on the list we have a notepad and pen the notepad i've chosen here is a write in the rain notepad so you've got waterproof pages this is a credit card size version they do lots of different sizes and it's super compact and lightweight and for emergency note-taking it's all you need for a pen i am using a sharpie but a mini sharpie to keep the size small and i use a sharpie pen because it has more uses particularly in an emergency situation it will write on more surfaces it'll write on fabric it'll write on glass it's indelible so it can be a little bit more visible to use but you could legitimately change this with something like a fischer bullet space pen which has the benefit of being able to write normally so just pick whatever is best for you you might have noticed in this writing the rain notebook i've also got one of these this is a fresnel magnifying lens and it is amazingly useful if like me you're getting old and you can't see super tiny writing with something like this you can so if you are trying to read some details on some medication for example then this is massively useful not only does it magnify but if i lost these glasses it would allow me to read say my mobile phone screen in an emergency so it is useful for that reason as well so i would always carry one of these in a pack next we have a lighter really useful thing to have and this is a bit lighter super reliable compact lightweight affordable and you never know when you might need a lighter it might be something like you've hired a cottage in the middle of nowhere and you get there and you want to light a fire and there's no matches around and no other way of lighting it so you'd be really glad you had one of these or might be just lighting a stove when there's no other way to do it or it could be that you need to burn through something or melt something it's always useful to have one and that actually brings me to this item you might be wondering what this is this is actually a piece of glue stick and the combination of this lighter and this glue stick is where it gets interesting because with a lighter you can melt the glue stick and you get hot viscous glue that sets immediately so if you need to join things or gap fill you can do it really quickly with a combination of this glue stick and this lighter and it will hold things fast and it doesn't have a problem with porous materials i have a micro kit for general edc use not for when i'm traveling and i'll link to that at the end of this video and in that i have some super glue in a tiny container and that's really useful but the problem with super glue is it doesn't bond uneven surfaces or porous surfaces very well at all so it's useful to have but this combination of glue stick and lighter in my view is more useful so if you've got i don't know a sole hanging off the bottom of your boot you can pretty much guarantee you could fix it with this and then we have some tape this is duct tape inch width folded back on itself there's no point in trying to carry a full reel it just won't fit in here and the fact that it's for use in emergency means that you don't need a huge amount really useful to have for strapping things together for fastening things for sealing things i don't really need to go into too much detail i think we all appreciate tape is a really useful thing to have then we have some zip ties or tie wraps again just a super useful thing to have for fastening things together and what i've done here is i've pushed them into a little bit of tubing this is actually a little bit of heat shrink tubing i found in the garage and what i found in the past is when you're storing tie wraps in something like this is they tend to kind of get very messy they end up sort of spread all over the pouch and this holds them together really well so that could be any sort of tubing really but it just keeps everything neat and tidy and accessible and one use for a tie wrap is to put on this big lighter here if you've not seen this before just basically to stop it being accidentally activated whilst it's in the pouch and we can use this to snip it off you'll see here i've got a little meds pack not much in here but really useful if you need it the obvious one is pain relief i was on a hike a week ago slipped cartoon style fell on my back and cracked a rib which was bad enough at the time but it's been a source of pain ever since as you can imagine and what it makes you realize is that pain can be really debilitating it can really take your mind off what you're trying to do so having something to manage pain is really important i've also got some aspirin here and a super useful one here imodium for if you've got the runs if you get my meaning and for those that have experienced that and let's face it it's most of us having to run at top speed to get to a toilet is um is never very cool something like ammonium it kind of pretty much stops it in an instant so really important to have those in my view and then i've also got some allergy tablets as well suffer from a hay fever but it's good to have it not just for you but for maybe other people around you as well so in the back here i have a few really useful items that pack flat and i'm using here a mylar ziploc bag i've found these are much nicer to use than a traditional polythene version the polythene ones have no real rigidity to them and they crease up and whereas these because they are stiffer and stronger can slot in and out of tight spaces more easily they can also keep things watertight if that's needed and in here i have a few things i've got some emergency glasses here these are from a company called thin optics i might have shown you these before and these are here in case i lose these and these work really well and in an emergency uh brilliant to have i'll link to those in the description as well so we've got emergency glasses i've got some thin cord here i like to carry paracord but there just isn't room for it in this pack and it's not really necessary but having some form of strong string for wants of a better word is really useful for all sorts of reasons i'm sure you can come up with quite a few of your own it might be an emergency shoelace you might want to carry something it might be an emergency washing line in your hotel room and this particular stuff is this micro cord and the great thing about this is it is super strong so that on its own will support 45 kilograms breaking strain which is 110 pounds so just two lengths of that would support my weight so it's super strong again lightweight takes up very little space i also have a sewing kit there we're all familiar with that you're going somewhere and the buttons popped off or something's ripped and so you can fix it with that again take some space very little weight and then finally in this pack i've got some aqua tabs you're in a hotel room you haven't got any bottled water you're not sure about the quality of the water for safety's sake just pop in one of those for 30 minutes and then you've got a litre of drinkable water until you can find some water you're confident about and that will save you using the diarrhea tablets later i also have a another mylar bag in here just a few really basic first aid items primarily alcohol wipes and different sizes of sticking plasters it's not going to help you if you cut your leg off but it could be quite useful if you find yourself dripping blood everywhere from a small cut so here we have a anti-microbial wipe so it will kill germs from surfaces and you can also use it on your hands so it's kind of a version of hand sanitizer with a little bit more flexibility because you can wipe surfaces as well so nice to have one or two of those and then finally we have this this has the worst name in the world it's called beast wipes whoever thought of that they should give their head a bang what it is is moist toilet roll that is flushable for use in an emergency so imagine you've forgot to put your aqua tabs in your water you've gone through your imodium you're in a public loo having to do a bit of cleaning up and you reach for the lu roll and you find that there's none there something like this would be worth its weight in gold at that point so a really useful addition i think to an emergency pack like this and then finally i'd put some cash in here as well in local currency for those times when you might say lose your wallet or you suddenly find your credit card stops working a little bit of cash in here could be a lifesaver so take this with you when you leave town if you don't use it on a trip then see that as a success but if you do need one or more of these items then you will be glad you have it and it could save the day if you are flying don't forget to move the multi-tool to your checked-in luggage or find another option and i've looked at other options for multi-tools in flight in another video so be sure to check that out if that sounds of interest i'd love to hear your thoughts on this pouch have i missed anything please let me know in the comments but don't forget we're trying to keep everything in the one pouch okay the trick now is to get everything back in the pouch on a good day you won't need to get in here at all and if you do need things there's a good chance you're going to be so keen to see it that you won't mind a little bit of messing around trying to get it all back in there later the idea of this it's for emergencies to get you out of trouble so i don't see a problem in packing this tight and spending a little bit time getting everything in place because hopefully you'll never need to use it and if you want to see my everyday carry essentials kit that i have with me when leaving the house but not traveling then check out this video here thanks for watching as always have a great day and i'll see you in the next one

Channel: Jon Gadget

Views: 119,803

Keywords: edc, everyday carry, bags, travel, camping, hiking, multitools, tactical pens, wallets, knives, knife, leatherman, victorinox, torch, flashlight, gadget, gadgets, travel gear, camping gear, hiking gear, survival, backpack, work bag, uk, uk edc, bellroy, wallet, victorinox compact, victorinox huntsman, victorinox mini champ, travel essentials, emergency travel, travel edc, EDC travel, travel emergency kit

Id: WwqdYc13RhI

Length: 26min 0sec (1560 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 16 2022