Mountain Hardwear PCT 55 L Pack - Men's vs Osprey Atmos AG 50 Pack - Men's

So the pack has a day-pack included that attaches inside the pack for ease of use and it has a clip inside to attach your bladder inside the day-pack. This is all and good however I don't really plan on using the day-pack and that bladder clip is the only one in the pack. So if you remove the day-pack you lose your mounting point. I found an easy fix that being some Velcro tape stuck together fed through an exposed portion of the metal frame at the top of the inside of the pack that allows me to hold a bladder in place (A zip-tie worked as well but is much less practical)

This review is for the 53L edition which is the large size for the Atmos AG 50. My favorite feature is the pockets in the hip belt where you can store your snacks, sunblock, chapstick, pocketknife, yo-to, troll doll, etc., for easy access without removing the pack. The anti-gravity system is comfortable though it never successfully lifted me completely off the ground

The pack has held up well enough in both the rocky high desert as well as alpine bristlecone forests over my first season with it. The detachable day pack turned out to be a lot more useful than I originally expected when I ordered this pack, Great for small day hikes or dropping your main pack at camp to summit with the daypack. Daypack is pretty comfortable with a 3L bladder although a chest strap would be nice. Biggest gripe I’ve seen about the bag is the front mesh pocket, it hasn’t been a tear concern for me personally even in pretty thick brush, and I hardly use it for anything but wrappers anyway so rain getting the contents wet is not a concern for me either

Now I don't think I'll be using it again on another thru hike unless for some reason I had to carry a lot of camera gear or just had an extreme amount...