We came across Templars Gear when searching the web for new and innovative gear makers. The company is quite young and produces tactical gear like plate carriers, magazine and utility pouches, battle belts and backpacks.
After meeting the Templars Gear team at the IWA 2015 in Nuremberg we got a bunch of different sample products to test and quickly startet testing the gear in various CQB and live fire shooting courses.
In this review we are going to take a detailed look at the Light Plate Carrier TG-TPC plate carrier and some of the mag pouches from Templars Gear. Another review about the utility pouches and the hydration pouch will follow soon.
MATERIAL & BUILD QUALITY
The plate carrier is made out of 500 Denier Cordura and 500 Denier polyurethane coated Cordura. Both fabric variants meet the military’s specifications for NIR compilance. Our plate carrier came in the Pencott Greenzone camo, which is becoming more and more popular these days.
Looking for those standard Molle webbing? Sorry to disappoint you. To reduce weight and not interrupt the camo pattern, Templars Gear is using the “laser-cut” method instead. As you can see on the photos, the cutting is precise and clean, critical parts are double-stitched and reinforced. The build quality and the workmanship is excellent and up to today’s standards.
The TG-TPC looks a lot like the Crye JPC for sure, that’s a fact no one can deny. But it’s not just a simple clone. You can’t reinvent the wheel but you can develop it further and that’s exactly what the guys (and girls) from Templars Gear have done with the TG-TPC.
FEATURES & COMFORT
The TG-TPC is designed to be light and, at the same time, offer maximum wearing comfort. The inside of the plate carrier features velcro panels for attaching the Comfort Pads (available separately). on the chest- and backside. The pads are made out of foam and spacer mesh to help create air channels for better air circulation and thermal comfort.
The comfort pads on the shoulder straps are not the same as the others as they feature a different mounting system.
Be advised: the pads don’t come with the plate carrier. You have to buy them separately.
We liked the pads very much because they really helped with the air circulation and prevented extensive sweating in the chest and back.
The TG-TPC can be adjusted on the shoulder straps which makes it easy to adjust the plate carrier to your size. The Comfort Pads can be mounted on the outer velcro surface of the shoulder straps. The pads also feature elastic loops to mount your cables or hydration system’s hose. The newest version of the shoulder pads feature a crossed bungee cord instead of the elastic loop which makes the shoulder pads more low-profile.
On the front side of the plate carrier you can find two more mounting loops for cables and the hydration hose. This is a feature that is missing on the Crye JPC though. The Front also features vertical and 45° Molle mounting options. This could be used to add buckles for mounting other small chest rigs.
A small but nice feature is the velcro area for name tapes and such right on the chest portion of the front side. If you don’t want to put a name tape or patch on it you can leave the the included velcro cover on.
Let’s take a closer look at the front panel. The TG-TPC features a removable front panel which can be interchanged with other panels from Templars Gear. They offer panels such as the Standard TPC Panel, which features 6×5 Molle compatible rows to mount all your pouches …
… or panels like the Shingle Mag Pouch TPC Panel, which has 3 single mag pouches and other panels like the Double Mag Pouch TPC Panel, which is available as an AR-15 or AK version.
Both the Shingle panel and the Standard panel feature a kangaroo pouch for your documents and small, flat items.
Inserting ballistic plates on the front and back is easy. The plates can be inserted from the bottom and fit in nice and tight, the velcro on the lid secures the plates safely. Depending on the size of the carrier you can use SAPI/ESAPI paltes from M to XL.
A litte sidenote: Sadly, we haven’t had any SAPI plates available when shooting the photos for the review so the plate carrier doesn’t fit perfectly on our model. The training plates arrived shortly after and we were able to test the pate carrier with those training plates though.
When it comes to the cummerbund, Templars Gear also offers a wide range of different cummerbunds to choose from. Thy offer an elastic cummerbund, an elastic cummerbund with integrated mag pouches (as seen on the photos) and hybrid cummerbund which features elastic elements and a conventional molle compatible grid made out of cordura.
The cummerbund gets mounted on the inside of the backplate instead of on the outside like on the JPC. This doesn’t make changing the cummerbund much harder.
We liked the build quality and the functionality of the products so much that we bought the optional Hydration bladders pouch TG-H1 which mounts to the backplate. This pouch will be reviewed in a separate article later.
MAG POUCHES
The mag pouches look and function similar to the HSGI Taco pouches and can be adjusted to fit a variety of different magazines an calibers. The side panels that retain the magazine are made out of Kydex and feature a laser-engraved Templars Gear lettering. The usage is simple and effective.
Despite common AR-15 and AK/AK74 we were also able to fit the large HK417 mags into the pouches. Although that caused the pouches to expand on the sides and we were only able to use two out of the three pouches on the front of the plate carrier. For magazine types like pistols, DMR, MP5 etc. there are different mag pouches available from Templars Gear.
The pouches are mounted with lashes that feature a hard insert at the end which gets flipped and stuck back into the Molle at the end. This is similar to the system Marz Tactical or Mayflower uses.
