Qore Performance IcePlate EXO

An overview and my thoughts on the Qore Performance IcePlate EXO. Enjoy.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/64684e_94ebc0330e8343be8b9dfae42de4b03d/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

hey what's up guys so today let's talk about the core performance xo plate carrier so the exoplay carrier is one that i got to play with a while back i think it was like almost two years ago that i got to play around with their pre-production one and i really really enjoyed it enough that when i asked them if i can keep it they were like no man so they only had a few of them and the material was proprietary to an extent and what they were using um for material was something they're still messing with i believe and their cummerbund was still something they were messing with so it was it was a really cool play carrier that i really wanted and then uh eventually i got one right so uh when they when they actually became available is what it is um now core gave me this one as a thank you uh for a photo shoot that i did with them uh recently in uh in savannah and uh and they made me one that was a little bit more custom and a little pretty on the front it says front towards the enemy and then the back portion says uh back towards bros uh just underneath kind of just kind of funny claymore slash not claymore uh reference but just for fun and and i i kind of dug it it's funny funny little thing it just shows like their humor when it comes to certain things they're good dudes over there so let's let's talk about this exo now what makes it different from other play carriers right that's that's what most people are going to try and find and uh and for me when it came to it uh if you look at the weight of these things they're really lightweight coming out of the box right so when they're they're brand new um with nothing on them yet they're already a really lightweight plate carrier which is important because you're putting this stuff on your shoulders and if you don't do enough pull-ups or if you don't have enough muscle on your body you're going to struggle a little bit with a plate carrier depending on what you put on it how much you weigh it down things like that now it can be as uh beefed up or slimmed down as you want personally right so remember a play carrier is something that you're gonna set up specifically for what you're gonna do if uh your mission set is something uh enormously crazy then you may add different things you may do something if it's more low vis you may have nothing on this thing and that's that's what you got to do right so depending on what you're doing is gonna it's gonna play into what you wear now um let's let's talk about a couple of features that i think are really cool about the exo now the exo is named because it kind of looks like an exoskeleton that's my guessimication and uh that's it's in the dictionary look it up um but uh but my guess on that is that it was made because it's very i'm sorry it's named because it was very exoskeletony meaning it has a ton of openings a ton of drainage holes um a lot of space for water to seep out even on the inside let me pull this off for you guys so you can see but even on the inside you can see like it's skeletonized right it's it's like an exoskeleton and and to me that was something i was like oh man that's kind of cool because one it lets the actual you know play carrier dry which is important when it comes to weight but it also allowed for like water to drain out immediately instead of pool uh so and and one of the reasons it drains out really well and and one of the reasons this plate here is a lot different from others is that the material they use is hydrophobic right so the whole plate carrier is made out of this minus the velcro and minus any of the elastic portions because they just don't make elastic hydrophobic stuff that kind of against nature or materials but either way it's it's this hydrophobic material this shiny stuff that you can see here hopefully that's showing up properly but it is it can't retain water it repels water immediately it can't retain it in any way which is really cool and uh and that's one of those features that i think really sets it apart from other plate carriers now being that it has that it also drains water or any liquids really fast because i live in a humid tropical environment slash swamp environment south florida um i have to keep you know so i have i get rained on or i may jump into the water or i may do some stuff with some teams and do some stuff in in the actual water uh so it comes down to the point where i need to have something that drains really well super super useful for this environment also the quick releases give me something that i can use to take it off in the water so i don't have to un-velcro something i can just pop it off now there's give and takes for those kind of features but i prefer it i like it more but it's up to you right you put the cummerbund on that you want so that's the cool part about this so it can take multiple different types of cummerbunds where you could do just the velcro ones that stick in the back and come around elasticy and stick to the front super simple you could do things like that and then also you can use any of them that have this quick release on it so you have options and and i think that's one of the coolest parts about this play carrier 2 um you're not stuck to one thing now the other variation or i think cool part about it is what they did with their cummerbund so the cummerbund they use is is the hydrophobic material and then they looped it in a way that you can molly whatever you want onto it and it still leaves you room to molly things on the back side if you want it towards your body so if you're kind of switching things up or if you're needing to put side plates on and have a radio or pouch on the outside or whatever you could do a lot of different things with it and it gives you that room to do so the other thing it does is also give you because of this quick release it has to attach somehow so it takes up a little bit of room but it gives you some elastic right here at the cummerbund so it gives you some breathing room and cummerbunds that are non-elastic should have a little bit of give whether it's in the back or in the front it needs to have some give because otherwise we have to keep them a little bit loose so that you can breathe and then they start sliding around on your body and it's uncomfortable and it starts becoming one of those things you have to fight you shouldn't have to fight your plate carrier you should be fighting the things you're fighting not with your play carrier so um but a little bit of uh elastic allows your lungs to expand which is good right that's how we breathe um or it's a portion of our breathing process and and that's how we're gonna actually get air so when you're actually working out with one of these or doing stuff with one of these you can actually breathe very very important keep that in mind when you get a play carrier with a cummerbund make sure the cummerbund has some elasticity or when you actually size it you give yourself some wiggle room for a deep breath i like to take a deep breath while i size it and i figure out where i'm at and then that's that's how i keep it um elastic also comes into play if you're putting on layers so if i put on a jacket or or anything like a like let's say i put on like a wet weather jacket or something like that or if i go to a colder climate and i have to put on like a sweater or something underneath i could do so and the elasticity is going to give me some room um depending on how many layers you put on you may actually have to adjust your your cummerbund though now something else they did that was a little different too is they also put velcro on the inside of the plate bags so it's skeletonized almost exactly like the outside and i would say it's almost identical to the outside but what they did was they made it so that your your inside could be used for sticking wing style pouches right so if i wanted to add more um magazines to my loadout or whatever i can stick them in and then the cummerbund would just wrap around that so i can actually add more magazines into the game or i can add a radio pouch or i could put a water bottle in there or i could do whatever i want because it's my plate carrier but having velcro on the inside like this is really useful very helpful in my opinion i like it a lot you can also use it you could also use it for danglers all right so depending on the dangler depending on how the velcro's set up you can use it there or you can put the dangler where you normally get it under soap all right so you have options when it comes to it i prefer to be able to do whatever i want they also make little pontoons made out of their ice vents that can go in there to keep you cool you could also stick a velcro version or pouch of their um ice plates which are for either you could put icing or you could freeze water in them use them as a drinking you know apparatus um or when it melts or i'm sorry or it could keep you cool while it's frozen in a hot environment and then melt into a drinking uh apparatus so it's actually really useful and depending on what you do you can really load this thing out into whatever you want so going further right let's talk about the actual plate bags now so the plate bags give you a couple options you can put clips on them which i believe they come with and or you can use g hooks in these little loops they also as you can see they skeletonize this thing pretty good to the point where you can slip a cordage through there you can your radio cables you could also use your ptts and ptt retainers or just elastic in between and retain a lot of your pc ptts and and you can get a lot of stuff done that way it'll also take a lot of the different placards out there depending on g hook or or quick release um up to you on how you set that up that's i mean very specific to you and we could talk about mine uh in a separate video but what you see here is just the the setup of all of this you could put more on here if you wanted i just don't i like to keep my stuff a little bit more slick but that's my personal preference um now the other thing to talk about with the plate bags is the bottom right the plate pockets so the plate pockets are real simple it's one piece of velcro that opens up and one that flaps out the other side and you can get your plate out of there now i keep my plates in a plate bag especially for this plate carrier one of the reasons i do that and it has to be a plate bag that doesn't retain water so something with like a like elastic tweed or whatever it is uh tweeve but something that will protect your plates a little bit because the corners of your plate as you can see are exposed now is it a big deal not for those of you that get issued plates those of us that have to buy our plates now it's kind of a big deal right we want to take care of our stuff so just something to point out you may want to get a plate bag if you're going to get this plate carrier or if you don't give a crap and it's just your training plate carrier and just throw steel plates in there to train that's what i do with my steel plates i'll go ahead and slide them in there to go for runs or go for swims and uh and that way it doesn't run it doesn't matter if they get dinged up on the bottom but also uh it's really easy to swap out plates or place plates inside which is kind of nice it also means that those of you that use those kind of uh little mix kits that go inside your plate carrier bags um they're really easy it's really easy to retain it and then extract it when necessary so kind of nice for those of you that use like i think it's focus group that makes that little plate carrier one that slips out the bottom um really solid solid piece of equipment really cool nifty way of keeping it now going further right let's let's go and talk about the shoulder pads now i'm sorry the shoulders so the shoulders are set up i set them up like this where i have their shoulder cover right a little cover slide little like sock condom thing and um that that way i can slide comms through there i can do all sorts of things with that it also just keeps the velcro off my neck if i'm using it without the ice vents so the ice vents arrows are the ones i usually use because you can see the shape gives me neck room so it doesn't rub against my neck super nice they're also really nice in hot environments like i live in and they don't retain water once again so it's really nice as a shoulder pad now the way their shoulder pads look normally which i've removed this one so i can show you guys is velcro on top of velcro so that retains water to an extent though because the hydrophobic material that it's sewn to doesn't retain water so it's just the loop portion of the velcro that's actually taking in water which is kind of nice so it's very simple very easy to adjust so when you put it on you can have somebody velcro it on you or you can do it yourself very easy to adjust and that's i appreciate that because some of us have to switch things on the fly and at the moment or hey maybe i just did too many push-ups that day no big deal but uh and my shoulders a little bigger my back my chest whatever and i need to expand it cool so just something to think about there now if i use it without the little condom on there their ice vents actually stick right to it which is really really convenient so those of you that that want to just use the ice vents and you like you like being able to use this velcro for other things like you know ptt retainment or or if you're gonna use it for like um straps that go to a backpack right kind of like the cry avs or something like that you could do stuff like that on this plate carrier really really easily um so the the cry avs bags if you've never seen them they come with a strap that is velcro and then it just has a clip and you're supposed to be able to clip it and then pull your bag over your head or pull it around your side and get into your bag really cool setup i just don't like having things permanently attached or semi-permanently attached to my back so just options now with this little little plate or sorry with these shoulder pads too because they are so thin um it is nice to have a little bit of cushion but it's not necessary unless you just have bony shoulders or something uh do more pull-ups and shoulder presses and stuff lift weights um but going into it right or going further let's get to the back of it and the back is set up in in a very uh normal way in my opinion it has a pull uh or a an actual like um uh handle uh i think uh most people will just use that for like admin stuff like carrying the bag or carrying the the plate carrier um i don't even do it that way i just grab shoulder pads uh the same way i extract people from certain spots or i have to pull them or tug on them i'll grab them by the shoulder strap versus the back of the plate mainly because when you pull somebody from the back of the plate a lot of times the play carrier will lift right and jam their head a little bit and depending on what the injury is i don't want to be making their neck do funny things at best i can so grabbing by the shoulders i can at least retain a head between my arms while i pull them so it's it's a little bit more useful in my opinion there's other extraction techniques and things like that out there that's just a way i just prefer using people's shoulder straps to pull them versus just their their rear plate bag like i said like it's not a very complicated plate carrier um it's also super lightweight and i'll try and put the weight up like right around here or something um i like it a lot i've been using it for quite a while now i think i got it uh what was it early on this year um and and i've been really enjoying it um really try to put it through its paces really see if it's worth it plus the the dudes over there they they really enjoy the fact that i i like messing up their stuff breaking and cutting it and shaping it different ways and then they're like dang this crazy man um but just something to think about there uh with with the way their play carriers are set up it's very very simple and and it's set up so you could use their other accessories um but in in a very useful way so it's not like hey you have to use our stuff because proprietary lbt um but but it's it's set up so you can use anybody's stuff as well as their stuff so hope that helps guys hope that that gave you a nice overview and an idea on how to go about using this bad boy um or just if it's for you so if it is cool if it's not cool do something else all right take care you