GORUCK GR1 vs GR2 – Our Review

At this point, GORUCK has and has put out a lot of different bags.

Currently offering the creatively-named “gym bag“, the excessively-named “Aviator Kit Bag“, and the snobbishly-marketed “shoulder bag” (who does GORUCK Founder Jason McCarthy think he is with that bag? Patrick Bateman?!), the company has certainly expanded lineup.

Despite these more niche and, in some cases, more “interesting” options, when it comes to GORUCK, it’s all about the GR line.

Always has been, always will be.

To go a step further, when assessing how these bags compare to one another, the battle that the world is most interested in is the GR1 vs GR2 matchup.

I mean, how can a skirmish between a bag (self-) described as the “greatest of all time” and one that allows you to “travel the world with one ruck” not be a legendary one?

Before we get started, check out our definitive guide to GORUCK backpacks, bags, and vests. If neither of these options turns out not to be the bag for you, maybe one of the other 8 in our review will work out for you!

Also, if you’re interested in GORUCK footwear offerings, check out our definitive guides on the GORUCK boots and GORUCK shoe lines!

GORUCK GR1 vs GR2

Before we get into our more informal, more subjective discussion of these bags, I think it’s important to give you an idea of how GORUCK itself markets them. It’s kinda like that whole “I’ll show you how it’s supposed to be done…then I’ll show you how we actually do it” speal you get (or give to the new guy) on your first day of work.

First, the GR1 aka the “The Original Ruck”:

“From Baghdad TO NYC

GR1 was built to thrive in Baghdad and NYC and has been tested and proven by Green Berets to meet the life or death standards of quality, toughness, and performance. It has proven itself the world over and earned its “Greatest Of All Time” status the hard way: one deployment, one event, one trip, one mile at a time. 1,000 Events/year, 175,000+ participants, and 200+ Special Forces Cadre later, the GORUCK Challenge is the most significant quality control program of its kind. No other bag is consistently put through more abuse, and GR1 thrives.

The GR1 is built with a minimalist approach in mind and includes only the necessary features of an everyday carry rucksack: a bombproof laptop compartment, opens flat for easy packing, built with Special Forces grade materials, and soft but tough 210D CORDURA on the back panel and shoulder straps so your ruck doesn’t irritate your skin or chew up your apparel.

Proven to Special Forces standards, GR1 is synonymous with the best of American Manufacturing. Each GR1 is built to last and comes with our Scars Lifetime Guarantee.”

In my opinion, that headline is the most important part…ya know…for all of those GORUCK shoppers who are headed to Iraq for their next GORUCK Event…

Next, the GR2 aka “The Original Go-Bag”:

“Travel the World with One Ruck

If you want to travel the world with one bag, it’s a ruck, and it’s GR2®. The GR2 offers all the pockets and organization, is carry-on compliant, and allows for hands-free travel because roll bags suck. Patterned after Special Forces medical rucks, GR2 is big, tough, and built to travel outside the airport. Special Forces operate in cities, mountains, jungles, and deserts worldwide, facing the most difficult challenges known to man. Since our founding, Green Berets have been judge and jury of GORUCK quality. We proudly overbuild every GR2 to Special Forces life or death quality standards so that we’re confident it will keep up with you and your lifestyle.

One ruck on your back with everything you need to do whatever you want. Backed by our Scars Lifetime Guarantee, aka the best guarantee on the market.”

I like the practical description of this bag…even if I don’t really have any frame of reference in regard to what SF medical rucks look like…

Those intros aside…

Rucking

For many (most?) people, the GR1 vs GR2 debate is going to come down to one category and one category only…

Rucking…what are these bags like to ruck with?

I’m happy to report that both bags make for pretty good “pure” rucking bag options, even if I’m slightly partial to the GR1.

Because, in many ways, the GR2 is the “big version” of the GR1, there are a number of similarities between the bags in this regard, making it more difficult to effectively deem one as the “winner” for this category:

• Internal pocket that most will use to stash their ruck plate in (these perfectly accommodate GORUCK ruck plates)
• Hard, stable frame sheet to keep said plates from directly impacting against the back when rucking
• Resilient, but much less abrasive 210D Cordura (to complement the much more voluminous 1000D Cordura) strategically placed in areas that are most likely to come into contact with exposed skin
• Extra padded (but really) shoulder straps

To those who aren’t really oriented with GORUCK bags, some, if not all of these features probably seem like fancy “noise”, but I can assure that numbers 1 and 2 are gamechangers, number 3 is really important (if you ruck in a tank top or shirtless) and number 4 is one of those things that you don’t notice or appreciate…until you suddenly do (usually somewhere around Mile 3 or 4 in my experience).

Anyways, neither bag really makes up any ground in these areas…so how does the GR1 separate itself?

…in most cases, it’s a smaller bag…which makes it easier for me to “handle” when I’m rucking.

Obviously, this area of consideration is going to be completely dependent on your body type as well as your personal preferences, but for me, I prefer a more “compact rucking” experience.

To illustrate the size differences, take a look at how the GR1 (26-liter) and GR2 (40-liter) bags respectively look on my ~5’8; 165-pound frame:

If I need to haul half of my life with me, moving countries or something, my GR2 is what I need for the job, but for a casual, 2-hour ruck down the hill and back…

…all of that storage space gets a bit superfluous…and gets a little annoying.

Obviously, if you’re, like, 6’2, 230, the GR1 may feel more like a kid’s backpack on your frame, creating the opposite, but probably equally weird feeling as when I opt for the bigger bag. In this case, you might reverse my scores for the GR1 and GR2 in this category.

Or…of course…ya know…you could always opt for the 26-liter GR2 which is more or less the exact same size as the 26-liter GR1 (with the addition of a few internal goodies we’ll mention later). If you go this route, it’s pretty much a tie ball game in this area (which is something you’ll need to get used to in this review…)

Overall, both of these bags are good-to-very good for “pure” rucking. There are other options, like those in the Rucker series that I prefer for these ventures (current favorite is the Rucker 4.0), but these two are still way up there. Just make sure you opt for the bag that’s going to best suit your body type!

Winner: GR1

Dynamic Rucking

I hate to be…I don’t know…”dense” (probably not the word, but whatever) here, but the dynamic rucking capabilities of both of these bags follow a similar trajectory as they do with the previous one:

They are both pretty close to one another, but the GR1 is slightly more adept and ultimately wins the point.

With that being said, neither of these bags are quite as good with this type of work as they are at “pure” rucking ventures, being more in the “slightly above average-to-above average” classification. What this translates to is “as long as you’re not gunning for GORUCK Selection, these bags are just fine for functional training ventures”.

The ruck plate pockets in these bags are the key components, ensuring that, for the most part, the plate doesn’t really move or jostle around during movements such as ruck swings, ruck thrusters, ruck get-ups, etc. There is more movement than there would be if you were using something like a Rucker (with its heavily padded and velcroed ruck plate pockets) but not so much to seriously hinder movement.

However, neither bag has the signature side or bottom handles of bags that are designed with dynamic training in mind (these handles make carrying and pressing movements easier to facilitate) nor do they have drainage holes (which come in handy if you and your bag just…happen to become waterlogged…).

The 1000D Cordura outer materials will certainly accommodate the pounding that inevitably occurs when throwing bags around in this manner so no worries about seriously damaging or tearing your bag.

(if you’re some kind of Hercules or just happen to run into some bad luck, you can always get your bag repaired by GORUCK Scars…fo’ free!)

Anyways, the GR1 gets the nod again for the same reason it did in the previous section: the GR2’s size just works against it a little too much.

Don’t get me wrong; I prefer a slightly larger bag for things like presses and thrusters (the pressing portion, at least) since they provide a slightly wider base for gripping and grasping the bag, creating a more advantageous position. However, for most other exercises (like swings), the extra bulk just makes the movement akward.

The GR2 has the vast majority of other rucks, especially non-GORUCK bags, beat for these tasks, but the GR1’s smaller size again makes it the better option.

Winner: GR1

Load Capacity

Neither of these bags is going to truly awe you with its overall load capacity.

Neither of them are even the biggest of the GORUCK bag options.

However, one of these has a pretty significant load capacity edge on the other…so long as you opt for the larger options.

With a load capacity of 40 liters, the GR2’s biggest option isn’t the largest ruck you can buy, but it’s getting up there. If pure size is what you’re looking for, it’s just outside of GORUCK’s top 3. It’s 34-liter option is nothing to sneeze at either.

On the other hand, the GR1 tops out at 26 liters, with its smaller iteration racking up 21 liters of space. To be fair, it has never been marketed as the most spacious ruck and it is about as “average” as you can get in this regard.

Something that’s important to mention in this area is that unless the cookie crumbles just right, the GR2’s effective load capacity is a bit smaller than advertised. This is because its main storage area is actually separated into two large pockets (as opposed to simply being a single large open area like most rucks).

If you have a larger item that doesn’t fit into one of these storage areas, you’re kinda screwed (and you’d probably be better off opting for something like the GR3 which has the capacity and the wide-open area), but if you don’t mind splitting some smaller items up, it works just fine…just not “to capacity”.

The GR1 vs GR2 load capacity skirmish is a bit more than a one-sided pulverizing, but the GR2 is the clear winner here.

Winner: GR2

Customer Reviews

As you can probably tell at this point, there is a lot to like about the GR1 and the GR2.

With that being said, it probably shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise that both bags get really good reviews from a plethora of customers who have chimed in on their personal experiences with these bags.

As much as we would like to see reviews come from a number of different sources/websites (you can pretty much only find these in large numbers on the official GORUCK website) the good news is that each bag has a large sample size of reviews to peruse.

Over a thousand for the GR2 and twice as many for the GR1…I know I would feel pretty comfortable making larger-scale inferences based off of these pools of reviews.

One thing to note is that for these reviews, all of the variations of each of these bags is lumped together. As such, you’re seeing (aggregated and individual if you chose to do so) reviews for the GR1 and GR2 Cordura (by far, the most common option), Ripstop Robic, Dyneema, Heritage…you name it. Thankfully, the collective review scores are quite high so I wouldn’t be too concerned about one iteration or option being significantly “worse” than the others.

Probably the most significant thing to take away from these reviews is that less than 5 percent (for each bag) of customer-submitted scores are under 4 stars (out of 5). I think everyone can appreciate the “grenade-proofing” that this type of scoring implies.

Unfortunately, neither bag made ground here; hopefully this tie doesn’t foreshadow anything having to do with our final assessment…

Winner: Tie

Price

As we move into the final review category, it’s time to address the area that GORUCK is unquestionably the worst at. As nice as their gear is, I don’t think anyone would describe it as being “affordable”.

The GR1 and GR2 are no exceptions to this rule and while they’re not the most expensive GORUCK bags you can get your hands on, they’re definitely in the higher range.

Looking at a price-to-load capacity ratio, both of these bags would be in the “average-to-below average” level relative to other, similar rucks with similar load capacities. However, the GR2 makes up some ground on the GR1 due to the very small incremental price increases that occur when opting for a heavier bag.

What this equates to is the smallest, 21-liter GR1 being only about $60 less than the 40-liter GR2, despite the latter being almost twice the size of the former!

This is probably pretty good news for a lot of people, but not…great news for the anti-“bigger is better” crowd. If you truly want a smaller, more compact bag, you’re either gonna have to pay a “premium” for it or you may consider an option like the GORUCK Bullet (most are only a few liters smaller than the smaller GR1, but are also a bit less expensive).

To kind of piggyback off of this point, it should be noted that you get a little more “value” with the GR2 as well. A field pocket, which would run you $60 if you were to buy it separately, comes included (albeit, affixed) in the GR2.

Granted, we try to exclusively focus on “absolute price” (as it relates to other bags in its category) as opposed to “value” when making these comparisons, but it is a significant addition to keep in mind.

Winner: GR2

Overall Winner

According to our metrics…we have…a tie!

…a tie?

I know, I know…I know what we’re all thinking…

…and yeah, I know it probably seems like I haven’t brought you any closer to your GR1 vs GR2 purchasing decision…but hear me out! If you think about it, instead of only having one, clear-cut option, if you’re down to these two, you’re pretty much guaranteed to make the “right” choice.

Our Testing Process

The GR1 has been one of my “go-to” rucks for over a year now, probably only being used less than my Rucker 4.0. To be fair, it gets more work as a travel ruck than it does as a “pure” rucksack (I use it even less for “dynamic” rucking), but it’s solidly in the rotation.

In contrast, my GR2 is one of my lesser-used rucks, mainly due to its somewhat excessive size. However, there have been occasions where it was the perfect bag for the job because of its size and of course I put it through the ringer with a number of rucking activities to get a complete idea of how it performs.

Frequently Asked Questions

I know we didn’t really get much separation between the bags in our analysis. Maybe if you ask the right questions, we can find provide some more “clarifying” answers:

The GORUCK GR1 vs GR2…the OG and his big brother…

There probably aren’t too many people who would name a GORUCK bag other than the GR1 or GR2 if asked about what one’s first ruck should be.

You might get some follow-up “well…shucks…what kind of activities do you think you’ll do with your bag” type of question from a try-too-hard (who will inevitably mention that the Rucker 4.0 is actually what you’ll need), but from anyone else (especially from normal people) you’re gonna get a sales pitch for the GR1 or GR2.

These two bags really are the quintessential examples that immediately come to mind when someone mentions a ruck and, arguably, when someone mentions the GORUCK company.

Ultimately, these are two very similar bags with the main, differentiating factor being that the GR2 has a few different expanded size options, making it more suitable for larger-framed ruckers and for those who prioritize load capacity (likely in relation to travel interests…it does fit in the overhead bins on the plane, btw…)

Personally, I am partial to the GR1 and think that it is actually the best all-around rucking backpack on the market right now, but if you told me that I had to ruck, train, and travel with only a GR2 for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t be at all upset.

As much fun as it can to really lay into an objectively crappy piece of gym or rucking gear, can’t do that here; both of these bags are legit.