Been seeing more army-ish gear out there -- and picked up a 50l tactical backpack. ( review to follow)
What are your thoughts on these Molle infused packs?

In other than combat use, an area in which I have no direct experience, the molle webbing is just unnecessary weight and clutter.

Doing SAR. carrying weights of 45 or so pounds, I preferred a pack with a sleek rounded profile, the better to penetrate brush and steep terrain. 50 L is a bit less capacity than I prefer, but that is more than many "tactical" packs can hold.

Civilian packs (Osprey, Deuter , Gregory, Mountainsmith, REi) come in varying sizes with adjustability options which give a more custom fit, key to the pack carrying well.

Tactical packs come in black or some other dull camo-like color. This makes good sense on the battlefield, but is a detriment in civilian life. i much prefer a brighter color. The color of the ppack I am now using is "molten red."

IMHO, tactical packs are overpriced mall ninja bait. I do have a Maxpedition Vulture 2 which suffered a seam failure after very light use. It was easily repaired but it has been at least thirty years since I have seen anything like that in a decent civilian pack, most of which saw fairly severe use.

Molle can be useful to me for things like attaching pouches. I don't want molle on my socks, but a little bit on a backpack can be helpful.

With that said, I've stopped using my Goruck GR1 (with a reasonable amount of molle) and been carrying an Alpha One Niner Evade 1.5, which has no molle.

Molle packs are great. Lets me add pouches as I want. Or attach a jacket or someting like that with pack straps. And they are not in bright colours, I hate bright colours.

I really like having PALS webbing on my packs. It really doesn't add that much weight (although the kind of pack that would have a lot of webbing is likely a heavier, more robustly built pack to begins with). I don't like a lot of crap MOLLE'd to the outside but I really like to have a pouch for a multi-too, a fixed blade knife (either a Mora or an ESEE Izula II, usually) and a Thyrm CellVault on the outside of my pack. This is really key to me; those are items I don't want to have to dig for when I need them. No matter the pack those things are always on the outside and always in the same general location. That's really convenient for the way I hike, camp and pack stuff.

I like the colors, but most of them are made of fabric too noisy for hunting.

Had a friend buy a new multi day Lowe pack. He cut off all the extra webbing he didn't need- second set of crampon straps and ice ax loops, extra webbing for tying on pads and tents etc. The pack went from 6 pounds empty to 4 1/2 pounds. And he still could strap on snow climbing gear on the outside. Tactical pack have even more web.

All the extra webbing looks to be on the back of the packs and if loaded with heavy gear would seem unbalanced. A down coat or foam pad, or Phaedrus' small items okay, but carrying several days of food, a water bladder or a rope in some sort of large strap on pocket, not ok.

Yeah, if you start hanging a ton of crap off the pack it starts getting heavy and unwieldy. Plus it defeats the suspension/load carriage abilities of the pack.

My current pack has eight zippered compartments plus a space for a hydration bladder, all with no molle or pals to clutter up the pack ,andadd weight.

Packs today are significantly better than those of past years, either civilian or mil surp - tougher, better designed, and better fitting.

Things attacked on the outside throws the balance off. Keep it in the bag, distributed properly. Pouches are also a heavy way to add storage, far more fabric then just a slightly bigger pack.

Choose a proper size pack for a job and try to keep things as small and light, for comfort / less energy use.

I tend to agree - they look cool, but fail as a well built, useful pack.