I sent an email to Ol' Tom asking about the changes made to the new I-Beam vest. Figured some of you would be interested to know as well.
Here's their reply:
Thanks for your e-mail. Here are the updates for the I-Beam 2.0:
- Upper Therma-Cell pocket replaced with two exterior striker sleeves with
magnetic closures to secure the strikers. The purpose of this change was to
relocate two strikers to the outside of the vest. Since we already had a
pocket for two slate calls on the outside of the vest, it was missing easy
access to strikers and caused unnecessary motion of reaching inside the vest
to grab a striker.
- We took the vertical zippered pocket off the right side of the vest - this
pocket housed a padded slate call sleeve and a striker sleeve. We replaced
this pocket with a huge cargo pocket that zips on three sides and houses
four smaller pockets and has a large open cargo area. This created a better
place to keep gloves, face masks, compact binoculars, other smaller items
and even back-up calls if needed.
- We added a larger and thicker seat cushion
- We added a greater range of vertical adjustability on the shoulder straps
Overall, the I-Beam 2.0 still has custom pockets for two box call pockets
(external), five strikers (two external and three internal), and three slate
calls (two external and one internal). There are other non-custom pockets
that can be used to hold more calls and a ton of accessory items.
