REVIEW: Crye Precision Airflex Field Kneepads

The Combat Pants with integrated knee pads from Crye Precision are a staple in the tactical community. However, if you own a "normal" tactical pants with slots for knee pads, you usually either don't have knee pads at all, or the manufacturers include simple foam or neoprene variants with the pants. Crye offers the Airflex™ Field Kneepads for their Field Pants or other pants with slots, which we want to show you briefly.

The Crye Precision Airflex™ series replaces the previous knee pads of the Combat Pants and also includes elbow pads for Combat Shirt and Field Shirt as well as the knee pads presented here for the Field Pants. All pads are anatomically shaped and equipped with ventilation slots - made from US materials in the USA.

The great thing about the Airflex pads (left) - on the right: the counterpart from Arc'teryx - is the right mix of strength and flexibility. This makes it easy to insert the knee pads into the pants, as it can be quite difficult with the soft neoprene or foam pads.

Furthermore, the material used does not create heat zones as quickly as a neoprene pad (right), the ventilation is really outstanding, as we could see.

The weight of a pair is 49 grams, in comparison a set of neoprene pads from Arc’teryx (from the Assault AR Pants, introduced HERE) weighs 25 grams. Arc'teryx manages to make it lighter, but that comes with the mentioned disadvantages of inserting or heat zones.

CONCLUSION: Knee pads with good ventilation are rare, and ones that are shape-stable are even rarer. The Crye Airflex™ Kneepads have both and are quickly inserted into the pants and stay in place. Perfect cushioning, everything perfect. Due to the durability, you may have to expect limitations in the choice of pants, as some have quite small openings for insertion - that is the only negative we could find.

The Airflex™ products are available at TACWRK for around 31€.