NeoMag Sentry Strap Review – The Perfect Sling Staging Solution?
NeoMag is an exceptional company, with products focused on helping you better utilize your equipment. Their innovative magnetic magazine pocket carrier changed the game, giving us the ability to effectively carry a spare magazine, in a controlled way. No more do we worry about having a magazine jostling around in the pocket with keys or a wallet, but instead, the magazine is held firmly in place in a static position. Taking this simple yet effective concept and adapting it to the rifle/pistol marketplace, NeoMag introduced us to the Sentry Strap.
With the massive growth in popularity of rifle cartridge pistols as well as Vertx backpacks for their daily carry, the NeoMag Sentry Strap is a great addition to the platform. Whether you intend to carry your AR pistol in a backpack, duffle, or tennis bag, a sling is still a critical part of your set-ups. As we mentioned in our blog discussing the merits of different sling systems is that they keep your firearm attached to you. Simply put, if you are deploying your EDC carbine, you need to control it, and ensure that it remains in your possession. Additionally, you may need to fulfill a variety of tasks, from administering first aid to engaging with your EDC handgun. Having a sling is critical to all of those tasks. However, if you are running a sling in a backpack AR or on your “truck gun”, you may run into snag issues or you may fumble about as you draw out of the pack or from under the seat. The NeoMag Sentry Strap is a great way to keep the sling tight to the carbine until you are ready to utilize it. This method is called sling staging. What is sling staging? Sling staging is the act of positioning your sling on your rifle so that it is easily deployed when the situation arises. In fewer words, you are “staging” your sling so it is always ready. Sling staging is underrated in the firearms community and often not even thought about when someone is envisioning their rifle build. As mentioned earlier, a sling is one of the most important parts of a rifle build. What is not considered is what the sling will be doing when the firearm is stored in your truck or
backpack. It is going to hang loose and catch on anything and everything. As you can imagine, this is a real problem when you are needing to deploy your rifle. If you have ever been in a hurry and your belt loop has been stuck on the door handle, you know exactly what we are talking about. Just imagine you are in a serious situation and you need to deploy your rifle quickly but your sling is stuck on something. Hence the sling staging solution that is the NeoMag Sentry Strap. The Sentry Strap mitigates these concerns as you draw your carbine from the tight opening of your backpack or other concealment systems. The other nice thing about this strap is that it allows you to keep your sling tight to your gun when you are out on the range. This way you do not have to take your sling on and off or actively use it when you do not want to. Best of all, the Sentry Strap effectively does these things while taking up a relatively small amount of rail space.
Sometimes simplicity is great. Not every new item in the community needs to reinvent the wheel in order to be critical to your set up. An elastic band, attached with Velcro, using a small but powerful magnet to hold your sling in place keeps things straightforward and prevents any hang-ups. The overall rugged and minimalist concept of the NeoMag Sentry Strap keeps things from being overcomplicated and allows it to fulfill an important task.
Putting the Sentry Strap to Use
The NeoMag Sentry Strap has a surprisingly strong magnet. You really need to give your sling a good rip to get the strap to flick around the rail and release the sling. This certainly isn’t a complaint, as you want it to keep the sling tight until you wish to deploy it. One thing that’s nice as well is that the magnet, in every test deployment, either attached itself to the rail or to the other side of the strap, depending on how aggressively one tugs on the sling. This means that you likely would not be concerned about the strap flapping around after engaging the sling.
Look, you can use everything from a piece of shock cord to a NeoMag Sentry Strap to keep your sling tight to the gun, but if you want something that is incredibly easy to use, remains affixed to your rail, and is forgotten about until it is needed, the NeoMag is the right call.
