With a truck bed camper in tow, we are currently heading out with the Black Series HQ19 behind us. This is its first trip, and we’ve picked a perfect destination for such a rugged off-road trailer. Our adventure takes us to Padre Island, one of the top tourist spots along the beautiful coastline of Corpus Christi, Texas. It’s sure to be an unforgettable journey.
So, this is the view we get to come out to, but this is a very nice and accessible beach that we have access to, and you can drive out on, as you can see. But today, we’re here to talk about this Black Series that the good folks over at Black Series have allowed me to review for 3 months. You heard that right—I get to spend 3 months with this beauty. This is the HQ19, which falls right between their largest and smaller floor plans. They also have some popup trailers, but this is arguably one of their most popular models. I had a chance to review one of these at RVX in Salt Lake City several years ago. Still, again, the kind folks at Black Series allowed me to do a long-term evaluation on this thing, so we figured out what better place to take it than out here on this beautiful beach outside Corpus Christi.
The first thing I want to tell you guys is that we tow with an F450. This is not an off-road beast. It is four-wheel drive, it has some pretty good capability, and you see many Coast Guard and Army Corps folks drive these things more in a work truck platform but out on the beach frequently. So, it’s not as if it can’t go on the beach; it’s just not able to go through, you know, really ridiculously tall dunes and stuff like that that you might expect, or over huge boulders that, you know, a rock crawler might be designed for. That said, I would venture to say that most folks who buy Black Series trailers aren’t specifically buying them to take them over those crazy off-road conditions. If anything, they’re buying them because they look amazing. After all, they have tons of capability and a lot of great quality perks. They’re super tough, and quite frankly, when you tow one of these things, you get attention because they’re super cool.
But today’s video is to do a walk-around of the outside and the inside and give you my in-depth review of what I think about this unit. Let’s go ahead and do what we normally do, starting with the numbers for this unit. So, the numbers on this unit are, at least from a gross vehicle weight rating perspective, 10,000 lb. It has about a 6,100 lb dry weight, which leaves a lot of weight available for cargo capacity. It has the equivalent because it’s an all-independent suspension, but it has the equivalent of almost 5,000 lb rated axles—two of them. So, you nearly have that 10,000 lb axle capacity, but remember, of course, you’ll have much of that weight transferring to the back of your vehicle.
Now, that being said, this hitch is entirely different from what most people are used to. This is called a poly block. This right here can articulate quite a bit, so if you’re taking this over extreme off-road conditions, the trailer will go one way, and the truck will go the other way; you have that articulation here. It also has a cool dampener built in right here. Some folks think this is tied to the braking system, but it’s not. This specific setup right here is connected to a large spring inside of this housing, so if you’re going over certain conditions, and let’s say you’re going down and hitting big rocks, this dampens the movement of the trailer slightly. It’s a built-in forward and backward suspension system, so that’s cool. And you flip this up if you feel you will be in those conditions. I’m not; I will keep it down, but you have this giant.
Pin that kind of press in place. You have this poly block right here, and you bolt it to the top of your typical ball receiver, and then it goes into the coupler of your truck. You must get the wider version to be a class five-designed coupler. You don’t want to go to anything smaller, or you’ll have movement right here, and it will feel awkward. You have a grease zer right here, which I like. The frame is hot-dipped galvanized, and you can see they have it nice and finished off back. It is also a boxed frame, so it’s not an open C channel or an I-beam frame, and I’m a big fan of the frame technology they’ve got going on here.
They have this cool jack leg that swings down and has a tyre on it, but this specific model also came with an electric tongue jack with a 3,500 lb capacity. Very, very cool. You have some auxiliary power connections right here, so you can provide solar power to the actual unit if you’re going to be off-grid and have a solar array that you want to set up. Now, up here are some cool boxes. You have two 25 lb propane tanks in this one, and the other one is a storage tank with a cool diesel canister right there. Why is there a diesel fuel tank here? Well, that diesel fuel tank is actually for the furnace. You heard me right. This uses a diesel furnace versus a gas furnace or a propane furnace, and it’s superior in many ways in terms of heating and keeping the air more comfortable than a traditional propane furnace. So, that is cool.
We brought a 30 lb propane can out with us, and there’s no real way to keep it in the truck without leaning on its side, so we just put it in there and propped it in place with wrap and some tyre chocks, but it didn’t move at all, and we hit some bumps, so happy about that. I love these little locking latch mechanisms right here, and everything’s on strut arms, which is also really nice. The skin on this is aluminium skin. You also have this aluminium diamond plate kind of tread pattern, which is designed so it’s easy to clean, but at the same time, if it gets hit by rocks or anything like that, it deflects it, so that is cool. All LED lighting—everything on this trailer is LED lighting. You have a front LED kind of scene light, you have a side scene light, you have another one over here, you have this cool little LED entry light. You turn it on, and it charges with solar. Then, at night, whenever it gets dark enough, movement triggers this thing, and it’s super bright. I’ve showcased these on my channel before on our old Chaparral; we put them in the lower area.
You know, you don’t want to skip this. You have an outside kitchen, and it’s also changed a little. The earlier version had this big flap that came over, and you had a table on this side, but they removed that. Instead, they have the extension of this site, which is arguably more practical, so that is cool. You have these cool rock sliders right here. So, these are actual rock sliders. I don’t know how many rocks you could slide across before you damage them pretty badly, but they are designed to take the impact of rocks, brush, or heavy things that might hit or rub against the side if you’re going over extreme off-road conditions.
And then, you have some little legs down here. These are stabilization legs. They’re not designed to carry the entire weight of the RV. You have a pass-through storage right here, which passes through to the other side. Something cool about this kitchen is that you have a water connection with a quick connection under here that connects right here. It feeds water, but this is all gravity-fed, so it drops the water straight down whenever you open it up. You’d want to put a 5-gallon bucket or something underneath there. You have a place for your propane line right there. You have a cool little Black Series compartment tray for all of your utensils and things right here—very nice—and then a two-burner gas cooktop from Dedic. And this whole assembly slides right back in place when you’re done using it.
I love the European-style windows that they put on here. Super, super thick dual-pane and they have these cool little kind of brace arms that, as you push it out, they lock into place, and when you push it out, it drops closed, and it has a lot of little securing mechanisms here. These things are super, super energy efficient. They block much heat from coming in, and I wish the US RV industry would move to these. These are standard on your European and Australian-style trailers.
We’ll talk about the blinds once we go inside. This is an awesome legless awning, as well. This is a power awning with a manual backup, and you know, if you lose power, you need to wind it back in. Another scene light over here, another one of those huge windows, much light considering there are no slides on here. This drops into a table, which is also really cool. Over here, you have a power outlet if you want to put something like a toaster or phone chargers, things like that, out here. The door also has this awesome holding mechanism—lots of technology you don’t see here in the States. And you also have this awesome little screened-in area, so you have a screen, and then you have this metal right here that protects the door. If you have pets or anything like that, you don’t have to worry about them getting out or possibly getting in. Over to these Cooper Discovery tyres—these are awesome. You see, LT, these are light truck tyres. Very, very cool, 265/75/16, and the suspension here is something to marvel at because it’s a fully independent suspension. Let’s crawl under here real quick so you can see what I’m talking about. So, underneath here, you can see that each wheel has two shock absorbers.
You can also see a chain that hangs down to prevent over-travel. It also has a coil spring with the jounce bushing inside, so you have a crazy cool setup here, and this is very unique here in the United States. Very few trailers— I don’t know of any more than maybe one or two manufacturers—that do anything close to this. In Australia, many brands use something similar, but this is still very cool. Look at that tank right there and how it’s strapped into place. Unfortunately, you don’t see that type of quality here in the United States. Everything is secured so that if you hit big bumps, you don’t have to worry about much.
Another slider back here. Very cool. Coming back, you can see you have some speakers that span the entire length out here, so you have a speaker here, a speaker way up front. That’s nice because you often see a speaker and a speaker in the US right here. This allows you to have sound from front to back, which I like. I love the huge LED light pods that they have in place right here and on both sides. You get three of them, plus LED lighting across the top. You have a nice scene lighting up there, so check out your spares. Talk about going overboard—two full spares on the same wheels on the trailer. That is awesome. Then, back here, you have a two-inch receiver designed to carry bicycles, coolers, and things like that on a platform rack, and check it out. It’s reinforced and braced. Overkill—that’s one thing you’ll notice with this entire setup.
All along the way, everything is overkill, and that’s also why these things demand a higher price than you might think. Shackles right here—I think these things are rated at 7,000 lbs each. They’re rated at more than the driveway to the trailer, which is super cool. And if you want to take this assembly back here off, it’s just pinned in place. So, it’s got two 2-inch receivers on each side. Pop the pins out, and you can remove this whole assembly if you don’t want that extra weight hanging off the back. Of course, the stabilization legs are back here, and you have a great kind of waste station back here. It’s all connected from the back. You have your grey and black tank handles right there. Very, very easy to dump. Very easy to manage.
Coming around this side, more LED lighting. You got your rock sliders on this side as well. The outside of your furnace, outside shower. I like how all of your tank fills are keyed. So, right here, you have a 16-gal freshwater tank with triple filtration technology inside. You fill this one up, and it provides you with filtered water inside for drinking. Is that your—see, I’m talking about people pulling up and looking at this thing? So many people stop and want to see this trailer. It’s pretty awesome, and they also want to come by and look at it. So, again, you fill a 16-gal freshwater tank, and it filters it through three filters so you can turn a little nozzle on the sink inside. I’ll show you when we get there for drinking water. This is your freshwater tank fill, which will fill up the main water used for showers, the toilet, your sink, and things like that. And then you also have your city water connection when you’re at a campground, and you want to plug into it and get water from the campground that’s already pressurized. But these two will go through pumps inside, so you can use the electric pump to pump the water to wherever it’s going. More of these awesome windows—I mean, check this out. Is this not gorgeous? You can wake up to this here because you can park on the island.
Anyways, over here, tankless water heater. People will ask, “Well, why didn’t they blend the two?” Because this is an upgraded tankless water heater. That is pretty awesome. So, you have on-demand water. So, this is going to heat water as you go. And we’ll talk about the power system from a solar perspective pretty soon. Right here’s your 30-amp connection. This is the other side of that pass-through storage. There’s not much to see in there except a 30-amp power cable. You got your reflectors and lights. I will take a quick step back so you can see the overall look of this thing. Very, very cool. That’s the restroom over there. Something else to notice, though: Do you see the shiny stuff right there on the backside of all of the blackout blinds? It’s a radiant,aluminiuminum material that helps deflect heat and keep it from coming in. It also deflects light, so you don’t get that funky glow whenever light hits it. That is awesome. It’s time to step inside and see what this is all about. Very high-quality door. I mean, just the fact that they use the steel right here—you know, this is just a very sturdy-feeling door, and you probably see this—this is simply that plastic wrap that comes on the door. You peel this off when you get it. I just hadn’t had a chance to, and the door feels incredibly solid. It doesn’t feel like those cheap doors you typically see on RVs, so that is cool. This step right here is electric, so you can turn it off and have it so it automatically comes out, which is cool. This right here is light, so if I press this touch-sensitive button right here—check that out. Something else that’s cool: if you forget to turn that off when you close the door, the light shuts off. So that is also just something very thoughtful that they put into it. But yeah, this is cool, so we’ll go and step inside. You got your fire extinguisher right here, you turn on your inverter down here, a subwoofer built-in down here, and some more stuff under here. A lot of really cool features in this unit. There are lights everywhere, so there are lights underneath here that can turn on, and I believe you can put it into this kind of party mode where they kind of move and strobe, but I got to read more instructions on this thing. You got speakers here at the front, you got some cabinetry right there, you got this nice upgraded memory foam bed, and they also include all of your pillows, your sheets, your mattress pad, and a nice comforter. The windows are open right now—I mean, check this out: you just got this awesome cross-breeze coming in because of these European-style windows, and if you want to block out the sun or, if let’s say, you want to stick your arm out the window, you press that, drop it down, and the window’s completely open. Pull that up and latch the two together; you can have your shade right here, your screen, and then your blackout shade, which has that radiant material on the other side. So, I can close this in completely, and it’s pretty much going to block out all the light from coming in. Let me open that up real quick; I got a heavy breeze coming in right now, so it’s putting pressure on it, but that is cool. Again, with all the lighting, you have some nice curtains and these great little side areas for whatever you’ll keep here at night. There is nice storage at the bottom; you can open these simply by pushing them in. This is something new over here, so even though you may have seen the HQ19, you probably haven’t seen the kitchen setup like this. One of the big things they’ve done differently here is that they moved the microwave from this side and gave you this nice pantry storage. So, now you have this cool space right here, a lot of pantry storage. The lights, I believe, are also controllable through the remote, so that’s awesome as well. But yeah, this is cool. You have this nice high-gloss backing; if you look up, you can also see how high this is all around. And you have a single air conditioning unit up here with your manual controls up top. There’s no thermostat paired to it. We haven’t found a need out here to use it, but I’m sure when it’s extremely hot, if you don’t have all your windows open, you probably want to use it, and this only works off of your generator or shore power, so you’d have to use those. This has a pretty impressive solar system built onto it, so we’ll briefly discuss it here. Many cabinets are wrapping all the way around. Again, I love this high-gloss going all the way around, and then here’s your control station. What’s cool is these little fuses right here—if one pops, you’re not replacing 12-volt automotive-style fuses. You’re simply pushing the button back in to reset it. So that is cool. You have all your tank levels: your drinking water level, your general water level, your black tank level, and your grey water tank level. And then you also, over here, have the condition of your batteries as far as power coming into them, charging them, current voltage, and how much is currently being used. And then you have your water pump up here for your general water pump, and then you have your drinking water pump right there. But a very, very nice control panel. These buttons can be a little confusing right here because they’re all touch-sensitive, but they control all the lighting inside of the RV. As you press them, you wait a second or so, and all of a sudden, LED lighting and other lighting will come on. There is much lighting here, and under here, you have a button that controls this long strip of light across here. Very cool. The stainless steel sink basin and nice drawers pop out when you press them in. Nice cabinetry right here. Under here are your three water filters, so they’re easy to access, get to, and even get to your water pump and other accessories or other electrical components; they’ve made it incredibly easy to service this unit if you have to replace something. Again, stainless steel sink base in here. That’s your main water, and this is—is that filtered water coming out of the 16-gal tank? So that’s cool. Bag of Lay chips here. You have a three-burner gas cooktop.
It has a nice oven, plenty of cabinet space, and a nice place for a small coffee station. So, I dig that. Up here, you press everything, and it pops up and holds itself in place. You have the King Connect antenna up here for your TV as well. Very, very cool. Here’s your compact microwave. Back here, you have your gas-electric Dometic refrigerator right here. And again, you have cabinetry everywhere. They take advantage of all the space, even trimming it off with this nice cornered section here. But yeah, cabinets everywhere, and they switched the support up here to this cool hinge versus the strut arm, so the strut arms don’t get in the way anymore, and they still hold up in place. Nice. Very, very nice.
This right here is a cool dinette. It also converts into a bed, which most people probably would have figured out. You pull this up like this, then push it down, lay your pillows on top of it, and have a bed platform. When you’re done, flip that up, and it raises back into place. But I will lower it quickly because I want to show you something special. So, I’m about to show you that when I move the pillows of this side, you’ll see your 2000-watt inverter under here. Again, getting to service and doing whatever you need is super easy. That is cool. So, we’ll cover that backup, which will power everything but the air conditioner.
All right, let’s restore these pillows to normal. Then, over here, we’ll move that out of the way, and you’ll see your four 100 amp-hour AGM batteries that are included, all with breakers, all with a disconnect, all very cleanly run. This is how you want an aftermarket system to look, let alone when that comes pre-installed and you have your charge controller here. It’s a very cool setup. Very clean.
You might ask what powers or charges those four giant batteries. Well, let’s show you. So, up here, you have something very special. If I open this up, you have a skylight, and you have a screen this way, as well as the shade this way, just like on the windows. But if I pull this down and pop this up—check that out.
While you were up there, you probably saw the air conditioning system, but you probably noticed even more the four 150-watt solar panels pre-installed and mounted on the roof of this unit. This great solar system is installed on the roof, which is a big plus.
Okay, so backing up into the bathroom, you have a nice sliding door blocking it. This has one of the largest bathrooms available on an RV this size, which is only about 20 feet long on the inside (closer probably to 18). You have a nice lockable hinge to lock the door open when you’re travelling, two nice towel racks, a nice solid fibreglass shower, and an adjustable arm. When you enter, you could be about 6’3″ and comfortably fit in here, turning around. Giant mirror on this wall, plus this cool mirror right here that adjusts, and you can focus in different directions if you want. Down here, you have a porcelain sink, porcelain basin sink, a lot of countertop space, and a porcelain foot-flush toilet.
Room-wise, for a bathroom this big and an RV this small, it’s pretty amazing; now, here is more magic. You have a washer. It’s not a dryer, but it’s a washer. So, you can wash your clothes and hang them outside, hang them where you want, or spin dry them. But yeah, this thing is cool. Again, it’s not a heated dryer, but it is a washing machine, and they fit it nicely into this space right here, which is awesome. The walls are trimmed off nicely. You have those same nice windows right here, so you can black them out if you want more privacy, open them up with the screen, or Open them up completely if you wish to, and then up here, more cabinets for storage across the top. Very, very cool.
All right, stepping back out here, I love how they’ve trimmed everything. I love all the lighting. It’s even getting slightly darker outside—what we photographers call the “golden hour.” It’s absolutely beautiful outside; everything in here looks so vibrant and bright. Nice.
Well, this is built better. It’s built differently. They use materials that the rest of the RV industry in the US doesn’t. It’s assembled in a way that is unlikely to fall apart while you’re going down the street. It has features and amenities you don’t get on some of your highest-end RVs. It has a solar setup and battery that you typically won’t find on your most expensive RVs.
But you’re paying for it in a compact package you can take anywhere. That’s what you get with this. You get a high-quality RV with different features that you typically don’t typically see at any price point. This is built superior to an Airstream or other products, which can’t handle some of the rigours you may put this through.
