The Archive

57 guides · page 2 of 5

Buyer's Guide

The Best Satellite Communicators & PLBs (2026)

The best satellite communicator for most hikers is the Garmin inReach Mini 2, especially now that its street price has fallen to about $250. Around it we ranked the whole rescue-electronics shelf honestly: the current-gen Mini 3, the budget Messengers, the $149 ZOLEO, the $50 Motorola Defy, and the two no-subscription PLBs that answer a different question entirely.

Read the guide →~16 min read

Comparison

Sawyer Squeeze vs LifeStraw: Which Filter Should You Buy?

The two most searched names in backcountry water, compared honestly on the specs their makers actually publish: pore size, flow, rated life, weight, and price. The short answer: the Sawyer Squeeze is the better long-haul filter and the thru-hiker standard; the LifeStraw Peak Squeeze is the easier, slightly cheaper first filter. Full verdict, one real table, and the cases for each below, current as of July 2026.

Read the guide →~8 min read

Explainer

How Much Does Hiking Gear Cost? The 2026 Price Index

We price-checked 63 live Amazon listings across 13 core gear categories on July 25, 2026 and turned them into one honest price index: what every category actually costs at the low end, the middle, and the top, and what a complete kit adds up to. The short version: a careful budget backpacking kit is about $625, a midrange one is about $1,377, and a day hiker gets fully equipped for $283 to $568.

Read the guide →~7 min read

Buyer's Guide

Best Hiking Pants (2026): Men's and Women's, Ranked

Eight pants ranked separately for men and women, from the $35 Wrangler ATG to the $93 prAna Stretch Zion, plus the rain pants to carry over them. Fabric contents, typical weights, live prices, a decision table, and the patterns to skip.

Read the guide →~14 min read

Buyer's Guide

The Best Travel Tech Accessories (2026)

Ninety percent of travel tech misery comes from five failures: dead devices, wrong plugs, lost bags, tangled cables, and seatback screens your headphones cannot hear. Each has a small, cheap, permanent fix. We ranked the six accessories that solve all five, from a $13 pair of spare cables to the 65W listed GaN brick that retires your laptop charger.

Read the guide →~14 min read

Buyer's Guide

The Best Packing Cubes & Compression Cubes (2026)

No purchase under $50 improves more future trips than a good set of packing cubes, and no zipper earns its keep like a compression zipper. We ranked the four sets worth owning, from the $36 Osprey standard set to the Eagle Creek compression benchmark, and we explain the one-bag math that decides which kind you actually need.

Read the guide →~13 min read

Buyer's Guide

The Airport Survival Kit: What Frequent Flyers Actually Carry (2026)

The airport is not an ordeal, it is a gear problem, and gear problems have solutions. For about $150 you can sleep on planes, keep your ears sane, and land with a charged laptop, and the kit pays for itself on every flight you ever take again. Here are the nine items frequent flyers actually carry, built around the sleep triad: neck, eyes, ears, plus power.

Read the guide →~16 min read

Buyer's Guide

The Best Multitools (2026)

A good multitool is the most identity-defining object in your pocket: it says you are the person who fixes the thing. We ranked the six tools worth carrying in 2026, from the 18-in-1 Leatherman Wave+ benchmark to the 0.7-ounce listed Victorinox Classic SD, and we built the whole guide around the one question that actually decides the purchase: will you use the pliers?

Read the guide →~13 min read

Buyer's Guide

The Best EDC Flashlights (2026)

Flashlight marketing sells you the burst number; flashlight ownership happens in the modes below it. We ranked the five pocket lights worth carrying, from the $12 OLIGHT i3T to the 500-lumen listed Streamlight MacroStream, and judged every one the honest way: by the runtimes and the batteries, not the headline lumens.

Read the guide →~12 min read

Buyer's Guide

The Best EDC Gear: The Everyday Carry Kit Worth Pocketing (2026)

Everyday carry has a dirty secret: most of it lives in a drawer. We built the seven-piece pocket kit that actually gets carried, a 250-lumen listed light, a 7-function keychain blade, a real wallet, a write-anywhere pen, and the organizer that holds it together, and the whole working core costs less than one impulse knife purchase.

Read the guide →~13 min read

Buyer's Guide

The Best Backcountry Bathroom Kit (2026)

Everyone poops in the woods. Almost nobody gears up for it properly, and the places we love are paying for that gap. This is the definitive kit: the 0.6-ounce listed trowel the ultralight world standardized on, the wag bags a growing list of high-use zones now requires, the $10 bidet that shrinks your toilet paper problem, and the small stand-to-pee device that makes the whole system civilized. A few ounces, total, to protect every trail you ever walk.

Read the guide →~13 min read

Buyer's Guide

The Best Power Banks for Thru-Hiking & Backpacking (2026)

Your phone is your map, your camera, your library, and your rescue line, and between resupplies the power bank in your hip belt pocket IS the power grid. We ranked the three 10,000 mAh banks worth carrying, from the $22 Anker workhorse to the 5.3-ounce listed Nitecore NB10000 that became the thru-hiker consensus, and we judged them on the only spec that matters on trail: mAh per ounce.

Read the guide →~12 min read