New And Notable Outdoors Gear: March 20

The good stuff, and what you need to know about it

Coverage of outdoors gear lacks experience, the freedom to be honest, and centers results for the brands and publicationa, not the consumer. Every Friday, I’m going to try to fix that by rounding up new releases, and bringing you some honest guidance drawn from my 24 years of experience reviewing this stuff.

Want to help? Send me links to new gear you want to see covered.

iKamper Skycamp 4.0

The original iKamper Skycamp rooftop tent debuted in 2017, and packed a spacious shelter into a hard-shelled roof box. If it looks familiar, it’s because that original shape has been ripped off by Roofnest and a thousand other companies that all just apply fresh logos to white label stuff they buy in bulk from Alibaba. In contrast, iKamper actually designs and produces in South Korea, which has a strong camping culture. The fact that iKamper has its own factory is a major boon to their ability to iterate designs and control quality.

This fourth iteration adds a new 3P size (which will be spacious for two people, or allow room for a dog) which weighs about 160 pounds. So while the pictured 4Runner doesn’t have room in its 895 pound payload to safely carry this thing alongside passengers, much less cargo, it does technically fit within that vehicle’s dynamic roof load capacity. So 5/10 to whoever produced this photoshoot in the Alabama Hills.

Also new is a little more interior height, and small improvements to features like the built-in lighting, diesel heater port, cork flooring, and the breathable canvas that helps iKamper tents resist condensation.

If I was shopping for a normal RTT, this would be at the top of my list. But, with prices starting at $4,500, I also understand why people are so willing to choose the Chinese knockoffs. My advice: Either budget one of these as part of a comprehensive build that considers the weight in your suspension plan, or just sleep in a quality ground tent setup.

CountyComm Meg Folding Kitchen Knife

Not only is this thing named after Jason Statham’s finest work, but it represents a rare, unique use case for folding knives: food preparation. The only other quality folding knife designed for this purpose I’m aware of is the Spyderco Spydiechef which is smaller, four times the price, and doesn’t give you as much space for your hand above a cutting board.

Practical? Throwing a fixed blade in your camp kitchen box is pretty easy, and I love my Benchmade Station Knife for that purpose, but just as something to have in my pocket as I grill for big groups, or while preparing food in camp? I plan to order an OD Green G10-handled version once the $80 knife goes on-sale.

That price point is partially made possible by use of VG-10 steel, which is cheap, but one of my favorites. It’s easy to sharpen, strongly resists staining, and will hold its edge better than most kitchen knives. CountyComm is also direct to consumer, cutting out at least one 100 percent markup.

Dometic Water Bottles

Available with a few different lid designs compatible across the .65, 1.0 and 1.2-liter sizes, these new water bottles from Swedish RV accessory brand Dometic are copper lined for clean taste, double walled stainless steel for insulation, and come in a range of fun colors.

With prices starting at about $40, they’re right in-line with a Yeti Rambler bottle.

Warn Fully Hidden Winch Kit

Every 4x4 should be fitted with a winch. But mounting a winch is extremely difficult, typically requiring a full replacement bumper, which adds a ton of weight on its own, necessitating dedicated suspension. Bumpers also interfere with parking and radar cruise control sensors, even if they’e supposedly compatible with those.

To fix those issues across a range of popular vehicles—Ford Super Duties and F-150s, and Toyota 250-series Land Cruisers*, 4Runners and Tacomas—the $850+ Fully Hidden Kit provides a mount for the brand’s $1,750 Zeon XC winch that attaches to the frame rails behind the bumpers and requires only minor modifications to the stock bumper on those vehicles.

That Zeon XC is more compact than a standard Zeon, allowing for the fitment of a 12k lbs winch on mid-size trucks, and rotates the clutch forwards so you can reach it through the bumper. There’s 70-feet of synthetic roper on the drum. You’ll need to swap out the chain hook for a proper shackle mount at additional cost, but this is still probably the lowest drag way to get a winch on any of those vehicles.

Exped Ultra Sleeping Pads

Swiss brand Exped is honest about its struggle to break into the American market, describing itself as a “best kept secret” during a recent presentation. That’s a shame, because the brand itself is very innovative—it invented the inflatable sleeping pad and flat valve, and created the luxury pad segment—and offers top-tier quality at reasonable prices.

Its new Ultra range of sleeping pads solves the crinkley noise problem inherent to mylar reflective insulation layers by separating that from your body with a layer of lofted synthetic insulation. So you get the reflected body heat warmth and light weight of mylar insulation with the silent sleep of lofted insulation. And employing both types results in high R-values.

Sleeping bag temperature ratings are established in a test paired with a 7.0-R value pad. So you’ll sleep cold while using anything less. And most backpacking pads don’t meet that R-value.

I’ve got an Ultra 6.5R in long-wide, which weighs only 20 ounces and has a 6.9 R value. It’s a rectangle, so it’s not quite small enough for ultralight summer backpacking, but will be a good companion for fall hunting and canoe trips where weight and space are a little less of a concern.

With this launch, Exped is trying out a new pricing structure that sees all pad sizes within a given model range priced the same. That’s $200 in this case, which is excellent for such a warm pad. And while that probably helps them simplify SKUs, I don’t really understand why buying a smaller size that uses less material wouldn’t be a little cheaper. I’d also love to see this technology offered in slimmer mummy shape to cut some weight and packed size.

The pad I’m really excited about though is the Ultra 10R, which uses a top and bottom layer of lofted synthetic insulation to achieve a 10.2 R-value for under 2 pounds of weight.

Compare this range to the popular Therm-A-Rest NeoAir XTherm NXT, which has only a 7.3 R-value but claims winter camping applicability, and you can see the advantage. With the Ultra 10R, there will no longer be a need to carry an additional closed cell foam pad in order to sleep in sub-zero temperatures.

Mountain Hardwear Ghoul 20 Sleeping Bag

On the other end of the price and warmth spectrums arrives this new ultralight summer bag. It justifies its $800 price point (for a Long) with the use of 950+ fill power ExpeDRY down. That’s the same gold particle treatment used in that Sitka parka I reviewed at length a year ago. Combined with a 10D face fabric, that creates a very compact packed size and very low 633 gram weight (normal length) for a full mummy bag with a 20 degree limit rating. Part of achieving that is thanks to the use of a reflective fabric on the top half of the bag that works like a mylar sleeping pad to reflect warmth back at your body, reducing the amount of down necessary to achieve that temperature rating.

I’ll do a longer writeup once I’ve had a chance to take mine camping. This is very much a case of quality and features targeted at discerning users with the budget necessary to buy solutions. But first I need to find a new ultralight sleeping pad to pair with this thing. Maybe a Nemo Tensor Elite?

Goal Zero Yeti 1500 6G Power Station

The portable power station space is now a lot more competitive than when Goal Zero essentially invented it way back in 2008. But compared to the now-ubiquitous stuff from brands like Jackery and Ecoflow et al, Goal Zero still offers the kind of quality you can genuinely rely on.

This new flagship offers 1,500Wh of capacity for $1,500, a just-right size for most general users. What makes it unique is all the vibration and temperature testing Goal Zero has done to ensure this thing will stay working through years of hard use. The company says it targets a 10-year lifespan even if you drive a lot of washboard, and that it can reliably power stuff down to -4 degrees Fahrenheit.

They believe in that durability so much that they’re sending me a unit used in their own product testing, rather than a brand new one. That’s impressive.

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