The Best Backpacking Tent Awards announced by OutdoorGearLab.com

Best Backpacking Tent Review just finished on my site OutdoorGearLab.com. Here is the official press release below.


CHEYENNE, WY—OutdoorGearLab.com revealed today the results of the 2011 Editors’ Choice Awards for the backpacking tent category, listing this year’s best and best value for 3 season tents. The OutdoorGearLab Review Editors chose the following winners after extensive field testing and road trips in the High Sierra, Southeast Utah and The Cascades. Each tent underwent extensive side by side tests to evaluate key performance metrics such as ease of set-up, versatility, livability, packed size, strength, quality, and value. View the complete backpacking tent review

The winners are:
Black Diamond Mesa – winner of the Editor's Choice Award for 2011 for backpacking tent. According to Gear Editor Max Neale, "The Black Diamond Mesa represents an excellent balance between strength, weight, and comfort in a backpacking tent. It’s our favorite all-purpose three-season tent; if we were to have just one tent it would be this one. The Mesa has been an award winner since its inception in 2007."

REI Half Dome 2 - winner of the Best Buy award for 2011. This award is given to a product that balances an extremely high score in our tests and a very reasonable price. According to Max Neale, "The REI Half Dome 2 tent is a well-designed, strong, and comfortable backpacing tent. The Half Dome’s best attribute is its absurdly low price- only $180- which makes it the unquestionable winner of our Best Buy Award. It continues to impress, however, with good quality poles, fabrics, a spacious interior, and an efficient and easy to setup pole design. The Half Dome is also stronger than most other tents reviewed here; it’s plenty capable of handling gusty winds and torrential downpours."

Big Agnes Fly Creek UL2 - winner of the Top Pick award for 2011 for Best Lightweight Backpacking Tent. This award is given to a product that excels at a specific application. According to Max Neale, "The Big Agnes Fly Creek UL2 tent is an aggressive looking and high performing ultralight backpacking tent. It barely tips the scales at 2lb 10oz packed weight, making it one of the lightest self-supporting tents in the world. This is our favorite tent for three-season multi-day trips."

Best Portable Solar Panel Awards announced by OutdoorGearLab.com

Portable solar panel review done! Hey friends and fam, i just finished a review on solar panels I have been working on for 7 years... phew. I am trying to get the word out about it. so if you could "like" it on facebook here it would be awesome... thank you!!

Here is the official release

The Best Portable Solar Panel Awards announced by OutdoorGearLab.com

Best Portable Solar Panel Review announced by OurdoorGearLab.com for Editor’s Choice, Best Buy and Top Picks.
August 23, 2011

CHEYENNE, WY—OutdoorGearLab.com revealed today the results of the 2011 Editors’ Choice Awards for the portable solar panel category, listing this year’s best and best value for portable solar. The OutdoorGearLab Review Editors chose the following winners after extensive field testing and road trips in Yosemite, Napa and The Bay Area. Each panel underwent extensive side by side tests to evaluate key performance metrics such as ease of set-up, versatility, quality, disassembly Safety, and value. View the complete portable solar review

The winners are:
Goal Zero Sherpa 120 Kit – winner of the Editor's Choice Award for 2011 for portable solar. According to Gear Editor Chris McNamara, "The Goal Zero Sherpa 120 portable solar kit wins our Editors' Choice award because it is the best relatively light and durable portable solar kit that can charge just about anything. If you have a lot of electronic devices to charge and spend a fair bit of time away from a power source, this is the device to get."

Goal Zero Nomad 7 - winner of the Best Buy award for 2011. This award is given to a product that balances an extremely high score in our tests and a very reasonable price. According to Chris McNamara, "The Goal Zero Nomad 7 solar panel is by far the best deal in portable solar panels. No other tiny panel came close to matching its versatility, ease-of-use and price. If your main need is to charge a cell phone or small electronic devices, get this panel."

OutdoorGearLab LLC is a company headquartered in Cheyenne, Wyoming dedicated to creating world’s best outdoor gear reviews. The company’s website, www.outdoorgearlab.com, is a free resource for people who love the outdoors and participate in activities such as hiking, climbing, backpacking, and camping. The company performs side-by-side testing of outdoor gear and publishes the results in comparative reviews. Each product is scored across a range of weighted categories, competing products are ranked, and awards are provide to top performing products.

Media Contact: Chris McNamara - 307.509.0188 - outdoorgearlabpr@gmail.com

Best Slackline Review is now live!

The Best Slackline review is now live. Damian Cooksey tested the lines so hard he was able to break many of them. We handed out many awards including best beginner slackline to the Gibbon Slackline Classic Model

Here is how the tests went down: We pulled together nine kits from the most active slackline companies on the market today, plus we rigged one the old-fashioned way with a few carabiners and some webbing. We rigged the lines at Bridges Rock Gym, in local parks, as highlines, longlines, trick lines – every way possible for each kit. We rigged them, walked on them, tore them down, rigged them again, bounced on them, tightened them to near failure, rigged and walked them again.

After a multitude of testing environments and over a mile of slackline webbing, we rounded out the best uses of each of these slackline kits. We timed how long it took to rig, making all the mistakes possible following sometimes complicated rigging instructions. We rated each product for its versatility, ease of setup, speed of setup, safety of setup and take-down, quality, durability of materials and price. We used these criteria in order to select our Editor’s Award winners.