Backpacking

The year in new tent design brought everything from a new breed of ultralight freestanders, to cushier rooftop tents loaded with amenities, to multi-tent inflatable base camps. Here's a look at our staff and reader favorites from 2025.

Neat screw-together kit uses Grayl titanium water purifier to create a Seattle-style coffee stop anywhere in the world. The Coffee Press for GeoPress Ti is available now with or without a titanium cook lid.

The all-new Float tent looks to make camping faster, easier and tailored to the conditions on the ground. It inflates into form in under a minute, and when the ground gets too rocky, soggy or scratchy, the Float leaps up into the trees.

The newest take on the performance sports exoskeleton, the Irmo M1 brings a multi-sensor AI system that automatically adjusts output based on the terrain ahead. It's like an adaptive automotive suspension, only for legs instead of wheels.

After a rather slow 2024, 2025 saw more multitool debuts than we could keep up with. Our favorites included a reimagining of Leatherman's most popular, a skeletal Swiss Army knife, and a Gerber campsite classic that starts fires.

The Fire Maple Antarcti Gas Fire Pit is a fire bowl so collapsible you can carry it in a backpack. It runs on the same style of tiny gas canister as a backpacking stove, making it the lightest, most portable gas fire pit you're likely to encounter.

The new KEA Hex looks like an unassuming folding knife upon first glance. But what looks like a basic lanyard holder is more than meets the eye, carrying a handful of functions within a simple rotating dial.

With DNA linking back to Leatherman's original PST multitool, the Wave has long served as a cornerstone for the brand. Now it evolves into the Wave Alpha, adding serious cutting muscle while improving upon its staple one-handed operation and grip.

Fire Maple packs both cooking and heating capabilities into its sleek, powerful Sunflower X. After cooking dinner, this particularly portable, wind-resistant stove can quickly tilt up to fire its radiant heat directly at you.

Designed for bigger adventures, longer distances and heavier loads, the new X Ultra performance exoskeleton is what Hypershell calls its best model to date. The new wearable boosts performance with a full 1,000 watts channeled into your natural gait.

The new Aviator's Ember from Aerohart applies aerospace-grade materials to an age-old design, providing powerful fire-starting performance that carries lightly in a pocket. Like an engine piston, it compresses air for fast, furious combustion.

Looking to best other squeezable filter bottles, the Oassay FlexFlow uses a compact filter to remove tiny viruses, bacteria, heavy metals, hydrocarbons and even fluoride. The bottle passes water at drinkable flow rates for seamless hydration.