When you finally decide to give up the dirtbag lifestyle and finish that degree, you’ll want an M210X riding shotgun. The Ultrabright widescreen supports ideal viewing of your digital scrapbook from the life nomadic or the latest huck-doll videos from your friends still livin’ it. When homework calls, the dazzlingly…

SIMPLE YET SOPHISTICATED Power low? The A710 can run on regular old AA batteries, which means—if you scrounge around someone’s pack or raid your headlamp—you should never miss a summit shot again. And stop showing your friends fuzzy wildlife shots: Because the A710 has a 6x zoom lens and the…

All you need to know: Thanks to a proprietary lens coating, the XM-HD delivers images as sharp and crisp as binocs twice the price. 8×42; carson-optical.com…

WILDERNESS-READY Two unique features make the Onix the year’s best GPS for the backcountry. The first is a layering function that lets you view different kinds of information—compass, waypoints, and map, for example—on the display together, eliminating the need to continually scroll between screens. The second—and even cooler—feature is the…

Interval junkies will love this new lap counter, which stores multiple training sessions with best and average lap times. And the sleek style feels right even if you're not prepping for Kona. timex.com      …

For adventurers in trouble, the ACR TERRAFIX 406 GPS I/O ($750) is among the first personal locator beacons with an internal GPS receiver, to bring help faster. When triggered, the eight-ounce waterproof device sends a distress signal to rescue teams, along with your lat/long coordinates, accurate to 100 yards.

Ah, the sweetheart of black-ops agents and adrenalists every-where. This next-gen chrono is as tough as they come, is good down to 200 meters, features ultra-precise atomic timekeeping, and charges via any available light source. gshock.com…

WALK, TALK, RUN, ROCK Fitness fanatics, listen up: This audio-focused, 3.3-ounce slider phone is the smallest, lightest device we tested—a stellar running companion. On board you’ll find a two-meg camera and a fitness app that can count steps, gauge speed, and monitor calories burned. Once we swapped out the puny…

This green-minded company’s solvents, lubes, and polishes are all biodegradable, and the reusable bucket comes with a paper-based cellulose sponge and horsehair brushes. And, yes, all of it works as well as—if not better than—the traditional stuff. pedros.com…

Casio takes its heavily armored G-Shock line to a new style plateau. Powered by the sun and kept perfectly precise by atomic technology, the 200-meter-rated Rose Gold is one of the best all-around travelers we’ve tested. casio.com…

The Throttle pulls off a rather nifty trick: In addition to being superlight—they weigh less than a pack of Gu Energy Gel—the grippy temples also make them the most comfortable glasses here. nativeyewear.com…

For starters, the interface is almost too much fun, like having a Mac in your hands, and audio integration is a snap with iTunes. Like the first-gen iPhone, the 3G has a 3.5-inch touchscreen that’s almost impossible to scratch—proven on multiple beach trips. Unlike the original, it boasts a…

MOST TECHNICAL The photochromatic lenses are a delight in low light or even mist, with a pale yellowish tint that knifes through murk. But when the morning fog finally burns off, the Race’s tint quickly darkens to a snow-and-ice-worthy shade of amber, blocking out an impressive 93 percent of available…

No one does GPS like Garmin. This totally wearable (but not waterproof) watch records distance, pace, and heart rate, saves data wirelessly to a computer, and has a new fine-tuned calorie counter that factors in heart rate. garmin.com…

Few sunglasses can switch from the Pacific Crest Trail to Rodeo Drive like this frameless number. Copper-tint polarized resin lenses protect against glare and pump up contrast for active sports. There’s secure grip in the right places, and the modest-size wrap lenses don’t sacrifice protection for fashion. Flair starts…

Whether it’s Black Eyed Peas or ABBA that gets you pumped to run, this iPod Nano–size armband (made for the Generation 4 version) won’t slip down your arm while running. It will also pull your whole look together—it’s constructed from nylon, just like high-end running shoes.

Why It’s CoolThe ripstop nylon fabric is embedded with a carbon yarn designed to dissipate static cling. So whether you’re layering it with a shaggy fleece or shagging in a fleecy lair, you won’t get that irritating snap-crackle-pop that synthetic threads tend to give off when they rub together. It’s…

Not only does the HP PSC 2510 PHOTOSMART ALL-IN-ONE ($399) copy, scan, fax, and, yes, print all your mundane workaday documents, it also churns out superbly bright, high-resolution digital pictures. The PSC 2510 has slots for a Sony Memory Stick, Compact Flash, SD, xD, and SmartMedia so you can insert…

Welcome to Savile Row. Enter your measurements and choose options on Beyond’s Web site and a couple weeks later take delivery of a custom-fit, custom-featured soft shell—I designed a model for cycling and nordic skiing. The one nonnegotiable characteristic—Schoeller Dryskin Extreme fabric—kept me just right during a 15-mph road…

Snap these aluminum grabbers onto any pair of Dynafit bindings and you can ski-climb slopes up to 25 degrees before having to de-skin and boot-pack. Available in three widths (82, 92, and 100 mm). 8.3 oz; TAGS: steep slopes, security…

Lightweight and low-profile, the Hooligan is perfect for slim faces and smaller heads. Bonus: You can afford another pair if you lose ’em at the crag. www.ryderseyewear.com…

Stay cool—literally and figuratively—with this high-style lid. www.kaenon.com…

Why They’re CoolNo matter how hard the cold wind blows, your eyeballs won’t mind, sheltered by removable, round-the-eye foam pieces that close the gap between shades and face. The double-pane poly lenses allow the inner surface to rise to your temperature, so there’s no steaming up. » Wide-range photochromic tinting…

Why They’re CoolYou barely feel these rimless half-ounce wonders, which perform like big wraps. A springy stainless nosepiece and temples support poly lenses. The copper tint, enhanced by polarizing, reveals a splendidly sharp take on reality. » The rearward swoops at the lenses’ outside corners make for good protection from…

A contoured footbed and a soft, neoprene-lined upper make the V-Lite the most comfortable sandal here. And because it has a beefy midsole and snug, one-pull lacing, it also performed well hiking. hi-tec.com…

CROSSOVER ARTIST Don’t mistake these shades for snooky streetwear; the sports bona fides are all here in this elegant blend of style and performance tech. Cleverly concealed sticky pads at the nose and ears, combined with springy nylon frames and temples, kept the Serpent from migrating on sweaty faces. The…

BEST CROSS-COUNTRY RACER Pedaling this nimble featherweight, one tester reported soaring up steeps she normally inches up in granny gear. A freestyle rider doubted the full-carbon beauty could handle a beating, but after a punishing four-hour technical grind, she gave the four-inch-travel Contessa an unqualified thumbs-up—thanks to components like Deore…

We think it’s called the Flow Pant because it transitions easily from the mountain to the bar. Or maybe it’s because it hangs off your body with a loose fit and baggy cargo pockets. Either way, the hard-shell pants are a great choice. thenorthface.com…

The contrast stitching looks cool, but we picked this top because, thanks to its construction (lighter-weight merino on the back and sleeves), it breathes like a champ in the backcountry. smartwool.com…

The acrylic Roman, like all the clothing and accessories from this small, Seattle-based company, is hand-knit in small Balinese villages. spacecraftclothing.com…

Lightly lined with fleece and reinforced in all the right places, the synthetic/leather Exum won the all-purpose award. Supple but durable goatskin won’t crack like hardware store specials. marmot.com…

Wear these wool-and-suede boots with a skirt to show off the Scandinavian-influenced knit collars, which can be rolled down (as pictured) to create warmer-weather ankle boots. salomon-sports.com…

Perforated side panels let out steam nicely, while a hem drawstring, an extra-tall collar, and soft chin padding help seal out the chill. 5.9 oz; merrell.com Bonus: Low-key style is coffee-shop friendly.

Thanks to a double layer of material on the knee, these quick-drying and stretchy nylon pants are up for every-thing from canoeing to climbing. prana.com Bonus: Available in two inseam lengths.

Sperry partnered with the U.S. Sailing Team to create a per-formance racing bootie. Interior mesh panels allow the ankle-high neoprene to drain quickly, while a removable internal toe thong adds extra control on slick surfaces. sperrytopsider.com…

Three rechargeable lithium batteries in each glove power a heating system that relies on sensors to regulate temperature. In warm conditions, the heat stays off; bury your hands during a digger and it kicks in. mountainhardwear.com…

In a galaxy of mostly boring base layers, the 100 percent polyester Esse has a refreshingly cool look. Caveat: It’s the only piece here without any sort of no-stink properties. 686.com…

Cut extra long and packed with 800-fill down for extreme cold, this super-puffy kept us warm in near-zero temps and 30-mph winds on a 12,000-foot-high ridgeline. 2 lbs; 66north.com…

Visible channels woven into the chest and back are designed to wick sweat (check) and, in cooler temperatures, create an insulating air layer (harder to tell). We loved the close fit, but the cut is oddly long in the torso. x-bionic.com…

Old-school hiking sole meets simple, leather oxford style in this classic-looking shoe. The organic-cotton-lined insoles mold to your foot, and there’s enough shock absorption in the midsoles for your daily walk to work. timberland.com…

High Tech They make this classy jacket expensive, but the redesigned, built-in heating panels definitely work. On the high setting, you can get up to six 20-minute blasts of heat in the torso, sleeves, and collar. $800; rossignol.com…

Good for Trail With its offset zipper, textured pattern, and athletic cut, this soft, recycled-polyester puffer has big-city looks. It’s no slouch in the backcountry, though, thanks to 850-fill down, a serious hood, and a DWR coating. 1.2 lbs; nau.com…

Good for Resort Two words: Tricked. Out. The Glenn has everything from a removable powder skirt to a headphone port to pit zips. But here’s the deal: With the exception of the removable (and superfluous) “hiking suspenders,” testers approved of every add-on, especially the hand gaskets with…

There are dozens of leather, waterproof gloves on the market, but none fits as well as the Tangent. Credit the thinner fleece insulation on the palm and heavier, loftier filling on the back of the hand. outdoorresearch.com…

Don’t fret about shorts—a breezy fabric, supportive liner, and pocket, like those on Patagonia’sseven-inch-inseam Long Haul Runners shorts, and you’re out the door. patagonia.com…

City Slick Want a more formal look in a protective package? The Rockaway looks swell with khakis and sports a soft leather upper and gummy rubber sole, between which you’ll find a footbed built for easy all-day cruising. keenfootwear.com…

Layers are key when it comes to summiting peaks. You can drop 20 degrees and gain as much as 6,000 feet in elevation from trailhead to summit. This quick-dry, breathable, mostly nylon top wicks away sweat as you get moving but will also keep you warm when the mercury…

This three-pocket, mostly mesh jersey zips down for maximum cooling. Caution: Avoid wearing Velcro with this—it snags. sugoi.com…

Despite the name, these aren’t just for fishermen. The Brine is a world-class multisport unit with polarized copper lenses and well-placed, low-profile hydrophilic rubber. Costa’s new 580P lens is made of an ultralight poly with glasslike clarity, meaning you get superior optics but can charge hard and not sweat…

Hot Deal With top-shelf synthetic insulation (PrimaLoft Eco), a tough, waterproof outer fabric, and all the creature comforts you could want (including nine pockets, pit zips, a powder skirt, and a goggle chamois), the 4 Pines has all the ingredients of a high-performance, full-featured resort parka. Normally, all this adds…

BLACK DIAMOND‘s SPECIALIST GLOVES, have foam padding to protect the backs of your hands.

Navigate the sunrise in real life with the USB-chargeable LED lights on SAUCONY‘s windproof PROTECTION GLOVES.

For jackets, you can go for either a base layer and a thick, thermal soft shell—like SALOMON‘s STRETCHY SWIFT MIDLAYER HOODY with integrated mitts—or a lightweight shell.

USER-FRIENDLY RIPPER Top pros like Bruce Irons, Joel Parkinson, and Luke Egan all ride Aussie shaper Jason Stevenson’s designs; the 6’5″ 300KW thruster we tested is identical to the one Egan surfs on in competitions. The bottom features a speedy, single-concave shape that transitions into a double-concave section near the…

Though it’s more than a year old, the Jefe, like its Tsangpo-stomping predecessor the Gus, has no equal as a creek and expedition boat. The long waterline, medium chines, displacement hull, and heavily rockered bow allow the boat to accelerate, track through turns, climb out of holes, and get…

TWICE AS FUN, TWICE AS HARD How much do you really trust your paddling partner? How solid is your marriage? The Topo Duo may have the answers. It’s the only two-person whitewater boat in production. A strong paddler can right both the boat and an accompanying novice, but beware: There…

GET UP, STAND UP Last year saw stand-up paddleboarding (SUP) move from the wacky fringe to the pages of Us Weekly, as seemingly every celebrity picked it up. With the fad still on full burn, shapers are racing into the SUP market, which is what makes the C4 special. It…

Like the cushy longboards that initially bore the Bing name, the single-fin Lovebird is gorgeous, with a gloss coat, fabric-inlaid deck, and pigment-colored bottom and rail wrap. But this isn’t some artsy old-school replica. (The brand was relicensed in 2000.) We tested our 9’2″ model in a variety of…

Top Touring Boat Paddle the nearly 18-foot-long Infinity as a day boat and it's fun if a bit cumbersome. Load it and head out for a week or more and it really shines. Serious paddlers looking for a comfy boat will love the Infinity's large cockpit and raised foredeck, which…

When you start gearing up to cling to walls of ice in the dead of winter, it’s no time to skimp, and PETZL‘s versatile and redesigned QUARK ICE TOOLS are a good place to start.

A harness is more than just something to hang by. You’ll want it to be durable with plenty of gear loops for carabiners, like the featherweight (only 11.2-ounce) R-280. Sure, it might look paper-thin, but its strength-dispersing technology uniformly distributes your body weight for maximum comfort.

1. This is simply the most adapt-able winter-specific storm shell we tested. The key is Schoeller’s new waterproof-breathable fabric with c_change technology, a membrane with a polymer structure that opens up when you get hot and contracts when you cool down. Translation: Testers didn’t overheat when their buddies did…

Why It RulesThe Airjet’s two-minutes-flat pitching saved me when I was hustling to beat some sleet: Thread two cross poles and a brow pole through the sleeves, then stake out six points. Done. » The Airjet stood taut as a kettledrum—even under two inches of wet snow. » Thanks to…

Talk about kids in a candy store. Contemplating the 20-surfboard quiver we assembled for Buyer’s Guide testing this year, our wave riders felt as if they’d been given the keys to Wonka’s brand-new surf factory. We had longboards, guns, funboards, thrusters, and fish—yet there was one stick our testers…

Ready to go pro? Then you already know that tricks are for kids—and success hinges on huge air. Enter Dagger’s Crazy 88, our Gear of the Year selection. This boat is a masterly equation of length, width, weight, and volume distribution, all of which pull together when the time comes…

The slow but steady First Need uses a three-stage matrix to draw out and starve viruses. Forcing water through the unit takes time and elbow grease on the pump handle, but the end product is virus-free and ready to quaff, with no need for additional chemical treatment. And because the…

1. The Stratocruiser 25 is a chameleon. It’s stylish enough to wheel inconspicuously through swanky hotels, but still tough enough for epic-trip abuse. After 18,000 air miles and a half-dozen rattling safari drives in South Africa, it posted a perfect unscathed score: no tears, breaks, or blown zips. Credit…

Why It’s CoolCuddling up to the two-pound-two-ounce Sub Kilo definitely took the edge off a few damp, chilly nights in the Green Mountains of Vermont. Two curvy lines stitched down the length of the bag to prevent the 700-fill goose down from clumping worked as billed: No cold spots arose…

1. The Aura is downright spacious (35 square feet), with two doors and two big vestibules. It’s plenty sturdy, easily withstanding 50-mph winds without guylines. And light: The Aura flirts with the four-pound barrier, the two-person freestanding tent’s equivalent of the four-minute mile. 2. Talk about usable space:…

Why It’s CoolThe canister version of MSR’s liquid-fuel SimmerLite shares its twin’s huge burner head, with similar pot supports that rotate into place and double as the feet. The legs endow the WindPro with the second-largest pot platform of all the cookers we tested, and the steadiness of a cast-iron…

1. Remarkable for its smart blend of features, capacity, ergonomics, and durability, this 9.9-pound duffel hits the sweet spot for most travelers. Its shell—420- and 630-denier nylon, with 1,680-denier ballistic-nylon reinforcements at crucial wear points— is a suit of armor. Add a tough back panel, bumper, and wheel…

If you think even a three-pound tent is heavy, but snoozing sans roof seems iffy, the NightHaven is for you. More than a tarp, less than a tent, the shelter sets up with two trekking poles. Lack of ventilation meant the silicone-treated nylon walls got clammy when the NightHaven…

It used to be that sleeping bags’ degree ratings were determined in various ways, so conventional wisdom dictated that you buy a bag with a temperature rating at least 10 to 15 degrees lower than the lowest temperature you’d expect to be camping in. That’s starting to change. For…

LOVABLE ODDBALLWith a slide-in pad replacing ground-side stuffing, the Crystal is one strange bird. But it’s also hosted some of the deepest slumbers of my life. Coziness arrives courtesy of an insulation-layering scheme called Dualmax, which intersperses slabs of Primaloft with batts of 650-fill down. As I flipped in sleep…

We’ve tested plenty of snowshoes with serious bite, and others that are extraordinarily comfy, but what makes the Mountaineer so impressive is how well it performed in both those categories. Thanks in part to two independent toe straps, the binding perfectly cradled every boot we jammed in it, from…

BEST ALL-AROUNDER Pardon our bluntness, but testers were unanimous: This tent has its shit together. How? The weight-to-space ratio is outstanding, the design simple and effective, and the protection bomber. With a quick-pitching hubbed pole design, two doors, and a spacious 36-square-foot interior, the Mesa was the most sought-after tent…

ULTRALIGHT SUMMER BAG You tend to pay more to carry less in the rarefied class of one-pound, down summer sacks. That’s why the barely-over-a-pound Flash is such a surprise: For packability, weight, and warmth it rivals bags that cost much more. And there’s nothing cheap about its silky shell and…

Of all the headlamps we tested, the Lucido TX-1 sends light the farthest (a whopping 345 feet), and its beam never wavered, even over a weeklong back-packing trip, thanks to three AAs. 5.8 oz; mammut.ch…

ULTRALIGHT AND COMPRESSIBLE Testers liked Big Agnes’s almost entirely recycled synthetic sack (the Skinny Fish; $180) just fine but were blown away by the down-filled Zirkel’s warmth-to-packability ratio. Like all the company’s bags, the Zirkel integrates the pad right into the bag via a sleeve on the underside, which, in…

EFFICIENT MOUNTAINEER Our most organized testers especially liked this tough, sensible 1,850-cubic-inch pack. Internal pockets hold snow-safety gear, valuables, and a hydration bladder. Outside, five more: two on the side, one in the lid, one on the hip belt, and one shove-it pocket on the back panel. The ski and…