Independent camping gear analysis

Camping gear decisions, settled with numbers

Most camping advice is a list of products. This is the other thing: the standards behind the labels, the arithmetic that decides what you need, and calculators that turn a forecast into a packing decision.

Start hereOpen the calculators
  • 40in-depth guides
  • 7working calculators
  • 89terms defined
  • 0sponsored placements

The eight systems that make a camp work

Camping gear is not a list of products, it is a set of systems that trade weight, warmth, water and time against each other. Each hub below covers one system end to end.

Sleep systemsBags, quilts, pads and liners as one heat-loss system. Ratings standards, R-value arithmetic and the fixes that actually move your comfort temperature.6 guidesTents & sheltersChoosing, siting and living in a shelter: floor area per person, condensation physics, waterproof ratings and when a tarp or hammock beats a tent.6 guidesCamp kitchen & waterStoves, fuel, cookware, coolers and water treatment, sized with energy and heat-transfer arithmetic instead of guesswork.6 guidesPacks & load carryingFit, volume and base weight. How load transfers to your hips, how many litres a trip really needs and where the kilograms hide.4 guidesClothing & layeringA layering system built from heat balance: insulation values, breathability numbers, rain shell reality and what to wear in camp versus on the move.4 guidesPower & lightingWatt-hour budgets, headlamp standards, battery behaviour in the cold and whether a solar panel earns its weight on your trip.4 guidesBasecamp & family campingCar camping done well: kit lists that fit a real vehicle, comfort that survives rain, and camping with kids without buying twice.5 guidesGear care & repairWashing down, reproofing shells, fixing what tears in the field and storing gear so it still performs in five years.4 guides
Sleep systemsSleeping bag temperature ratings, decodedWhat comfort, limit and extreme ratings promise under ISO 23537, why the number on the bag is usually the wrong one, and how to convert any rating into yours.Updated 9 September 2026Camp kitchen & waterCanister stoves in the cold: pressure, blends and what actually worksWhy butane rich blends quit below freezing, how fractionation weakens the last third of a canister, and which warming tricks are safe and which are not.Updated 9 September 2026Tents & sheltersTent condensation: where the water comes from, and how to stop itTwo sleepers put nearly a litre of water into a tent overnight. Here is the water budget, why clear still nights are the worst, and what to vent in which weather.Updated 9 September 2026Sleep systemsSleeping pad R-value, and the heat you lose to the groundWhat R-value measures under ASTM F3340, how many watts each extra point of R really saves you, and why foam under an air pad is the best value warmth in camping.Updated 9 September 2026Packs & load carryingBase weight, explained properly, and what to cut firstBase weight defined without the folklore, the consumables on top, what your body tolerates as a share of body weight, and a cutting order that starts free.Updated 9 September 2026Clothing & layeringRain jackets: what breathability numbers do and do not tell youHydrostatic head, RET and MVTR explained: which numbers are comparable, why a jacket that wets out feels like it leaks, and what actually keeps you dry.Updated 9 September 2026

Calculators, not opinions

Each one runs in your browser, shows its working, and states the assumptions it makes. Nothing you type leaves the page.

Sleep system comfortA sleeping bag number describes a bag on a test bench, not you on the ground.Base weight and pack loadEnter what you own, category by category.Stove fuelFuel is the one item you cannot borrow from a stranger halfway through a trip.Cooler iceHow much ice to buy, and how long it survives in your cooler, in your weather.Camp power budgetSizes a power bank or leisure battery from your actual devices, with the conversion losses and cold-weather capacity drop that catch people out on night three..Tent sizeTent capacity numbers describe bodies laid side by side with nothing else inside.Camp food weightTurns days, people and effort into calories, then into the grams that land in your pack.

What this site does differently#

Every gear question has a number behind it. How cold you will be tonight is a heat balance between your bag, your pad, your dinner and the wind. How much gas to carry is 377 kilojoules per litre of water divided by the efficiency of your stove. Whether that cooler survives to Sunday is a conduction problem with a known constant: 334 kilojoules absorbed for every kilogram of ice that melts.

Nearly all of it is settled physics or a published test standard. Very little of it makes it into gear writing, because it is easier to rank ten products than to explain why the seventh one would be wrong for you.

So this site is organised the other way round. We start from the standard or the equation, show you what it does and does not promise, and give you a tool that runs the numbers with your inputs. Then, if a product category is genuinely different from another, we explain the difference rather than the brand.

Where to start#

If you are new to camping, Start here walks through the four decisions that matter in order, and explicitly tells you what not to buy yet. If you already camp and something specific is going wrong, the fastest route is usually a calculator: cold nights point at the sleep system calculator, a heavy pack at the base weight calculator, and running out of gas at the stove fuel calculator.

If you want to understand the vocabulary before you shop, the glossary defines every term that appears on a label, with the number ranges that make each one meaningful.

Frequently asked questions#

Does this site recommend specific products?#

Rarely, and never by model number. Product ranges change every season and a recommendation ages badly, while the decision rules behind it do not. We tell you the specification to buy (an R-value, a fill weight, a floor area, a watt-hour figure) so that you can apply it to whatever is in stock where you are, at whatever price you can pay.

Where do the numbers come from?#

Three places, and we always say which. Published test standards such as ISO 23537 for sleeping bags, ASTM F3340 for pad R-value and ANSI/PLATO FL1 for lamps. Physical constants such as the latent heat of fusion of ice or the vapour pressure of isobutane. And explicit models built from those two, where we state the assumptions and show the working. Read the full method on how we evaluate gear.

Are the calculators accurate?#

They are as accurate as their assumptions, which each tool states in full on its own page. The sleep system calculator will not predict your night to the degree, because human thermal comfort varies by several degrees between individuals. It will reliably tell you whether you are 2 degrees short or 8, and which change closes that gap most cheaply. That is the decision you actually need to make.

Who is this for?#

Anyone choosing camping gear who wants to understand the choice rather than be told the answer. It works for a first family tent as much as for a winter sleep system. Where a topic is genuinely specialist, such as vapour barrier liners or inverted canister stoves, we say so and mark it as such rather than presenting it as normal practice.