Gear I Am DONE With and What I am Using Instead

companies are constantly releasing new gear but new isn't always better new is always better and that's why I'm here testing out gear and there's been a bunch of gear over the last year that I've tested out and just doesn't make the cut and for that reason I'm not going to be using it anymore I was pretty excited when trichology released a new pillow the ALF Pro is pretty much the perfect pillow on paper it has supportive baffling and ergonomic design shape to it a pillowcase that is insulated and removable and most importantly a pad strap but there's one big thing that makes this pillow unusable for me it has this wedged shape design so the front of the pillow is narrower than the back of the pillow especially where it throws a kind of slot into your shoulder it's super narrow and I can't find a comfortable way to lay on this pillow it either feels like my neck is getting really heavily kinked or I'm just laying on it where my head is kind of propped up but way too high compared to where my shoulder is on my mat I've even given this pillow to a bunch of friends and family to try out and all the said that the wedge-shave design makes it a really uncomfortable pillow to lay on and for that reason I'm going to be ditching the Aloft Pro and going back to my trichology 2.0 pillow it's been my favorite pillow for years now and it's just going to continue to be my go-to I've been a dedicated quill user for years and the Zen baby quilt promised to address a lot of the issues that people say they have with quilts like drafts and not wanting to sleep directly on a sleeping pad if you're not familiar with the Zen bivvy quilt consists of a sheet that goes over your sleeping pad the sheet contains an insulated hood that you can then tuck a pillow into it then uses Clips to attach a quilt to flaps on the sheet with this connection aimed at reducing drafts I've used this system on multiple trips and have three main gripes with it the first is that the system promises to reduce drafts but I find that it really doesn't any meaningful way especially if you're tossing and turning a lot you have this flap here this piece of material that's supposed to help lock the quilt onto your sleeping pad but I find that it's just a really thin piece of material so if I do toss and turn a lot and and open up a draft on the bottom here a little thin piece of material doesn't do enough in order to prevent cold air from getting into the system and cooling me off I found properties of pad straps on a regular quilt system to be more effective than what Zen bibia has done here without introducing a lot of the complicated features how we're going to now get it and that's the second problem that I have with this and that's that it's really complicated to use you have that sheet system as well as the quilt system that attaches to it but you can't keep them all together when you pack it into your pack or it gets all tangled up and it makes it really time consuming to get untangled once you get to cam and want to set it up for that reason you always have to be detaching and reattaching the quilt from the sheet and it takes quite a bit of time because it has these really tedious Clips on the side here that especially if you have not a lot of dexterity or you have kind of arthritic figures like I do can be a really pain to do couple the factor with when you want to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night you have to be undoing all these clips in order to get out of the quilt system and get out of your tent the third issue is is that it's quite heavy you have just a regular quilt which is going to weigh the same as any other quilt out there but then you add this sheet system which has a lot of features and doodads on it which really bring the weight of the entire system up a lot and it ends up weighing about 30 to 40 percent more than the other quilts that are out there I do know there are a lot of people out there who use the Zen bivvy and love it and I'm not saying that it's not a good system I just find that it's a little bit heavy and finicky for me to use relative to an inline equipment quilt or ham gear quilt which is what I'm going to be using on most of my trips moving forward the new nitecore nu-25 headlamp is another item that has disappointed me this year it's bulkier and heavier than the previous version which is a pig knock on it and then the headband options are terrible they tried to go with the light Smith mod but just failed all around it's just really uncomfortable to use and gets tangled up quite a bit the only good thing about the new version compared to the old version is that the new version comes with USBC charging which is really exciting because everything these days should have USBC charging mostly due to the pretty terrible headbands as well as the heavier weight and bulkier design I've been using the rovivon a5x flashlight most of the time when it's three season backpacking I'm in bed before it's dark and I'm awake after it's already let out so I'm not using a light that often and when I do the Roby Von flashlight is super capable while only weighing 16 grams they also recently updated it to have USBC charging so I'm not having to sacrifice that compared to when using the nikor and u25 the catadine B3 filter has an awesome design and filters water super fast that is until it clogs up on you which happened to me on day four of the great Dubai Trail so when lifestyle released a new filter in the peak series with a very similar design to the LifeStraw I was optimistic that would be everything that the B3 was without the clogging issues but I was wrong the LifeStraw Peak still gets clogged up it doesn't filter nearly as fast it has one major design flaw and that design flaw is that water can only go in one side of the filter so unlike the cation B3 where you have openings all along the filter so water can get into the filter any way that it needs to with the life straw Peak as you're filtering water and pushing it down to the end of the bag you're unable to filter any water below the top of the filters unless you start pushing with one hand and then squeezing the water back up to the other end of the bag with the other hand it's a really big pain and a huge fluff for this filter Like Straw did make it so you can take the filter and screw it to the outside of the bag but then you're losing a lot of the compact benefits of the filter system and then you still have the clogging issues after only one trip the life straw Peak really slowed down on me a lot about 15 liters put through the filter with no back flushing it took a minute for me to filter a liter water and for that reason I'm going to continue to use the platypus life straw which I filtered thousands of liters through a couple different ones and it's still going strong filters super quickly and I love that you have the two watertight ends so you can store it inside of your sleeve system really easily so it doesn't freeze overnight in those sub freezing conditions the Sawyer squeeze is another great filter option it doesn't filter quite as fast as the Platypus Quick Draw but it has a 0.1 micron filter instead of a 0.2 Micron which is going to filter those unwanted things out of your water a little bit more effectively the MSR freelate was released last year and has a lot of great features that could have made it an awesome alternative to semi-freeze saying tents like the Big Agnes tiger wool and the Nemo Hornet but the Freeland has one big problem that makes this that I pretty much never take this tent out on trail anymore and that problem is that the brow pull that goes across the top of the tent is too short this becomes a major issue when it's raining you have about a foot of space where the brow pole ends to where the floor of the tent ends so that's a lot of space where if you have the door opened in order to get in or out of the tent everything that's it within that foot of space within the tent is going to get water rain on top of it and get soaking wet and I've had this happen to me out on a trip where it was raining and as I was getting in and out of my tent a lot of the stuff inside of my tent ended up getting wet and that's coupled with another design flaw with this tent that has to do with weather and that's the way the door is designed so MSR made it so that the zipper for the door goes from the peak all the way to the front of the tent here which is great it makes it really easy to get in and out of the tent you don't have to be reaching all the way to the front of the flight in order to do up and undo the zipper but the issue that I encountered and this has been duplicated by other reviewers out there is that as you open up the door it dumps water inside of the tent and that coupled with the fact that once the door is open you're getting rain going directly inside the tent leads to a lot of your Keurig getting wet inside the tent as you get in and out so for this reason I ended up just peeing into my vestibule over the course of that trip as it was raining which is not an ideal scenario these two design features make it so that this tent is essentially unusable in the rain I would never recommend anyone take this tent out if there's even a hint of rain it becomes a safety issue because if it's cold out and your ear gets wet you're going to be in for a really miserable time and it could become a safety issue the third issue which isn't necessarily a design flaw specific to the MSR freelate is that it doesn't have an all-in-one or fly first pitch so you have to pitch the inner first and then you have to put the fly on over top of it and while you're putting up the inner you're getting water all inside of that as well so while your gear isn't getting wet the inside the tent is going to get wet as you set it up and for that reason all the tents that are my go-to right now are either all-in-one pitches or fly first pitches where you can pitch the fly and then pitch the inner tent inside of it with keeping everything dry and I have three go-to tents that I'm gonna be using instead of the MSR freelate for solo ultralight trips it's going to be the Plex solo for trips where I want a little bit more space or if I'm going with Steph and we want to be doing an ultralight couples trip then I'll be using the derson X Mid 2 person not the pro version just the regular person because it has a little bit more space and when Steph and I really want to be taking up tons of space have a lot of space but also just be in a really nice well-designed tent I'm gonna be bringing the sea to Summit hellos three person tent that thing is gigantic and all three of those have an all-in-one pitch or a fly first pitch those of you who follow the channel know that I've been ditching toilet paper on my back country adventures in favor of a back country bidet I'll still use toilet paper when I'm going to campsites that have outhouses because it's just a large harder to use of a day system in those scenarios but every other time I'm going to be using them a day because it's it's like a shower for your butt you're getting a whole lot clear while some people will use toilet paper in order to dry up after using them a day the way that I use the bidet makes it so that I'm super clean down there it's just like having a shower for your butt and for that reason I can use a cloth just like I would a towel in order to dry up I like to use a cooler cloth for drying up because it has some built-in sanitary features and it's really easy to hang it off your pack and expose it to the Sun in order to get those UV rays in order to kind of kill off anything that may have gotten on there as you're drying up go watch this video if you want to see a live demonstration of me using the backcountry bidet and the entire system that I go through in order to clean up down there and have a squeaky clean putt after going number two

Channel: Justin Outdoors

Views: 146,813

Keywords: Backpacking, Hiking, Camping, ultralight, backpacking gear, backpacking gear list, camping gear, hiking gear, ultralight gear, best backpacking gear, best hiking gear, Appalachian Trail, ultralight backpacking, hiking trails, gear review

Id: h5IS2WyntRU

Length: 9min 59sec (599 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 07 2023