Gear Patrol | Spirit of Adventure, Passion for Gear

Fine Lines

Get it straight people. HP’s new x2301 monitor isn’t thin, it’s Micro Thin. What exactly does Micro Thin mean? Well, we’ll skip today’s lesson on redundancy, and just presume it’s a new adjective for describing things measuring 9.8mm (0.39 thick) or less — because that’s how thin the x2301 is. It’s a pretty incredible spec [...]

Sweetz Beatz

Your next tour with the Rolling Stones may be years and dreams away, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take the smash set with you. Korg’s all-new Wavedrum Mini offers up 100 samples, 10 audio effects and 100 rhythms which can then be recorded with an unlimited number of overdubs using the on-board looper. Battery [...]

30 Minutes with Liad Cohen, Lomography General Manager and Chief of Retail

We tend to believe that technological advancement in the last 20 years has changed the world mostly for the better. Still, the waning of film-based photography is the worst causality in our books resulting from the collateral damage of the digital age. Thanks to a passionate community of shutterbugs and the style elite, however, analogue [...]

High Tech Hoodie

Triple Aught Design continues to swing for the fences this year. This time with a comprehensive update of their already rock solid Stealth Hoodie. After ten years of excellent service TAD went back to the drawing board and put a decade’s worth of product testing to good use.

Welcome to a new wall of sound

Take the following quiz: You’ve had your ultra-sharp flat-screen TV hanging on the wall like a piece of modern art for years now, but your speakers are still sitting on (choose one): a) the far end of the bookshelf, b) a mantle about 4 inches too shallow, c) mismatched speaker stands, d) the floor.

Your paper will thank you

Pencil snobbery? You betcha. Whether you prefer your pencil of the Japanese variety or more traditional in nature, the Rotring 600 Drafting Pencil ($30) will likely give pause to any jaded engineer, architect or writer. Built in Japan, this 18 gram beefcake scrawler sports an all metal brass body with traditional knurled grip, lead grade [...]

Pick your pick

The Pickmaster Plectrum Punch ($39) is the perfect accessory for guitar players, and we’re not talking about the colored button-pressing variety. It’s essentially a rock-inspired hole puncher designed to turn old gift cards, ids, and credit cards into personalized strummers. So kiss those worries about your pick clashing with your mullet and sequins goodbye. Buy [...]

Now you see it, now you don't

The Mirage Wine Rack ($45) is another ingenious project born from the social product development community Quirky. Its key point of differentiation involves a clever extendable rack system that holds between one and eight bottles of your favorite vintage. That may sound over-engineered for vino, but it helps avoid the pitiful impressions standard racks give [...]

M Pedal Power

Carbon fiber bikes have been around for a while now, though that doesn’t make them any less exclusive. BMW M Performance cars have also been around for some time, and they remain high on the list of uber-desirable cars. Well, what happens when you combine the BMW Motorsport name and the lightness and strength of [...]

Too smooth to shoot

The days of shooting bad tequila with salt and a lime are nearing an end. The tequila category has shaken off its sordid past and reemerged better than ever, with renewed interest in the spirit and a spate of new labels on store shelves. This is good news for discerning drinkers, who are rediscovering classics [...]

Shhh, be quiet...

Built with noise dampening materials and a uniquely designed exhaust tube, the Husqvarna 356QT Quiet Blower ($495) emits just 64 decibels making it a veritable Lexus amongst its peers. And in case you’re not savvy with decibel ranges, 60 dB’s is the equivalent of a dishwasher on rinse cycle and 70dB’s is roughly your average [...]

A Better Way to Boil

The Backcountry Boiler just recently stepped on the Kickstarter scene, but the project has been a labor of love for Devin Montgomery for quite some time. In fact, check out his blog theboilerwerks and you can follow his development process from start to finish. The central concept behind the device was to develop a sensible [...]

Google and Samsung gang up on the traditional OS

The name ChromeBook sounds like something Lil’ Wayne reads in bed, but it’s actually the brand Google has devised for a new breed of internet-addicted laptops. Built to be cheap and speedy, they won’t replace the MacBooks or Dell’s of this world, but Google clearly envisions a future where they’re the go to device for [...]

Small Wonder

For the past two weeks, we’ve had the opportunity to go hands on with a unique piece of gear that’s found itself firmly planted at the epicenter of the hype-machine, the Fuji FinePix X100. And like a lot of hyped products (Apple comes to mind), the X100 has amassed legions of fans who love its [...]

Monkee Do

Denmark’s Wrenchmonkees puts out some seriously menacing designs and the Monkee #20 embodies both classic and apocalyptic themes that make their motorcycles so appealing. Straight out of their shop in Copenhagen, these guys always have some unique designs up for sale and regularly take on custom projects. Built up from some seriously good bones and [...]