Gear Patrol | Spirit of Adventure, Passion for Gear

Lighting the Way

When we think of fine watches, our minds automatically shift to thoughts of the quaint villages and alpine vistas of Switzerland, or, increasingly, to Germany’s Glashütte region, where brands like A. Lange & Söhne and Glashütte Original hail. But what of merry old England? Given that some of the most renowned figures in horology have [...]

800 Club

Guess what? Your memory card just got a whole lot smaller thanks to the new Nikon D800 ($2,999). There’s no hiding the fact that the long awaited full-frame FX-format shooter is a direct assault on the Canon 5D Mk II, which has captured the attention (and dollars) of HD-SLR shooters. Built around a Super Bowl [...]

Fanning the flames? There's an app for that.

The Escea DX15000 pushes the snowball of fire-controlling skills kicked off by our ancestors to the next logical platform — the smartphone. Besides being the first-ever contained gas fireplace available with a 60-inch wide flame, the Escea DX1500 features a Smart Heat intelligent control system that allows users to manipulate the fire via a smartphone [...]

Boxed-Up Box Office

Newbies in the display game rarely succeed given the variety of entrenched brands already doing well in the space. BryteWerks hopes to become an exception with their soon to be released Model One Cube, which takes a slightly more literal approach to the concept of a home theater in a box. Inside the sleek black [...]

Mowing down Motown

The Detroit Auto Show has hosted plenty of firsts over the years — like the unveiling of the Jeep Grand Cherokee in 1992. So it’s no surprise to learn that the 2012 show is still mowing new trails as the launch site for Craftsman’s new CTX-series of lawn tractors. Yes folks, you read that correctly. [...]

All-Inexclusive Adrenaline

You don’t just dive into the sport of Paramotoring all willy-nilly like — no matter how much tequila you’ve had. You need training, a motor, a couple of parachutes, a gliding wing, and some fairly large cojones. For those with the appetite for aviation and the wallet to back it up, though, Parajet’s 1-2-3 Let’s [...]

2 Wheel Motion

You know those Chrysler commercials touting the tagline “Imported from Detroit”? Well, we like to imagine that there’s another one but rather than cars they’re packed with similarly seductive night shots of Detroit Bicycle Company’s two-wheeled artistry. The company’s works are rolling testaments to killer design, with each bike entirely hand-crafted in Motor City. Indicative [...]

Office Gym

The Origin Workstation ($4,160) is the kind of office furniture you’d expect to find in the shiny new digs of a silicon valley startup. Weighing in at 250 pounds a pop, each piece is made from reclaimed gym flooring that showcases the original sport lines and features eight below surface storage shelves for organizing office [...]

Box Full of Blur

Amateur cinematographers, it’s time to get your depth of field on. Lensbaby, purveyor of all things attainably-priced-lens-blur has released an exhaustively comprehensive Movie Maker’s Kit ($2,900), which includes Lensbaby’s flagship lenses, including the Composer Pro, and enough interchangeable optics to ensure there’s never a single repeated shot style — even though we wouldn’t recommend such [...]

Orson Well

With a heartbreaking price you might be tempted to immediately look past the 365 Orson Desk ($3,845), but give it a few more seconds and you’ll immediately see that its hand-finished American Black Walnut and seasoned cast iron construction make this one ravishing lectern. But designer Matthew Hilton didn’t just create this as an exercise [...]

Ocean Twelve

The International Watch Company has always done things a little differently. First of all, the firm wasn’t founded by a venerable Swiss family in the remote mountains of the Jura or in the Vallée de Joux. Rather, it was an American entrepreneur from Boston, F.A. Jones, who set up shop on the banks of the [...]

Excellence For the Rest of Us

Utter the Runco name around most men, and you’ll trigger a chain reaction that ends with their wallet hiding in a cave of happiness, shivering in anticipation of the pillaging to come. The company’s new Light Style 1 HD DLP Projector ($4,000) still packs a wallop of sticker shock, but it’s down right affordable compared [...]

You'll hate getting it dirty, but love every minute of it.

The arcane sport of cyclocross is a mix of mountain biking and steeplechase that was developed in the mid-twentieth century by European road bicycle racers looking for a way to stay in shape in the cold off-season. They would fit knobby tires on their road bikes and race them around muddy, or often snowy, tracks [...]

Bed Rock

The Mood Rocking Bed ($3,000) is creative a project from Etsy seller Shinerinternational. Founder Joe Manus got his start making furniture for high-end nightspots using a mixture of landfill-destined materials, and those origins are clearly visible in the mood bed’s whimsical style. Frankly, the curved carbon steel frame combined with a mix of pine, oak, [...]

Jump Around

How do you improve the trampoline? Easy, just build one on top of a giant inflatable platform. The Aviva Sports Orbit ($3,500) may be intended for water parks and camps, but if you’ve got the cash, think of this beast as the ultimate lake house accessory. The mondo aquatic trampoline measures 25 feet in diameter [...]