Hot threads > [Gear]

Following on from the glowing comments of the £55 camelbak bladder complete with flow valve aimed at the intellectually impaired here's a thread aimed at letting OM's vent spleen about complete junk, unnecessary gadgets which end up in landfill or overpriced tat being sold as "gear".

 My starter: £350 GPS's aimed (if the maps available are anything to go by) for use in such wilderness extremes as..err...the UK.

 Thanks Benco for the thread title inspiration! 

Never had a carrier bag from a gear shop decent enough for carrying boots. Morrisons bags are the best boot carrier bags on the market.

Ti chopsticks? (Sorry, Alpguys )

*pets his £344 gpsr*
Horses for courses eh?

edit - weird stuff happened halfway through posting

Gorillapod,

Nice idea, funny name - does the same job as a 50p beanbag.

rucksack covers, excellent for preventing water from escaping from your rucksack, makes a good novelty windsock/sail when it comes off in the wind.

The built in electronic compasses on GPS units, good for wasting batteries.

The built in barometric altimiters on GPS units, great for telling you what the altitude isn't.

RaR wrote (see)

Gorillapod,

Nice idea, funny name - does the same job as a 50p beanbag.

sorry kate but those little blue bags from Ikea make the best boot bags!!

What's a gpsr then Alex UK? Is it an extra special expensive GPS that is really only worth £100 but the r allows the extra £244 to be added? Perhaps R stands for really gullible.

MK beat me to the chopsticks. I really want a pair though. I know, I'm a gear freak.

Button compasses. What good are they as they don't have a straight edge to take a bearing or grid lines to allow you to take a bearing from the map.

Another thing I don't like are the sporks or foons that don't have enough of the spoon bowl left after the fork tines. Ydet it doesn't have enough length in the tines to pick anything up that way. So you end up spooning food in and if its soup you end up leaking it as it goes to your mouth. Give me a nice and simple long handled titanium spoon any day of the week. In a nice matt,grey colour.

Posh Totty wrote (see)

laser comp. 

Posh Totty wrote (see)

first aid kits the size of your torso with no painkillers coz someone had woken up with too many hangovers and forgot to replace them.   i mean seriously.  who, apart from rocky, is going to splint their own arm when out on a day walk apart from Rob Elliot who twisted his ankle in the Great Langdale campsite carpark..

Survival kits, If your survival came down to one of these tins of junk.....

Any of those huge, expensive headtorches that make you like the Borg from Star Trek.

Mr Sworld wrote (see)

70L rucksacks.....

 What have you got against small rucksacks then?

Benco wrote (see)

What have you got against small rucksacks then?

(Snowpeak) titanium pan sets, unless you only use them to boil water, which is difficult to burn on!

Titanium pegs supplied with Terra Nova Laser Comp: OK as toothpicks may be

Barometric altimeters in wrist watches: utterly useless.

Silva Helios, cheap plastic lighter in a fancy looking plastic and rubber shell, the gift Box has more quality than the lighter.

Titanium Cutlery, whats wrong with plastic/lexan stuff?

MSR's Colour co-ordinated cookware and sundry accessories 

The New Jetboil with the heat sensitive gel that turns orange to let you know the water has reached 60 degC (FFS)

The old Jetboil for being overpriced, overweight and under performing

Heat Exchanger pots in general

Windshirts that try to be water resistant so end up less breathable and less waterproof than a waterproof jacket. 

Multitools that cost near £100, have a dozen different tools but only 1 that you actually use. Need something to adjust crampons/ski bindings etc? take the appropriate screwdrive/spanner and do the job properly at less weight and a fraction of the cost.