Nothing kills a good afternoon on the water faster than a soggy deck of paper cards. I learned this the hard way during a sailboat outing last summer when a sudden wave drenched our poker game. Cards stuck together, edges curled, and within minutes the deck was unusable. After that experience, our team tested eight […]

Last summer, our team spent three weekends at Lake Tahoe testing waterproof playing cards for camping. We spilled drinks, dunked them in the lake, and let the dog chew one deck (don't ask). By the end, the regular paper Bicycle set had warped into unusable cardboard, while the plastic decks kept shuffling like nothing happened. […]

Three winters ago, I biked 4 miles to work in a downpour with a "water-resistant" pack that wasn't. My MacBook came out looking like it had taken a bath. That day sent me on a months-long hunt for the best waterproof roll top backpack, and the lessons from that search are baked into every pick […]

I've been fishing for 22 years, and nothing stings quite like watching $80 worth of premium lures turn into rust after a single wave crashes over your kayak. After losing two tackle boxes to saltwater spray on a striper trip in Cape Cod last spring, I made it my mission to find truly waterproof tackle […]

When I lost my passport to a rogue wave in Costa Rica back in 2019, I swore off unprotected travel forever. After testing 23 different waterproof travel pouches over the past 18 months across beach trips, whitewater rafting, and torrential downpours in Southeast Asia, I've narrowed it down to the 8 best waterproof travel pouches […]

I've been testing the best waterproof notebooks for outdoors for years, ever since a soggy field journal disintegrated in my backpack during a wet weekend on the Welsh coast. That disaster sent me down a rabbit hole. Since then, our team has put 12 notebooks through real-world testing: rainstorms, kayak spray, mud, grease, and yes, […]