Release Radar: The Coolest New Outdoor Gear of 2025

When we’re hungry for a look at the upcoming year’s brightest gear innovations, we head to the Outdoor Market Alliance media show, a biannual hands-on preview between the people who sell and market gear and the folks who cover it. Our look at 2025’s haul did not disappoint, with fashion-forward hiking apparel, featherweight sleeping pads, and some awesome new car camping tech. Here’s what’s on our release radar for this fall and early spring of 2025.

Exped Mega Pump (Available Now)

Exped makes the best car camping mats money can buy, hands down. The major downside? They take ages to inflate and deflate. A few years ago, they came out with the Widget Pump, a battery powered pump, lamp, and powerbank all in one. It was a vast improvement, but it’s relatively slow, and doesn’t help with deflation, which often looks like a one-sided wrestling match given all of the mat’s foam and air capacity.

The Mega Pump is faster and has both functions, making the process relatively painless. With some included adaptors, you can use this pump for most non-Exped car camping pads, too. The best part? It’s already available online for $65.

Seniq Apparel (Available Now)

Seniq is a new brand focused on fashion-forward hiking apparel. It really stood out at OMA, where the cut, colorways, and features of apparel and outer layers are almost indistinguishable across outdoor brands. Seniq’s co-founders and lead designer are women, which is important for an all-women’s hiking apparel company, and it donates one percent of sales to outdoor equity and mental-health focused foundations. Really, though we just think this stuff looks rad. There’s a careful balance of fashion and function going on here that we’ll be excited to test out on the trail.

Rossignol Vizion Ski Boot (Fall 2024)

Skiers who are tired of wrestling to get their ski boots on and off (and let’s be honest, that’s most people) should get excited about Rossignol’s new Vizion ski boot line. A new proprietary buckle and spine mechanism on these boots allows the cuff to open much wider than a traditional four-buckle overlap boot, allowing skiers to slip into the boot easily and hands-free.

In terms of getting the boot on and off, it’s like a rear-entry boot; but once buckled up, it feels like a traditional alpine boot that you can actually ski in (as opposed to most rear-entry options). Rossignol’s new Vizion boot family ($650-850), which comprises 10 models ranging from 130 flex down to 80 flex, will hit shelves this fall. Read more about the new Rossignol Vizion here.

Thule ReVert Bike Rack (Fall 2024)

Thule is finally releasing a hitch-mount vertical bike rack that comes with the kind of smart design features the Swedish brand is known for. The new ReVert, launching in September, will come in a four-bike ($900) and six-bike ($1,100) model.

Each carries bikes via wheel baskets that require zero frame contact (so carbon frame owners can chill out). The ReVert’s Dual Tilt Assist tech in the arm is also sweet, providing weight assistance on the way up and down to make it easy to lower and raise the rack even when loaded down with six mountain bikes. Both models of the Revert can fit 20- to 29-inch wheels, though you’ll need to purchase wheel adapters (sold separately) to accommodate 20- to 24-inch tires. Thule will also offer accessory wheel baskets for plus-sized tires.

La Sportiva Prodigio Pro (Spring/Summer 2025)

We were amazed at how light La Sportiva’s new trail racer felt when we picked it up, weighing in at a scant 8.9 ounces for the men’s model and 7.9 for the women’s. Touted as a “super shoe for the mountains,” the Prodigio Pro ($195) promises super shoe performance for tricky terrain. That’s been a tough guarantee to live up to for competing models that try to use bouncy foams and plates off-road.

The shoe has a blend of nitrogen-infused TPU and EVA foam (lighter and bouncier than that in the highly-praised Prodigio), paired with La Sportiva’s signature, deep-lugged, sticky rubber sole and a crazy-looking “Power Wire” mesh upper made from polyester, TPU, and nylon. It lacks a rigid plate, allowing it to adapt to uneven surfaces underfoot, while the aggressively rockered geometry looks like it’ll keep you rolling quickly down the trail.

Diorite Gear Trekking Pole Attachments (Spring/Summer 2025)

Diorite makes some of our favorite carbon trekking poles ever. They telescope out long enough to support a pyramid tent without a weight penalty and are incredibly sturdy for carbon construction. They’ve always been very field-repairable (including the tips,) but now Diorite is coming out with interchangeable EVA handles built for mountaineering and skiing.

Using some simple-but-sturdy hardware, you can attach things like Skimo picks and potentially even whippets at home without special tools. Put simply, Diorite is designing modular, quiver-killer poles that you can use year-round. That means spending less money on specialized poles and the ability to repair your set indefinitely.

MSR Switch Stove (Spring/Summer 2025)

We love integrated “Jetboil-style” backpacking stoves for their speed and wind-resistance. But you can’t do much more than boil water in those superheated cookers. MSR recognized this was a bit of an annoyance with folks who wanted to occasionally do some actual cooking on its WindBurner and Reactor stoves. The Switch is basically a WindBurner pot that’s been redesigned to work on a specialized canister-stove. (Bonus: the stove is pressure-regulated for cold weather and half-empty canisters.)

A ring on the canister stove locks into the hard-anodized aluminum pot—which has a convex bottom for maximum surface area—for the usual speedy, water-boiling purposes. Flick a few arm extenders out, though, and you can set an actual pot or skillet on top for measured cooking. While Jetboil already sells an accessory that has a similar function, it doesn’t work particularly well in practice.

NEMO Tensor Elite Sleeping Pad (Spring/Summer 2025)

In the race to design the lightest-but-still-comfortable sleeping pad on the market, Therm-a-Rest has always lead the pack. Now NEMO is taking a stab at a boundary-pushing inflatable pad with its Tensor Elite. Unlike the rest of the brand’s Tensor line, the Elite comes in just regular and short mummy sizes. Allegedly, it weighs just 8.3 ounces, has an R-value of 2.4, and packs down to the size of a pint glass. That’s a few grams shy of TAR’s discontinued, extra-lightweight (and easily-punctured) NeoAir UberLite.

In the comfort department, the Elite looks better than its defunct competitor. It has 3 inches of thickness and uses the brand’s Apex Baffle construction, which is an improvement over horizontal baffles. We won’t know until testing whether the Elite is an ultralight game-changer or just another extra-delicate pad to stress about on long backpacking trips.

Deuter Hiline (Spring/Summer 2025)

At first glance, Deuter’s new mountain biking pack looks like it has the usual feature set: helmet-holder clips, bike pump attachments, and plenty of space for hydration and spare tubes. But the Hiline, which comes in 8 and 14 liter sizes, has some real tech on the inside.

It’s got a removable memory foam SAS-TEC multi-impact spine protector “for enduro fans.” The new hotness is a 3D-printed breathable back panel for airflow. Not only does 3D printing reduce material waste in the production process, but it allows for multiple levels of texture—essentially a complex honeycomb structure—that looks like it’ll work better than most airflow-improving designs on the market during intense climbs. (It could be a total gimmick, too.)

At $375 for the 14-liter version, the Hiline’s tech ain’t cheap. Deuter’s rep hinted that it might be headed for the brand’s backpacking packs, as well.