The best camping gear starts with the pieces you end up relying on for every trip. Our Editors’ Choice picks for 2026 cover the essentials that shape your day to day comfort at camp, including a cooler for food storage, a dependable stove for real meals, a gravity water filter for safe drinking water, and a water storage bag that keeps your setup simple and organized. Together, these picks handle the basics that matter most so you spend less time managing camp chores and more time enjoying where you are.
Best Camping Gear
Titan Pro Outdoor Gear 36 Can High Performance Welded Cooler
This is a good option for a cooler to hold cold drinks. The welded exterior is tough, the lid features a gasket that creates an air-tight seal, and the cooler has molded handles on the sides as well as an adjustable shoulder strap to make it easy to carry. It features an internal SmartShelf for storing items that need to stay cold (i.e. sandwiches) but that you don’t want mixed in with your drinks, as well as an external dry-cargo compartment.
MSR 4L DromLite Bag
On extended backcountry trips, lightweight water storage is a good thing to have. In 2025, we used the 4L DromLite Bag. It’s extremely light, packs down small, incorporates a loop at the top for hanging and carrying, and has a 3-in-1 cap that allows you to fill, drink, and pour. MSR states that it can handle freezing, but we did not validate this assertion. Water is life; staying hydrated will help your performance and keep you on top of your game when fishing, hiking, and hunting in Alaska’s backcountry.
MSR Dragonfly Stove
We used this stove on multiple remote trips in 2025, and it performed flawlessly. The stove is very efficient, burning far less fuel than expected. It is compact, reliable, can support pots up to 10 inches, and it can burn 5 different types of fuel (white gas (which is what we used), kerosene, unleaded gas, diesel, and jet fuel). The ability to burn all those different fuels makes it a very valuable tool in the Alaska backcountry where types of fuel can be limited. We’ve been using MSR products for 30+ years and continue to be impressed.
Platypus QuickDraw 3L Gravity Filter System
It’s essential to have effective water filtration in the backcountry. We typically carry a handheld water purifier that connects to a Nalgene bottle and we pump from the water source into the bottle. It works well, but is time consuming. With the thoughts of increasing output, particularly on adventures where you rely on dehydrated food, and even more so where physical exertion demands more water intake, we added this system to our kit. We are impressed. It’s easy and fast to use, gives us a 3L capacity, and works like a charm. The whole system breaks down into a compact bag and doesn’t weigh much. After filtration, clean water empties directly into the bottle of your choice. A shutoff clamp allows you to stop the flow once your bottle is filled. The filter is quick and easy to clean.