Have you ever felt overwhelmed trying to decide which outdoor product might be best for you? Or have you been recommended a product (or worse still bought it) only to find out it wasn’t the right one to meet your needs?
Do you find yourself pogo-ing from website to website to find the answers you need to your questions about the outdoors?
We’ve experienced all of this and more, and that’s why TopNotch Outdoor exists – to help you.
TopNotch Outdoor’s mission is simple: to create the world’s best resource for outdoor gear reviews, to answer all your questions, and listen to you – our Reader.
We believe the world’s best outdoor resource should help educate you if you need it, and help you make great choices in selecting the best product for your budget, specific needs, and interests.
How do we do it? Our secret sauce…. is our team of independent researchers and reviewers – experts in their specialist areas (such as fishing, camping, skiing, running, survival) who spend every moment of their spare time doing what they love, and then writing about it for you.
Here’s how it works:
- We select the very top products in each sector.
- To be completely independent – we will never accept free products for evaluation from manufacturers.
- Our TopNotch Outdoor team put the products through rigorous side-by-side testing both in the field and in the lab – assessing value for money, performance, reliability and ease of use.
- We analyse the data, rank the products, and finally we give our TopNotch Outdoor awards to the star performers.
TopNotch Outdoor is completely reader-supported. We do not accept any free product or financial remuneration from any supplier.
If you click on a link to buy a product we’ve reviewed, we may earn a commission which is used to support our work.
Our review process starts with research: we research hundreds of products – we check out the reviews and look for best sellers in order to find the top contenders for each category. We then put these products through detailed hands-on testing.
To be objective in terms of our scoring, we develop a set of criteria for each product range so that we can properly quantify key differences and form comparisons between competing products.
These products are then put through not only TopNotch Outdoor’s lab tests but also field testing where we test them (sometimes to destruction) to see which hold up and how they compare to any competitor product.
Our TopNotch Outdoor testers are avid campers, hunters, runners, climbers, bikers, surfers, backpackers, skiers and snowboarders. We use our TopNotch Outdoor labs for review and then put products through a side-by-side field testing. All our testers have an eye for detail and we’re obsessed with finding the best.
Many of our testers are professionals in their field and bring years of collective wisdom and hands-on experience to the job.
Our mission is to create the world’s biggest and best resource for outdoor gear reviews – helping you find that all-important product for your needs.
Product which is within budget and best in its class.
To achieve this goal, we publish our scores against each product relative to its competition, with an overall score – in addition to scoring across important criteria for each product category. This means it will be easier for you to find the product that best meets your individual needs.
Our
Editor’s Choice
awards go to those special products we believe are the very best overall.
Our
Best Value Award
goes to quality products that offer the best value for money.
Our
Top Pick Award
goes to products that stand out from the rest for a ‘specific application’.
Our Editor’s Choice awards go to those special products we believe are the very best overall.
TopNotch Outdoor reviews enable you to buy a product with confidence and provide you with all the information you need to choose the right outdoor product for your needs and budget.
Our TopNotch Outdoor review process takes a lot more time and work than other reviews you’ll find online. We firmly believe that good reviews are independent and compare and contrast. We find out how one product stacks up against all the other best products in the range, and why one product is perhaps materially better than another.
It’s our rigorous testing style – comparing and contrasting – whilst remaining completely independent and objective, that sets us apart from other online reviewers.
Sean Williams
Editor-In-Chief
Sean is our Editor-In-Chief and an Outdoor junkie who has a special passion for Outdoor Kit!
He has built our team of highly talented researchers and writers who are proud to serve you up the best Outdoor Gear Reviews – every week. Brace yourself, there’s everything you need here at topnotchoutdoor.com
“If being in the outdoors is your idea of heaven, and your interest is in doing it as comfortably and effortlessly as possible, then our reviews are for you!”
Sam Benedict
Author
Life-long buddy and Outdoors aficionado Charlie went to Uni with our big boss Sean – though allegedly they spent more time in their tents at weekends than they did on Campus – that’s where they learned their real craft!
When we asked him for a quote, he said “I do what I love – so it never feels like work – and my passion is seeing others benefit from that.”
Kudos Charlie!”
Keep In Touch
Now you can check out our reviews and let us know if we live up to our promises.
If you have any further questions, please check out our FAQ section, Affiliate Disclosure or you can email us here. We’d love to hear from you and we encourage any feedback – it’s how we improve what we do – of course.
Help us make TopNotch Outdoor the world’s leading source of information for outdoor enthusiasts just like you.