The Equipment Guide Testing Team
Our reviews are not written by one person with one opinion. Every product we rank is used by a rotating panel of testers — our own authors and presenters, along with their families and friends — spanning complete beginners through to lifelong experts, across a wide range of heights and body weights.
This page explains who those testers are, how the panel is built, and how their individual assessments become a published score. If you want the detail of what actually gets measured, see our How We Test page.
Why a rotating panel
Most gear reviews describe how a product performed for one reviewer. That is useful, but it is incomplete — and it quietly assumes that the reviewer is you.
They usually aren't. An experienced paddler will brace instinctively in chop that would put a first-timer in the water, and will report a twitchy hull as "responsive". A tent that a seasoned hiker pitches in four minutes without reading anything can take a beginner twenty-five minutes in the wind and the dark. A 62 kg (137 lb) tester and a 105 kg (231 lb) tester sitting in the same inflatable kayak are testing two different boats: different waterline, different trim, different stability, different speed. And a car camper who's 195cm tall will have a less comfortable experience in a low family tent or with a smaller camp chair than a camper standing 165cm.
So we test with a panel instead, and we build that panel deliberately:
- Across experience. Beginners find the usability problems that experts have learned to work around. Experts find the performance limits and the durability issues that beginners never reach.
- Across body size. Height and weight materially change how kayaks, sleeping systems, sleeping bags and camp furniture behave. We record both for every tester so those effects can be separated out.
- Across use case. Solo day paddlers, families, weekend campers, multi-day hikers and fishing users all want different things from the same product.
- On rotation. Panel membership changes between products and between seasons, which keeps any single person's preferences from setting the tone of an entire category.
Every tester fills out the same form. After using a product, each participant independently completes our category testing matrix — objective measurements, 0–10 scores against printed criterion definitions, the conditions they tested in, and free-text notes. The published review amalgamates all of those matrices. Scores are averaged, measurements are reconciled, and every free-text note is read by the author writing the review.
The people behind the panel
The panel is anchored by the Equipment Guide's own authors and on-camera presenters, who test across every category and are responsible for writing up and presenting the amalgamated results.
Alongside them, the panel includes family members and friends of the team who volunteer for testing sessions. These testers are not public figures and have not signed up to have their names published, so we identify them by profile rather than by name — experience level, height and weight, which is the information that actually affects how a product performs for them. They are also anonymous in order to avoid any potential for attempts at direct contact and influence by retailers or manufacturers.
Experience levels, defined
"Experienced" means nothing without a definition. Here is ours, applied consistently across the panel:
| Level | What it means |
|---|---|
| Beginner | Little or no prior experience in the activity. Approaches a product exactly as a first-time buyer would, using only the supplied instructions. |
| Novice | Occasional participant — a handful of trips a year. Familiar with the basics but not with technique or troubleshooting. |
| Intermediate | Regular participant across multiple seasons. Confident in normal conditions, owns their own gear, can compare products against personal experience. |
| Advanced | Frequent participant with substantial mileage or nights out, including in demanding conditions. Understands materials, construction and where products typically fail. |
| Expert | Professional or lifelong experience — guiding, instruction, outdoor retail, competition, or decades of continuous participation. Tests to the performance limits of a product. |
The panel
Each tester is listed below by profile. Height and weight are included because they directly affect performance in most of the categories we cover; testers are otherwise not identified.
| Tester | Experience level | Height | Weight | Primary disciplines | On panel since |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AU-01 | Expert | 189 cm | 94 kg | Sea kayaking, multi-day hiking, car camping | 2025 |
| AU-02 | Advanced | 165 cm | 59 kg | Hiking, kayaking, whitewater | 2023 |
| AU-03 | Intermediate | 178 cm | 88 kg | Fishing kayaks, car camping, overnight hikes | 2024 |
| AU-04 | Intermediate | 183 cm | 75 kg | Family camping, flat-water paddling | 2023 |
| AU-05 | Novice | 159 cm | 55 kg | Weekend camping | 2022 |
| AU-06 | Novice | 158 cm | 57 kg | Day paddling, beach use | 2025 |
| AU-07 | Beginner | 191 cm | 108 kg | First-time buyer profile | 2026 |
| AU-08 | Beginner | 180 cm | 68 kg | First-time buyer profile | 2025 |
Panel membership rotates, and not every tester tests every product. A typical ranking draws on testers from at least three experience levels and a spread of body weights.
How individual assessments become a score
- Independent testing. Each participant uses the product in real conditions and completes the category matrix on their own, without seeing anyone else's scores.
- Measurement reconciliation. Objective figures — weights, dimensions, timed runs — are compared across testers. Where they disagree, we re-measure rather than average.
- Score amalgamation. Scored judgments are averaged across every tester who used the product to give the criterion score out of 10.
- Disagreement analysis. Where scores diverge sharply between experience levels or body sizes, that divergence is treated as a finding and reported in the review.
- Write-up. One author reads every matrix in full, including all free-text notes, and writes the review from the amalgamated result.
The weightings applied to each criterion, and how the criterion scores become the out-of-100 Overall Rating, are set out on our How We Test page.
Joining the panel
We are always interested in testers, particularly beginners and occasional users — that end of the panel is harder to fill than the expert end, and it produces some of our most useful findings. Panel testers are unpaid volunteers, receive no free products, and have no involvement in scoring decisions beyond their own matrix. If you would like to be considered, get in touch.
Independence
No tester on the panel has a commercial relationship with any manufacturer whose products they assess, and no manufacturer selects, approves or has any contact with our testers. We buy, borrow or view all products in person ourselves and do not accept free products from manufacturers. Read our full testing methodology.
Last updated: 11/09/26. | How We Test Outdoor Gear