2024 has been a very good year for gear. Lots of blog-favorite brands have released new stuff. TRM dropped the successor to the Shadow. Reylight updated the Mini Pineapple. Frelux made a more compact Gen 3 Synergy. Tactile collaborated with CWF for a flashlight. Giant Mouse updated the Riv. There is even a waxed canvas GoRuck GR1. 2024 was a banner year for a thriving EDC market. Choosing winners was picking amongst an embarrassment of riches. I have been working on this article for more than two months—adding new stuff, moving products around, and dropping stuff as new things are released or brought to my attention. During this period of time, I have become thoroughly convinced that this is the best year in gear since the site began in 2010. We have been incredibly lucky this year.
Additionally, years of cranking out tons of stuff means that even if nothing was released this year that you liked, there is probably something from 2022 or 2023 that you missed that turns out to be a stellar bit of kit. As luck would have it, last year I included a winner for “stuff I previously missed” and this year that item has turned out to be one of my two most often carried items. But it is not the only item on this list. There is a really strong market for all sorts of EDC gear.
As always, I want to highlight as much stuff as possible, so there are two rules. First, I am looking at only new stuff that was released this year. “New” however has as loose a definition as possible. If it came with a new emitter or steel, that’s good enough for me. Second, once something wins in a major category, it can’t win again. This prevents, for example, a knife that wins Overall Gear of the Year from repeating as winner of another category.
Because this year has been so incredibly stacked, I have decided to do a comment about each item, so if something is an Honorable Mention, I have included a comment about it in that section. This way, everything gets a little bit of a spotlight.
What gear did you pick up this year that you would put on your must have list?
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