A handful of companies have been working on bags with built-in batteries capable of charging gadgets on-the-go. Most of those efforts have relied on slow and fussy solar panels to charge the bag. A few others are either very expensive or don’t work well. One very promising battery bag from Quirky, a cool online store of crowdsourced products, spent a year available for pre-order but never went into production.
Which is why Spot Cool Stuff is thrilled that there’s one company is getting the bag-with-built-in-battery right: Powerbag.
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It might be the ultimate outdoor concert backpack. That’s because Keen Springer Backseat Pack doubles as a lawn chair.
Basically, a rear panel of the backpack flips down. Side straps form the rest of the chair.
The idea is ingeniously simple; so much so that we are surprised that it took Keen, more a cool manufacturer of active footwear, to think of it.
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In one of our first travel posts, Spot Cool Stuff took a look at the best wheeled convertible backpacks.
Wheeled convertible backpacks are hybrids between an overnight hiker’s backpack and a rolling suitcase like so many travelers wheel through airports. Having such luggage versatility can be hugely helpful on trips that mix luxury and outdoor travel.
Heading to Thailand, for example, you may well want a backpack for roaming across beaches and through mountain jungles but wish for a wheeled bag to navigate the airport and for when you arrive at your luxury Bangkok hotel at the end of your trip.
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What do you get when you cross a travel bag with a kid’s scooter?
That question isn’t the set-up for a (likely terrible) joke. It’s what Samsonite, a century-old luggage company, and Micro Mobility, a European scooter specialist, asked themselves when they sought to develop a carry-on bag with built-in mobility.
The result of the companies’ three-year collaboration: the Samsonite Micro Suitcase Scooter.
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Have you—like us—ever had a container of liquid or gel confiscated from you by airport security? Or have you—like us—had a bottle of shampoo explode in your luggage?
If you have, then you—like us—can appreciate the value of a durable, carry-on friendly travel bottles.
Travel bottles are not the sort of WOW! factor products we usually review at Spot Cool Stuff. But they are the sort of product nearly everyone brings on an overnight trip.
And so we thought it was worth mentioning what will become a staple of our own travels: the PakUrDerm travel kit.
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At Spot Cool Stuff, almost all our reviews cover products and places we love. Sometimes, though, a product can be so mind boggling terrible that, well, there’s something good about the horribleness of it.
With that attempted explanation we take a break from our usual routine of writing about genuinely cool things and present you with a collection of travel gear you would almost certainly never bring on your next trip—unless you lost a bet.
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Spot Cool Stuff is freshly back from the Summer Outdoor Retailer convention in Salt Lake City where, along with approximately 20,999 others, we ooo-ed and ahhh-ed over the latest tents, backpacks, kayaks, shoes, bicycles, roof-top carriers, portable disposable toilets (yes, really), sunglasses, jackets, pocket knives, hammocks, energy bars, hiking GPS units and an assorted sundry of outdoor gear and gadgets.
Many products at the OR Show were newly released and several will not be available to the general public for several months. What were the coolest new items we discovered? Here’s a roundup of our 12 favorites—and a sneak peak at some products we’ll be reviewing more fully in the future:
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Spot Cool Stuff can get geeky when it comes to airport codes. Those three letter combinations unique to every airport, used on all manner of airline documents from tickets and checked bag tags, are familiar to every frequent air traveler. So it was only a matter of time before some one incorporated those codes into the design of travel gear.
That some one turned out to be Jason Solarek, a former journalist and diplomat in South America. Solarek apparently shares our love of airport codes because he’s made them central to his Airwear collection of products.
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