About Gear Verdicts
Gear Verdicts exists because most luggage articles refuse to finish a sentence. Every piece here ends with a verdict: buy it, buy the other one, or skip the category. If we can't say that, we don't publish.
Tessa Morrow started the site in Denver after six years of writing about outdoor retail from press releases. Ray Okonkwo covers checked bags and sets and flies a regional route most weeks. Hana Vance handles price bands and tracks what the same bag costs across a year.
Three of us, all named on every piece. We buy the bags ourselves — no samples, no loaners — and we keep using them after the review goes up, which is why you'll see posts updated months later when something breaks.
The three of us
- Tessa Morrow — Editor
Runs Gear Verdicts out of Denver. Spent six years writing about outdoor retail before getting tired of press releases and starting a site that buys its own bags. - Ray Okonkwo — Gear Editor
Covers checked bags and sets. Flies a regional route most weeks and has opinions about gate-check tags. - Hana Vance — Associate Editor
Price-band and value coverage. Tracks what the same bag costs across a year.
How this site pays for itself
Nothing on this site is sponsored, and there are currently no affiliate links — we pay for the bags and the hosting out of pocket. If that changes, the disclosure page changes first and every affected page carries a notice at the top.
What we will not do
- Accept payment for a placement, a ranking, or a kind word.
- Publish a guest post, a "sponsored review", or a link exchange.
- Take a free sample and review it as if we had bought it.
- Describe a test we did not run, or a trip that did not happen.
- Quote an instrument reading. We own no instruments.
Method: How we review · Contact: editors@outdoorgearverdicts.com