The Best Car Camping Gear of 2022
The best gear for staying put outside
Tailgater Original Standard Steel Tire Table

This table attaches to any vehicle via a steel frame that slides over your tire. (An extendable leg supports the opposite side.) It fits an XL pizza box or two-burner stove and packs into a 1.5-inch-thick, 29-by-23-inch rectangle.
Outdoor Research CarryOut 80L Duffel

Thanks to a 600-denier polyester that’s more supple (read: packable) than most TPU-coated fabrics, this duffel saves closet space between trips. It’s less burly than expedition luggage, yet held up to a season of use, and kept our gear dry on a particularly stormy Utah campout.
Kelty Galactic Down Blanket

This 550-fill duck-down quilt bested stacks of synthetic-filled blankets when it came to quickly warming testers on 35-degree fall evenings in Colorado’s Never Summer Range—without the price hike typical of down. No cinches or snaps here, just 50-denier polyester fabric that feels like satin pajamas. (It’s still tough enough to survive getting dragged beneath a chair leg.)
Black Diamond Moji R+ Light

This sleek, puck-size lamp delivers soft, ambient white light, plus green, yellow, and red. We charged the battery in four hours, and it lasted for a long weekend of nightly use. Suspend it from collapsible hooks, or attach it to your car with the built-in magnets.
Dometic CMP-C2 Compact Camp Bench Seat

Benches aren’t common for car camping, but this one convinced us they should be. Its sturdy aluminum frame and 600-denier nylon seat easily accommodated two adults and doubled as a stand for a cooler filled with 60 pounds of food (the CMP-C2’s limit is 300 pounds). Still, it weighs just 6.5 pounds and rolls up to the size of a fire log for easy packing in a stuffed car. Read More...