Read Standards Watch: Introduction (Backpacking Light)

Intro to a monthly column that explains important backpacking product standards, interviews key people, and analyzes industry standards.

This is an interesting area and highlights the fact that marketing and standards can sometimes subsume the actual facts and make it that much harder for people to make informed choices. This sort of investigative work and comparison becomes important to help level the playing field, but then again, finding sources like this is yet another task in itself.