Easton Mountain Products' new Syclone composite tent poles earned the “Best New Gear” award from the Gear Institute at this year's Outdoor Retailer Summer Market in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Gear Institute is a network of top outdoor gear testers in America, who conduct head-to-head tests of comparable outdoor products, both under controlled conditions and in appropriate real-world field-testing scenarios, to provide objective and helpful advice to the sector. The institute praised the Syclone's wind resilience, advanced materials and construction, along with its overall top-of-the-line performance when compared with aluminum tent poles on the market. Engineered from aerospace grade S-glass composite fibers, Easton's Syclone poles appear to be 80 percent more failure- and bend-resistant than aluminum in both wind and flex testing. In addition, lab tests have shown that Syclone poles can flex farther than carbon and aluminum, return to their original shape and still offer solid structural support.