Kea Kit Ultimate Outdoor Survival System – Review

If you can imagine 1980s TV star MacGyver having a love child with Bear Grylls. The offspring of this dynamic duo would be the Kea Kit — a so-called ‘Ultimate Outdoor Survival System’.

The Kea is considered to be the world’s only alpine parrot. This endemic New Zealand resident is renowned for its intelligence and mischievous behaviour.

Now I wouldn’t call the Kea Kit mischievous, but I would definitely call it intelligent, which is the obvious draw-card of this little unit.

The Kea Kit is a modular survival system based on the 5 pillars of outdoor survival — water, shelter, tools, fire, and medical.

It comes ready to go and weighs in at 1.95 kilograms (when fully packed).

It contains more than 30 individual items to help you survive should things turn pear-shaped out there.

Convenience & Useability

The best thing about this kit is that you don’t need to think about it too much.

It’s easy to throw into the bottom of your pack and get out the door with some peace of mind that should the proverbial hit the fan, you’ll likely be able to ride out a lot of situations until help arrives.

This kit provides a high level of convenience based on whatever activity you’re doing so its modular setup is a big win.

Going for a short day trip? No probs, just grab the first aid kit module and throw that in your pack. Already got a tent as your emergency shelter? Just turf that bit of the kit out for the trip. Easy as.

If you do get caught in a situation and your brain turns to mush, the developers have included a very handy and concise Survival Guide. That way you can easily work through a simple process when your brain is on stress overload and hopefully you’ll make it home safely.

Weight and Size

Given its weight, I don’t think this is a kit necessarily designed for ultralight hikers.

However, I think this kit would be very useful for a lot of other adventure folks who don’t mind packing a bit of extra weight if it means you might live out a wild adventure and be able to post about it all over your socials.

The kit contains over 30 items and they all have their place which has ensured the kit is nice and small considering its wide array of survival content.

I do recommend taking everything out prior to using it for the first time in order to get familiar with what’s actually within the little package. But, make sure you remember where everything came from when putting it back together!

I have several different packs and the kit fits in the bottom of all of them with no problems at all.

Durability

The kit comes in a very hardy case. While I didn’t throw it down a cliff or into a lake, I did toss it around while camping and left it lying in wet grass and on wet rocks etc.

The case and zippers are solid and water-resistant and it appears to me that it will stand the test of time for years of adventures.

Affordability & What’s Included?

You could definitely buy all the components within the kit separately and put one together yourself, but you’ll never get it all into such a compact and well-designed package.

The Kea Kit currently retails for $249.95 on Wild Earth.

If you’re a time-poor adventurer then any time saved is worth a fortune – and better spent outdoors.

You simply can’t beat the convenience that the Kea Kit offers. Plus, when you add up all of the bits and pieces and big-ticket items like emergency shelter and stainless steel multi-tool it starts to make decent sense as an investment.

Here’s the complete list of what you’ll get:

• Multi-Tool/Knife
• Signal Mirror
• Compass
• Duct Tape
• Fire Striker
• Tinder
• Head Torch
• Rain-Fly Tarp
• Tarp Pegs
• Para-Cord
• Water Filter Straw
• 50 Piece First-Aid Kit

Extra Thoughts

A few things to consider before trying to use the kit in a real-life scenario…

You’ll need to cut small lengths of paracord to tie onto the edge loops of the emergency shelter so it can be pegged down. You don’t want to be doing this in a genuine survival situation (i.e. when it’s flogging down rain or when you’re caught in a blizzard!).

Given it’s a Kiwi contraption, for us Aussies, I’d recommend throwing in an additional larger elastic bandage. Why? Snake bites of course!

The existing elastic bandage for snake bites might be a bit small at 5cm x 4.5m. Most snake bite bandages required to wrap a large adult leg are 10cm x 4.5m so maybe substitute one of these into the kit. Here’s what to do in the event of a snake bite.

Final Takeaways

I’m sure there will be people who think they could put their own survival kit together with more tailored or better quality gear.

However, this is a survival kit so it doesn’t need to be premium equipment. It just needs to help keep you alive.

So, if your car breaks down in a remote area and you want to MacGyver a repair using components carefully removed from your watch, or you want to pit yourself against the worst Mother Nature can throw at you in a Grylls-like adventure I think the Kea Kit is a seriously handy addition for your pack. It’s also way easier than ‘trial and erroring’ your way through survival situations… Kea has done the work for you!

Kel was sent the Kea Kit and was allowed to keep it afterwards. The views are his own. While no extreme survival situations were encountered during testing, Kel believes the gear is well up to the task of providing the basic survival necessities.