The Best Down Jacket Brands: Heritage vs High-Tech Winter Jackets (Plus The Secret Champion)

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What’s Up Snailiens: Let’s Talk Winter Jackets!

Hello Snailiens, and welcome to class!

In today’s article, we will be talking about five coats from some of the best down jacket brands, including Filson, North Face, Patagonia, Arc’teryx, and the greatest coat maker of all time, whose name shall be redacted until later in the article.

Along the way, though, I will tell you how long it took me to start shivering in each jacket when it was five degrees outside (I timed it), why the Filson jacket is one of my top two, how I’m disappointed in the Patagonia jacket, why Arc’teryx technology makes their jacket amazing but also has a massive downside that may make you not want the jacket, and then finally why none of this matters.

Okay, class, bring me an apple, and let’s get going!

Quick Comparison: The Cold Hard Facts

Down 101: A Quick Crash Course

And now a quick rundown on down – we’re gonna get some stuff out of the way so that way there’s no confusion. Down is not a feather. People are familiar with feathers. People write with them all the time. Alexander Hamilton used it to write his famous musical. Feathers are on the outside of a bird, and when you’re talking about down jackets and stuff, it’s a duck or a goose. Down is on the inside, and it keeps the duck or goose warm.

A really high-quality down jacket has more down than feathers. Most down jackets have a mix of down and feathers – 80/20 is usually the lowest you ever want to go, 80% down 20% feathers.

On top of all that, there is down fill and down weight. Down fill is the efficiency of the down-to-weight ratio. Mixing all that together, you see 600 fill down, you see 900 fill down – the higher fill, the more efficient it is, so you need less of it.

Down weight obviously is just the weight of the down in the jacket, usually measured in ounces. A lower fill down dries faster than a higher fill down. That ties in very heavily with Arc’teryx, which we’ll talk about very shortly.

The Filson Down Cruiser: Heritage Meets Warmth

First up is Filson’s down Cruiser. It’s a play on their Wool Cruiser, probably their most famous product, what they became famous for. Basically, it’s a mix of all the Filson’s like “Oh, this is cool, oh that’s great, oh this is awesome” combined into one, plus down.

So we have shelter cloth on the arms, which is their 11-ounce wax canvas. The cover cloth above there is 8 ounces, so it’s a little more flexible, but you really have the heavier lower, the lighter upper. So that way, if you’re going through briars, it’s not that much of an issue.

There’s a Merino wool lining on the neck, and you have Merino wool in the hand warmer pockets. You also have a lot of room in the hand warmer pockets, even when things are pretty stuffed in there.

So anyway, all those things come together, and they make this jacket. Why are we using wax cotton, you may be asking? If down gets wet, especially this down, which is not treated with anything, it’s very ineffective. You could die out there.

The Filson down Cruiser is 650 fill 80/20. They also have another down jacket, which I tried to get from Filson: the Chilkoot. It’s shiver test time!

This is the worst test in the world, and I hope you’re aware of that. It’s just me, I have bias. Really, we’re talking about how comfortable I was in these jackets because you can’t really be like, “Well, it’s this percentage warmer” or anything like that.

Shiver Test: 1 minute and 52 seconds, 5th place

The North Face McMurdo: Technology Meets Toastiness

Next, we’ll do the North Face McMurdo parka, which I was not disappointed with. I used to watch reviews of this jacket like freshman year in college and I wanted one so bad.

At the time, I couldn’t afford one, and I just watched reviews and was like, “That jacket’s amazing, that jacket’s awesome,” and then when I could have bought one, I never did. I got all this other cool stuff.

We’re now leaning away from wax cotton, obviously, and we’re going to North Face’s version of Gore-Tex, essentially. Now, on this list, the only company that uses Gore-Tex is Arc’teryx, and that is very, very important. North Face uses its own proprietary version of this.

It’s a very similar thing, so it’s waterproof and windproof. This is actually one of the warmest jackets on the list. When we get to the timing scores, it’s very, very high up there, and what’s interesting about that is we just learned all the stuff about fill power and fill weight, and this is the lowest fill power down jacket that is on this list – 600 fill down.

But this jacket has the second most amazing hand warmer pockets in the bunch. The wind flap over the zipper is the best because it’s Velcro, so if you have mittens or gloves on, you can just spank it. You don’t have to worry about snapping all these different things.

And it has a hood, which is a huge game changer for warmth until we get to Patagonia. On top of that, there is a removable fur trim lining.

Something really cool about fur trim linings is they actually change the way wind interacts with your face. So if the fur is out or forward, the wind can’t really spank you in the face. It kind of creates a little vortex that keeps you warmer; it keeps the wind a little away from you.

North Face happened to do snaps around the outer of the hood, and that’s great, but what I did notice was when I was testing this jacket, some cold air would come in through the gaps where those snaps were and then hit you in the face. It’s obviously reduced by a lot, but that stunk.

Shiver Test: 6 minutes and 12 seconds, 2nd place

Patagonia Tres: Good Try, But Here’s The Deal

It’s really not Patagonia’s fault but I kind of sort of bought the wrong jacket. It’s one of those jackets that’s really okay at a lot of things, but not really.

It’s probably a great rain jacket, but it’s not really that great at everything because you’re making compromises. It’s like the North Face hood, essentially.

This is the Patagonia Tres three-in-one parka. It’s my favorite fit. I think it looks cool. I would pick this over the Arc’teryx any day if Patagonia made a version of it that was an actual winter jacket and not like a mix of everything.

The way this jacket works is that the outside shell is a waterproof raincoat, which is fantastic – it fits great, it looks awesome, and it’s a great jacket. All the separate components are great, but when you combine them, there are a lot of things that beat them at a similar price point.

700 down-filled jacket, not parka – the parka is not lined, so it ends at about your belt line. It’s pretty warm. It’s nothing too crazy, really. You’ll see the information when we get to the time of how long I was outside with each one, but it’s fine; it’s great. The hand warmer pockets are not that good because it’s a rain jacket, and that’s pretty much it.

Shiver Test: 2 minutes and 2 seconds, 4th place

Arc’teryx: The Tech Nerds of the Jacket World

Okay, Arc’teryx – what is so special about Arc’teryx? That was my Google search history.

What makes Arc’teryx so special is that they just do everything to the absolute maximum cutting-edge technology, and they use the best of the best. And I said Gore-Tex is really important – Gore-Tex is basically the same mindset as Arc’teryx. But that is where Arc’teryx shines because they use Gore-Tex, which is the best.

What they don’t use from Gore-Tex are other brands they make themselves, and they innovate like micro seaming, for example, where you have these like no visible seams on Arc’teryx jackets, which is really cool – it gives them that really sleek futuristic look.

There’s no lower-level Arc’teryx – they start high-end and don’t go down. So that’s why Arc’teryx is so expensive off the bat. You can get an expensive version of Patagonia or other down jackets that are like that, too, but there is no cheap version of Arc’teryx. That’s the Arc’teryx philosophy.

And that is where we get into the hot topic of this article – down composite mapping and contour construction. The coolest thing ever when you’re talking about down jackets, those two things are insane, and they’re genius and they’re brilliant, and I can’t get enough of them, but they also have a really big flaw that we’ll talk about at the end. The Arc’teryx boys are going to go nuts – 750 fill down, the second highest fill of down. We haven’t gotten to the Italian Stallion yet, don’t forget!

Shiver Test: 4 minutes and 45 seconds, 3rd place

The Italian Stallion: Manifattura Ceccarelli’s Masterpiece

The Italian Stallion is waiting in the stable, AKA my closet. I wrote an article about this jacket about a year ago and said it was the jacket of my dreams. Since then, I’ve acquired it – this is the Manifattura Ceccarelli Fisherman Down Jacket. I forget exactly what it’s called.

I just want to say everybody that I’ve asked when they think about this jacket doesn’t like it. They do have more normal-looking jackets, okay?

800 fill down, the weight is super heavy, and it’s packed to the gills with down. It has vegetable-tanned accents that you can tighten with the hood or tighten on the body so cold air doesn’t come up into the body. 20-ish ounce wool outer – you could also do this in total wax cotton (wax cotton arms and wax cotton hood).

It’s an insane jacket that is the best of the best that you possibly get when you’re looking for down jackets. It has wax cotton, so it will age and patina beautifully over time.

I’ve talked to Mr. Ceccarelli many times before – he’s a super cool dude. He made a line of things for Filson before (the Filson Italian line), which is Manifattura Ceccarelli – best of the best.

Shiver Test: I did not shiver with Manifattura Ceccarelli, 1st place (duh)

The Great Debate: Heritage vs High-Tech

Out of these five best down jacket brands, there are two jackets that do something very different. You have North Face, Patagonia, Arc’teryx, and then you have Filson and Manifattura Ceccarelli.

When you deal with North Face, Patagonia, and Arc’teryx, they all have the amazing benefits of technology – they’re super waterproof, super lightweight, they’re tough, they’re cool.

But the flaws that you run into with those all kind of center around delamination in some way.

Gore-Tex and then North Face’s, and Patagonia’s versions all delaminate over time, which means they separate and bubble and become less effective. And maybe it’s ten years, maybe it’s two years – it depends on how you wear your jacket, but they become less effective.

What’s interesting is that when you look at old North Face jackets from the 70s and stuff, the only difference between those and Filson is that they use nylon and not wax cotton. Nylon is fine; it is very simple and just holds the down, but when you start to incorporate all these different waterproof technologies, glues, and stuff like that, then you have more room for failure.

The biggest thing that I forgot to talk about is down composite mapping and contour construction with Arc’teryx. Lower fill power dries faster. Higher fill power is more efficiently warm but doesn’t dry as fast.

There is also synthetic insulation, which dries dramatically faster than down in general. So if you combine those two things – and Arc’teryx does this for a very specific reason we’ll talk about – then your garment is better equipped for a variety of circumstances.

So Arc’teryx does this in two different ways. Number one, like I said, is down composite mapping, and we’ll go over the pros first. Arc’teryx puts synthetic insulation in key areas on your garment that are most likely to get wet, like your hood, your shoulders, your cuff, and your underarms, because you’ll be sweating.

Since those areas get wet more than all the others, they dry faster with synthetic insulation. People who have down composite mapping say it’s actually super convenient when they do get wet that those areas dry really fast.

There is a big problem, but before we get into that, the other thing is contour construction, which is very cool. So you have your baffle that holds the down – they put a layer of synthetic insulation around the down insulation to act as another shield to make sure that down doesn’t get wet, and you get that layer of synthetic insulation there, too.

The downside to both of these: down is very, very lofty for a very long time, and synthetic insulation is not very lofty for a long time. It is very lofty, but it will compress and become less insulatory (that’s a word, right?) after a while. That synthetic insulation loses some of its warmth capabilities, and the down insulation does not, so you have cold areas on your shoulders, on your armpits, and on your hood.

Another point in Filson’s favor, for me specifically, is that over time, this jacket will patina and get darker, especially if you re-wax it, and it will start to look gorgeous.

There are a lot of different types of down jackets, obviously, but if we boil it down, there are heritage cloth ones, then there are the ones with the waterproof outer and no baffles on the outside – that’s on the inside like the three we looked at today – and then there’s the Alpine down jacket.

That’s not usually called an Alpine down jacket, but the ones where you could see the baffles, people are like covered in goose feathers and stuff like that.

The Real Talk: It’s All About Layering, Baby

There are different types of jackets for different purposes. So the big point is really that you need to figure out exactly what you’re going to be using this jacket for, but when we compare all of these down jackets, there really is no clear winner because you do a lot of different things.

The other super important thing to consider is that all of this varies on how active you’re going to be. If you’re just sitting at a game or doing not much outside, you want a really warm outer layer probably, but the second you start doing physical labor, you realize that maybe the down jacket is important but not that important because you get warm very quickly.

So that’s when you realize the most important thing that you could possibly do is layer correctly. This is not an article on layering, but you should look into base layer, mid layer, outer layer, shell – whatever it may be for what you’re doing because that’s the key to being warm.

My little blueberry muffin, Taylor, was always cold all the time, no matter how big of a down jacket she put on. Then, the only thing we changed was I had an old thick Under Armor base layer in my drawer – put that on. We went outside with a jacket, and she was immediately too warm, so we figured it out.

Watch This Review

Until Next Time

That’s all for the best down jacket brands! I’ll see you very soon. I really appreciate you reading my articles. Wow, this is so fun!

This article was adapted from Michael Kristy’s video on The Iron Snail, with edits from FashionBeans, and was reviewed by Michael to ensure the integrity of his original content. Watch the full video here.