Zpacks
Zpacks Solo Quilt 20F
No citable owner-review average published for this one, so no stars.
The Classic bag with the hood and the back panel removed — the same down weight, the same 900-fill, half an ounce lighter. That half-ounce difference is the most useful single data point on this whole site about what a hood actually costs, and the answer is: almost nothing, because the down that would be under your back has already been left out of the bag. What you are really choosing between is a hood and a draft-free back, versus the freedom to stick a leg out.
Label against lab
No ISO or EN rating is published for this one — the 20 °F is Zpacks’s own figure, with no lab test behind it. Where a maker publishes loft or fill weight instead, those are the numbers worth comparing. What the standards measure
At that temperature the pairing table wants at least an R 4 pad underneath it.
Size run
One product, 7 sizes. The headline numbers on this page describe the Standard / Medium.
| Size | Weight | Approx. price | Length | Shoulder girth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Slim / Short | 1 lb 0.2 oz | ~$449 | 68 in | 55 in |
| Slim / Medium | 1 lb 1.2 oz | ~$469 | 74 in | 55 in |
| Standard / Short | 1 lb 1.3 oz | ~$469 | 68 in | 60 in |
| Standard / Medium | 1 lb 2.3 oz | ~$489 | 74 in | 60 in |
| Standard / Long | 1 lb 3.4 oz | ~$509 | 80 in | 60 in |
| Broad / Medium | 1 lb 3.5 oz | ~$509 | 74 in | 65 in |
| Broad / Long | 1 lb 4.5 oz | ~$529 | 80 in | 65 in |
Specifications
Highlights
Features
- Hydrophobic down
- RDS down
- Pad attachment straps
- Wide option
- Made in USA
What it does well
- 18.3 ounces with 13.7 ounces of 900-fill down in it — one of the best down-to-shell ratios in the catalogue.
- Twenty-one sizes, each with published shell weight, down weight and total weight.
- The same 2.5-inch target loft as the hooded Classic, so the two can be compared honestly.
- Elastic-and-snap pad straps rather than a proprietary system, so they work with any pad.
- Made in Florida, and Zpacks will re-loft or repair a quilt rather than replace it.
What it costs you
- No lab rating; the 20 °F figure is the maker's own and the loft spec is all there is to check it against.
- A quilt with no hood means a hat is mandatory below about 35 °F, and the draft-management is on you.
- 10-denier shell fabric wants care.
- $489 buys a wider, warmer quilt from several of the custom makers if you are willing to wait for it to be built.
Those two lists are drawn from Zpacks’s published specifications and from reviews that measured them. They are not owner sentiment — anything owners said appears under its own heading below.
What owners say
Distilled from owner discussions and long-term published reviews, not from anything measured here.
Zpacks' sleep gear sits awkwardly in owner discussion. The company's shelters and packs have a strong following; its down gear gets named, more than once, as the part of its range people steer buyers away from. No specific failure is described — it reads as reputation rather than evidence.
What owners do praise is the design idea. A quilt with a full-length zip can be closed into a hoodless bag, which makes it usable in a hut or a shelter where a quilt is awkward, and opened flat when it is warm. Owners specifically mention that as the reason to look at it.
The unanswered question in owner threads is the one that matters most: whether the temperature rating is optimistic. Zpacks publishes target loft rather than a lab figure, and nobody in the discussions has offered a confident answer.
What owners like
- The full-length zip is the feature owners point out: it turns the quilt into a hoodless bag for hut nights and opens flat on warm ones.
- Owners using the two-person version with two short pads describe the setup as working well.
- Owners who have one recommend looking at the whole line rather than just the quilt, which suggests satisfaction with the construction.
- Owners appreciate that Zpacks publishes exact shell and down weights for every size combination, which gives them something concrete to compare when the temperature rating has no lab behind it.
Common complaints
- Zpacks' reputation for down gear specifically comes up as a reason people steer buyers elsewhere, alongside two other well-known makers.
- Owners ask whether the ratings are optimistic and do not get a confident answer, which is a real gap when the maker publishes no lab figure.
- Price is the usual objection, and owners say so plainly.
Questions owners ask
Are the temperature ratings optimistic?
What does the full-length zip get you?
Why do some people steer buyers away from Zpacks down gear?
Zpacks Solo Quilt 20F, head to head
Others in the same band
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Feathered Friends
Feathered Friends Flicker UL 20 Quilt
The Flicker answers the quilt-versus-bag argument by refusing to pick: a full-length centre zip and a drawcord footbox mean it closes into a hoodless bag on a cold night, opens as a quilt on a mild one, and lies flat as a blanket in a hut. Because the zip runs down the middle rather than the side, the closure sits over your chest where you can reach it, and there are no pad straps to fight. Sixty-two inches of wrap width is generous, and 14.7 ounces of 950-fill down sits inside a 25.5-ounce total.
Best for: People who cannot decide between a quilt and a bag
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NEMO
NEMO Pulse Quilt
1000-fill down is the highest fill power available at any price, and the Pulse is the only item in this catalogue that uses it. The result is a 2.3-litre packed volume — smaller than a one-litre bottle and a bit — and 18 ounces for a quilt with a published ISO lower limit of 23 °F. It is also $550, which is the most expensive quilt here, and it is the only quilt in the catalogue with a lab figure attached. Whether 1000-fill is worth the money over 900 is the sort of question a spreadsheet answers better than a salesperson does; the honest answer is that the last hundred points of fill power buys about an ounce.
Best for: Thru-hikers optimising packed volume above everything
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Katabatic Gear
Katabatic Flex 22 Quilt
Katabatic's pad-attachment system is the thing the rest of the quilt world copies, and the Flex is the model built around it: the quilt clips to two cords that run under the pad, and it can slide and roll with you while the edges stay sealed. That is the whole answer to the standard complaint about quilts. The Flex adds a zippered footbox to the formula so the same quilt opens flat into a blanket on a warm night, at the cost of an ounce or so over the sewn-footbox Alsek. Katabatic publishes single-side loft (2.75 inches here) and exact fill weights per size, but no lab rating.
Best for: Quilt sceptics — the attachment system is the reason to try one
Full spec sheet