The Sierra Designs Backcountry Bed700 - Women's is unique and hard to describe. It is the most comfortable women's sleeping bag in this review and wins our Top Pick Award for Comfort. Its clever half quilt and "catenary" shaped opening cradle the sleeper and feel comforting and warm. We love the versatility it provides. The quilt allows for different sleeping positions, as well as the ability to adjust to many different temperatures. The new version of the Backcountry Bed is less expensive, but Sierra Designs has lowered the quality of the down fill to 700 fill, making it less lofty and warm than the previous 800 fill. If you're fed up with traditional mummy bag design and want something that makes you feel like you're in your bed at home, you should seriously consider the Backcountry Bed.
Sierra Designs Backcountry Bed 700 - Women's Review
Compare prices at 2 resellers Pros: Comfortable, versatile, good for stomach sleepers
Cons: Heavy for a down bag, bulky
Manufacturer: Sierra Designs
The Skinny
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Our Analysis and Test Results
The Backcountry Bed 700 is a stomach sleeper's best friend. This comfortable and versatile sleeping bag allows you to sleep in all different positions and regulate your warmth with its quilt insert. It wins our Top Pick Award because the quilt makes you feel like you're sleeping in an actual bed and is very comforting.
Warmth
The intricacies of the bag/quilt interface took some time to get used to. At first, our testers found this bag a bit drafty in colder temperatures if the quilt wasn't properly tucked. We had a similar problem with the Sierra Designs Cloud's comforter. This is one drawback to the design of the Backcountry Bed, but once you get used to it, it becomes easier to use. When the quilt is completely tucked in, it seems to stay put, even when you move around. This bag has no zippers, so once it's all tucked in, there are no draft points to worry about. It also allows you to be stealthier getting in and out as not to disturb your tent mate undoing your zipper.
The temperature rating of EN comfort 20F seems slightly ambitious. We'd hesitate to take the Backcountry Bed out below freezing. We feel comfortable and warm in this bag at night when temperatures get down into the mid-30s. It has 24 ounces of 700 fill down, which is lower quality and loft than the higher end bags like the Marmot Phase 20 but still feels fluffy and cozy. Luckily if you're a warm sleeper, it is effortless to regulate your temperature with the integrated quilt and foot vent. If you are too hot at night, you can open up the bag by lowering a corner of the quilt or throwing the whole thing off. The Backcountry Bed has cozy hand pockets in the edges of the quilt that you can use when the quilt is untucked, like a folded down comforter, or put your hands into wrap it around you inside. We like that the bag does not have insulation on the back through the torso, as it is meant to have a sleeping pad insulate you from the ground. But it is insulated all the way around the foot box — an area that women tend to get very cold. If you want warmth, the toastiest traditional mummy bag we tested was the Feathered Friends Egret.
Weight
Even though the quality of down is lower in the new version of the bag, we were impressed to see that Sierra Designs shaved 3 ounces off the old Backcountry Bed's weight.
Weighing in at 39 ounces, it is 11.6 ounces heavier than our Best Buy Winner and the Backcountry Bed's counterpart, the Cloud 800. However, this is a very lofty, comfortable bag with a decent 18 ounces of down fill. For some people that extra weight might be worth it for a quality night sleep. For the ounce-counters, it's probably not.
Comfort
This bag scores high in the comfort department. It's the top scorer in this category followed closely by the Sierra Designs Cloud 800 and Egret. The quilt feature allows you to do virtually anything with your arms, including sticking them out of the bag.
When the quilt is all tucked in it feels very cozy, almost as if you are being cradled in it. The ability to regulate your temperature by adjusting the quilt and the foot gasket make it extra comfortable at many different temperatures. While the NEMO Rave 15 is designed to offer a lot of leg room, the Backcountry Bed has more room for the upper torso and arms and less for the legs. Side sleeping is still quite easily done — your legs just rotate inside the bag.
In this new version of the Bed, the bottom of the bag seems to have been widened to allow for more leg room, similar the Kelty Cosmic Down or the Neutrino. If you're looking ultimate leg room, check out the Big Agnes Roxy Ann.
Packed Size
Luckily this bag's shell material and fill are quite compressible. We can just barely fit it into a small compression sack when we are trying to keep the size of our pack down.
It is not as compressible as the REI Joule or the Rab Neutrino, but still more compressible than all the synthetic bags in this review like The North Face Cat's Meow.
Features
Sierra Designs has put a lot of thought into the design and features of this sleeping bag. We like how well all the features work together to create the whole package. The catenary shaped opening of the bag is somewhat womb-like, cradling you and keeping your arms tucked in, holding the quilt in place as well. Sierra Designs has added a cord closure system in the new 700 version to help keep the quilt tucked in when you want it. The quilt itself is lofty and cozy, and the hand/arm pockets work well when your arms are outside the bag, either on your back or stomach. We like the zipper-less foot-venting gasket, although it is quite easy to stick your feet out of it accidentally, this is only a minor problem.
The DriDown hydrophobic down fill will give you a bit more piece of mind if things are starting to get wet and soggy, and should keep the bag loftier longer. The updated version also has PFC free down. Read more about hydrophobic down in our Buying Advice Article.
Best Application
This sleeping bag is great for three season camping and backpacking trips. If you are a stomach sleeper or feel claustrophobic in a regular mummy bag, the Backcountry Bed could be a great solution. As we have already mentioned, this bag is very versatile. It allows you to sleep in any position — except for starfish since your legs are still confined to the mummy bag shape. The ability to tuck and un-tuck the quilt allows you to regulate your temperature easily. The only downside is that this bag will never be able to mate with another sleeping bag if you have the desire to combine bags with another human.
Value
With the drop of quality and quantity of down fill, the price on the Backcountry Bed has dropped significantly with the new 2018 version and is now a reasonable $290. Personally, we would save ourselves 11 ounces and spend $10 more for the Sierra Designs Cloud 800 for a higher quality product that has a similar comforter style, although not quite as versatile as the Bed.
Conclusion
This unique, versatile sleeping bag is a good, comfortable choice for backpacking and camping. It wins our Top Pick Award because it is so comfortable. We like the innovative partial quilt design and how the bag cradles us. It has lots of great features and high-quality materials. The 2018 version is less expensive, lighter and more compressible, but has lower quality down and doesn't seem as warm to us. Nine times out of ten we would recommend a lighter, more conventional sleeping bag over the Backcountry Bed, but for those who need more room for their torso to move around and want to feel more like they're in their bed, this could be the solution.
— Jessica Haist
