Patagonia Down Sweater Hoody Review

Patagonia created an excellent down jacket with the Down Sweater. The 800 fill down gives this jacket a strong warmth-to-weight ratio. The hood and handwarmer pockets provide the essential features you'd want in a jacket and the piece has a top-tier fit. Warm, comfortable, and with all the features that anyone would want while out hiking, climbing, or skiing, the Down Sweater has the quality one would expect from Patagonia.

Performance Comparison

Warmth

Patagonia stuffed 800-fill down into a DWR (durable water repellent) recycled ripstop nylon outer to create this jacket. Down's fill quality is figured out by filling a cylindrical container with one ounce of down and then compressing it for a minute. After the sixty seconds, the amount of space filled is then considered the fill so 600 cubic inches of down equals a 600 fill. 900 fill down is as good as it gets and so the 800 fill comes in at a very high quality. The warmth of a jacket is then measured in not only the quality of the fill but also the amount of it. The Down Sweater has a decent amount of fill, making it an excellent mid layer piece.

Additionally, the jacket has some features to help trap warmth. Elastic wrist cuffs, a cinchable hood, and a drawcord at the waist help trap the heat inside of the jacket and prevent wind from getting in.

Overall, the Down Sweater offers a good amount of warmth and is more than suitable for active outdoor adventures in the cold.

Weight

Our size medium weighs in at 14.89 ounces, making it one of the heavier jackets we tested. This translated into a slightly warmer jacket but the weight to warmth isn't amazing in this piece. The jacket's features add a bit to the jacket and make it heavier.

While the weight of this piece isn't the best jacket for alpine missions where every ounce counts, it is a great piece for general use in the backcountry, out at the crag, or for staying warm around town.

Water Resistance

Patagonia treats its jackets with a DWR (durable water repellent) that helps bead off the initial drops of water during a rainstorm or afternoon thunderstorm. Our testers wore this while climbing in Rocky Mountain National Park and in Rifle Colorado. They found the DWR to be adequate but would start to get wet after heavy or prolonged weather.

As with most down jackets, this piece needs to be coupled with a hard shell or rain jacket if the precipitation becomes heavy or long-lasting. If the jacket does get wet, the down isn't treated so it tends to clump and offers significantly less warmth. Make sure to check the forecast to be prepared.

Comfort

The Down Sweater jacket has a slightly athletic fit. While it's not as tapered as some of the pieces reviewed, it also stays away from the boxy style of many larger down jackets. Our bigger, more athletically built testers enjoyed the jacket for the freedom of mobility it offered, liking the long torso and lengthy arms, which prevent the jacket from riding up.

The fleece against the inside of the jacket also felt nice against our tester's skin when they needed to zip the hood up. The overall feel of the jacket was one of the most comfortable that our testers tried. The jacket layered well with other pieces over and under it too making wearing it nice.

Compressibility

This jacket fits inside the interior chest pocket. The dual-sided zipper makes closing it easier and the clip-in point attachment allows for it to be hung from a harness or outside of a backpack. While the quality of the down helps with the compression, overall this piece ended up being a bit large.

While this jacket has a built-in stuff sack and features a clip-in point to attach to your harness, the compressed overall size is larger than something we'd want dangling from our waist. It felt a bit big and bulky and some of our testers struggled to fit it into the interior zipper pocket. But stuffing into itself felt better than having to carry around a separate stuff sack.

Overall, this jacket had decent compressibility compared to the other jackets in this review.

Features

The Down Sweater focuses on simplicity. The two zippered hand warmer pockets provide ample space for storing a phone and gloves. The internal chest pocket has a solid amount of space to store keys and a wallet.

The jacket's hood has a single pull at the back to adjust it. The waist hem cinches as well as the elastic wrist cuffs help further batten down the hatches, preventing warm air from escaping and keeping cold air out. Microfleece around the chin zipper adds to the warmth by making it comfortable to zip up the hood.

These features, while not super technical, give the jacket a simple, functional feel. While a pair of drop pockets inside the coat for gloves or a more brimmed hood would have helped, the jacket's features provide everything that a generalist would need in the mountains or while hanging out after skiing.

Should You Buy the Patagonia Down Sweater?

The Down Sweater falls in the middle of the pack in terms of price. The jacket's versatility in both being a layer over and under other garments makes it exceptional for time in the mountains. The style, warmth, and comfort of the jacket make it a classic piece. Patagonia's quality assurance adds to the value making this an exceptional jacket and a worthwhile investment.

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