Quote:
Originally Posted by markharf
This is an important point. A lot of manufactured stuff is designed to spec out well, without regard for real-world utility. The best temperature ratings in combination with total weight can be achieved in a very narrow bag with a short zipper.
Score this one in favor of brick and mortar shops, where you can measure your own loft and by all means try the bag out yourself before buying. If your first bag costs an extra ten or twenty dollars/pounds/Euros, consider it money well-spent.
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Narrow bags are just awful to sleep in - in my experience anyway. There was a trend some years back to make bags that tapered from the hips downwards so that both legs were held tight together. The idea (presumably anyway) was to cut out 'dead space' and so keep everything warmer. It sounds great in theory and I even bought into it with my own money. That was the only bag I've ever gotten rid of; the psychological effect of feeling like your legs have been bandaged together made sleep impossible.
Experience has also taught me that sleeping bags don't just have minimum temperature specs; they have ranges. That is, a given bag is (more or less) usable between a temperature where it's too warm and and one where it doesn't keep you warm. If you buy a bag with better low temperature performance than you're likely to need 'just in case', it means you've bought one with a lower high temperature performance - and higher temperatures are where most bags are actually used. My worst experience has been using a bag rated to -25C when the night time temp didn't fall below +25C. It was absolutely unusable - and likely to become permanently so with the amount of sweat involved in try to use it.
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