Vitals Vantage Alpine Outdoor Puffer Jacket Review: The perfect spring puffer

I’ll admit that I would be very impressed with ExpeDry even if it didn’t work, if only for its use of basic chemistry, which I even dimly remember when I was in high school but for some reason never made it into a product until recently. What’s even better is that He does a job.

I don’t have a lab, and I’m not particularly interested in what happens in one anyway, but I’m a traveler, I live in a cold climate, and I absolutely hate being cold. In the real world, where I live, if your jacket loses its fluff and gets cold, bad things happen. In my testing, the Vantage jacket lost almost no height all day, even when I’m active and sweating in it.

Better than DWR?

Photo: Scott Gilbertson

Outdoor Vitals is not the first to use ExpeDry. Marmot, Katabatic Gear, and many others also have many types Sleeping bags And jackets with ExpeDry, but the Vantage is the first time I’ve noticed a real difference. The Vantage has less padding than many other puffer jackets I wear regularly, yet keeps me just as warm, if not warmer, thanks in part to losing very little loft over the course of the day.

ExpeDry proponents also claim that it will last longer than DWR coated (whether chemically coated or wax coated) just because it is uncoated, and therefore will retain its slickness longer. I haven’t used any ExpeDry down products long enough to test this yet, but based on my experience with the Vantage Alpine jacket and the way it holds up under adverse conditions, this claim makes sense.

The second thing Vantage uses to mitigate heat loss is Outdoor Vital’s Nova Zero Stitch fabric, which, as the name suggests, uses no stitches. There are still baffles to keep the bottom in place, but instead of making thousands of tiny holes as you would in sewing, baffles and other seams are woven into the fabric. Where the traditional method has an inner and outer fabric that is then stitched (or bonded/welded), Zero Stitch fabric is two pieces woven together. It’s hard to imagine how this works, however Vitals released a video To explain.