Coreloft- clo rating?

[Vig S]

Anyone know what the clo value is for Coreloft? I'm looking at a couple jackets that use this material and have no way of comparing it to Primaloft (One .92, Sport .79, Eco .74). Thanks.

[Vig S]

One thing I like about Arcteryx is that the service is fantastic. Coreloft looks like a pretty good insulating material if it's only 5% worse than Primaloft One.
______

Hello Vig,

I apologize for the delayed response. I have been in touch with our designers in order to answer your question as best I can.

Currently, Arc'teryx does not have a recorded clo value for Coreloft. Apparently, there are two standards for testing clo value when it comes to Coreloft and even these tests vary with weight. In some instances Coreloft was tested and found to have a higher clo value compared to Primaloft. Other instances, Coreloft was tested with a lower value compared to Primaloft. Overall, I was told that the accepted standard is Coreloft falling 5% below Primaloft One when tested head to head.

With regards to Synthetic fiber fill there's two factors that relate to warmth.

One is clo and the other is loft.

Insulations with high clo values, like down, are very fast acting. A garment with a high clo value, once on, traps your body heat very quickly. In comparison, insulations with high loft, generally have a lower clo for a given weight. The higher loft takes longer to heat the insulation and feel the insulation warm, but there is the potential to trap a lot of heat. Down being the ultimate combination of both clo and loft.

Frequently, to make up for Primaloft having a higher clo, Coreloft has a little more loft.

I was also informed that when determining the warmth of down, knowledge of the weight is really important because the density of the down can vary. However, synthetic insulation is different because the density does not vary. When comparing 2 comparable synthetic down jackets, the higher the g/m^2 the warmer it will be.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Kind Regards,

[whitenoise .]

Thanks for posting this! And wow, that's some really helpful customer service.

I just ordered the Atom SV Hoodie and I'm looking forward to giving it a shot.

[James holden]

I was also informed that when determining the warmth of down, knowledge of the weight is really important because the density of the down can vary. However, synthetic insulation is different because the density does not vary. When comparing 2 comparable synthetic down jackets, the higher the g/m^2 the warmer it will be.

that doesnt make any sense … if that were true then we wouldnt need to improve on the synthetic fills every so often … for example patagucci reduced the gm of their DAS because the new primaloft one has a higher clo/oz value than the old PL1 … and patagucci still claims the newer thinner one is warmer i believe than the older thicker one …

this would be question for richard, if you want to contact him

but the above statement makes absolutely no sense … we'd still all be using the old polarguard 3D

and there are no synthetic down jacket ;)

[Roger Caffin]

> > density of the down can vary.
> that doesnt make any sense

After allowing for the strange grammar the Arcteryx reply was written in, I think what he meant was that the way down fills a volume can vary, while the way a synthetic insulation fills a volume does not. That's quite true.

Cheers

[James holden]

no doubt

but the "warmth" of a jacket is more than the g/m … it also has quite a bit to do with the insulation involved … which why we strive to use better synthetic fills all the time

as an aside … id love to see a standard for testing all these synthetic insulations … everyone and their dog has their own version … montbell, marmot, MH, dead bird, etc … thats the problem, you never really know how "warm" it will be relative to the standard primaloft …

i suspect the reason why many companies dont use primaloft or limits their use is because either they dont want to pay fees to em, they dont want a proper comparison (easier when stuff is proprietary), or they dont believe the insulation is good enough (bunk IMO as primaloft is used by top notch mountain equipment such as RAB, patagucci, etc)

[Roger Caffin]

> why many companies dont use primaloft or limits their use is because either they dont want to pay fees

Whatever made you think that ??? :-)

Good point, and that is what limits the profit margin available to a new-improved product. Charge too much and someone else will enter the market and undercut you.
(In many cases, 'someone' = the original Chinese factory, but that's another thread.)

What this does mean is that products improve across the board. Fancy Malden Mills fleece for jackets selling at $150 in gear shops one year, cheap Chinese fleece jackets of almost-as-good quality at Walmart 2 years later. Same for underwear etc, as noted in another thread.

Cheers

[James holden]

or more stuff for the same price with insulation you dont really know …

two cases in point … MH switched the compressor jackets from PL1 … and MEC some of their jackets as well …

neither has dropped the price that i know of

dead bird aint exactly cheap ;)

[Colin Krusor]

"Insulations with high clo values, like down, are very fast acting. A garment with a high clo value, once on, traps your body heat very quickly. In comparison, insulations with high loft, generally have a lower clo for a given weight. The higher loft takes longer to heat the insulation and feel the insulation warm, but there is the potential to trap a lot of heat. Down being the ultimate combination of both clo and loft."

I'm pleased to see that the response to your inquiry was so thorough. This is a good example of excellent customer service, I think. But I also think the above explanation of clo vs. loft is the kind of tidy kerfuffle that marketers are hired to invent. "Fast acting" insulation?

I apologize for criticizing the well-meaning response from that representative. I just think that it isn't too difficult to come up with accessible, non-scientific explanations of things like clo value that are simplistic and amenable to marketing but more or less correct.

[Jeffs Eleven]

Yeah that one got me too. Although I stop short of calling it 'kerfuffle' :P

I have found that, for me, I can put on my UL Down JKT and it gets warm quick, but my Compressor (PL1) DOES seem to take longer to get heated up. I feel like I have to move around for a minute to create some warmth. If I just put it on (when I get a little chilly) and stand around- I never really warm up. But when I do get it warm- its plenty insulation.

When I read that quote from the CS person, all I could make of it was that down warms up more quickly than syn.

I dont know if this is true, or even possible, but it seems like it from my experiences.

[Jerry Adams]

"Insulations with high clo values, like down, are very fast acting. A garment with a high clo value, once on, traps your body heat very quickly. In comparison, insulations with high loft, generally have a lower clo for a given weight. The higher loft takes longer to heat the insulation and feel the insulation warm, but there is the potential to trap a lot of heat. Down being the ultimate combination of both clo and loft."

That doesn't make sense to me, but I'm not an expert:

"Insulations with high clo values, like down, are very fast acting"

clo is a unit of insulation, like R value for residences. Any insulation can achieve a specific clo value if you select the right thickness of that insulation.

Some insulations have a higher clo per weight – down is best, Primaloft One is not quite as good, Apex or Primaloft Sport are a little less.

Some insulations have a higher clo per thickness (loft) – Thinsulate is better, other synthetics are less, down is worst.

"A garment with a high clo value, once on, traps your body heat very quickly."

As a possibly ridiculous example, if a garment is twice as thick, it will have twice the clo value, but take longer to warm up.

High clo per weight would tend to warm up faster. To simplify, the heat capacity of an insulation is related to it's weight. Water or metal as an extreme example, is very heavy and takes a long time to heat up. Down has a higher clo per weight so it takes less time to warm it up. Higher loft synthetic like Primaloft One takes longer to heat up that down. Other synthetics take longer than PL1. etc.

Maybe they should just say that down heats up faster and leave it at that.

It just bugs me when they come up with some bogus explanation.

Maybe I shouldn't worry about this – argue about politics or something.

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