Thermoball

Looking at the weight of the garments (12 oz jacket, 14 oz hoody, 9 oz vest) I don't see this as exciting. You can easily make a primaloft or Climashield garment the same weight or less and it will be warmer because you won't have to quilt it as much (if at all). So while Thermoball may possibly be warmer per ounce if you measure just the insulation in a lab, the additional quilting and resultant cold spots will probably make it less efficient in the actual finished garment.

Plus, for MYOG it would be a lot more work, weighing out and filling like a down item instead of dealing with sheets of insulation.

that sounds like Primaloft One – like Paul said, not worth it even if it's slightly better

they're always making claims of some synthetic that's as good as down

When new fabrics and insulations come out there's usually at least a year lag (often two or more) before the products become available for the DIY/MYOG community. There's a ton of economics and logistics involved, but basically the big name brands are left with exclusives for a few years.

Luckily, as others have mentioned, thermoball doesn't look like that much of an improvement over PL1 or APEX in practice.

In a few years time though we'll understand it's durability better and I see that as one area where it could shine over the current synthetics…right around the time it'll be available for us.

"In a few years time though we'll understand it's durability better and I see that as one area where it could shine over the current synthetics…right around the time it'll be available for us."

That's the one good thing about the lag.

Thermoball is a warm as ~600 fill down per thickness… Making it a terrible synthetic insulation.
It needs a lot of stabilization (baffling), is not efficient per thickness, and not efficient per oz (nominal).
Down also needs a lot of baffling and thickness, however the nominal insulation value is fantastic.
It's all marketing, technically true, but misleading.

Anthony

I can't remember where I saw it but somewhere I saw a very rough estimate of 800+ fill downs clo value as ~2.5clo/oz, the most competitive synthetics as around .8clo/oz.

Down is fantastically efficient for the weight.

Anthony