Sierra Designs Cloud 15 Review

Bard

Sure looks like a nice bag :) and the hood seems snug like a bug

A couple of things stand out though:
1) color – a bag that aint dark means to me that someone preferred fashion over function. Admittedly its sexy thou
2) baffle weight – HUH??? these guys have horizontal baffles WITH flow gates located throughout the baffles (how tightly spaced i dont know- so essentially they have vertical AND horizontal baffling – how much less can they be? most bags we all use are constructed in a simple manner (eg WM, FF, zpacks, EE…) and i cant see how baffle material can be more than a couple of oz all together…so you save 0.5 oz MAYBE??
3)heat transfer – i read that in insotect's website a while back when looking at the Plasma….and im not sure i buy this:

the human body has a very intricate system to balance heat transfer within the body – its called blood flow. I think (of course I have no validation for this) that the complexity of this heat transfer system is way way more detailed than what insotect did – so why do i NEED this??? Imagine sleeping in a marginally cold night say 12F in 15F bag and you are cold-ish…your blood restricts flow to the extremities to keep core warm…there is a REASON for this…and then come insotect and ruin it??

dunno – just saying

Nice review, novel product

I have a white bag. Problem is, if I want to dry it in the sun, it doesn't absorb light very good. Won't have white bag again. It is sort of nice because you can see dark colored stuff on it more easy and brush it off before it finds it's way inside.

I know I have a gift for missing the obvious, but except for the name "15" I failed to notice any information as to the low temperature rating of this bag. Is it in fact 15 degree?

Why no spec chart?

Yeah I guess we can go look at SD:

http://www.sierradesigns.com/p-474-cloud-15.aspx

Does it use a variable fill ratio, or is it an even amount of down front and back? Side-sleepers need to know that (or the hood is wasted).

I like seeing the 900 fill being used.

I take it you used it. What were the field conditions? Does the 15 F rating hold up in your experience?

Many of us started backpacking with US Army surplus down/feather bags with vertical baffling in the 50's and 60's, followed by commercially available bags from the Alaskan Sleeping Bag Company and Eddie Bauer that had lighter fabrics but similar vertical baffles. Much time was spent re-distributing the down in these channels as it tended to shift top to bottom or reverse. Most of us thought that horizontal baffling was an improvement has they better controlled down shift.

Did you experience much fill shift in this bag, or did it seem similar to more conventionally baffled models?

My initial questions are similar to Ray's — basically, why is there no info about this bag's performance? No real specs? No testing notes from the field?

Pictures and poetic cloud analogies do not a gear review make.

I think most of us come to backpacking light (and pay for membership) because this is the best (only?) site that has empirical, quantitative, comparative data about gear. In stark contrast, this review reads like ad copy from a PR firm.

No offense to the author — the BPL editor should have sent this review back to the drawing board for more info before it ever went to press.

This is a great introduction to a bag. Perhaps it could just be stated as such. I look forward to reading more about the bag over further testing.

I would love to read more intro's to new gear going into the review pile at bpl. I feel like I'm missing out on the new stuff. No one is covering the masses of gear at the OR shows. Unless I missed something. :)

My question as well…I probably missed the obvious but can we assume that the "15" refers to the temperature rating of the bag? -B.Lutz

I find the statement "Insotect is clearly applied differently by different *manufacturers*" quite awkward when Insotect is a brand name of a single manufacturer. The term *brand* would be more appropriate in that sentence, as some people (like me) will associate the term manufacturer with factory, as opposed to a consumer brand (which is what I presume is meant by the author).

A white sleeping bag? That thing is going to look so dirty after a while.

"That thing is going to look so dirty after a while."

There have been a few references made made to how this bag will get or look dirty in a short period of time and usage.

Question:

Any bag of any color is going to get just as dirty over a similar period of time and usage, so are we concerned that the bag will get "dirty" or are we concerned that it will just look "dirty"?

Appearances can be deceiving. ;-?

SD could have given into a marketing ploy and made this bag to mimic an actual cloud. If so maybe SD should have used silver thread instead of blue or a silver grey material inside to reference a silver lining. ;-)

Party On,

Newton

It will just "look" dirty. It could get dirty and ugly enough that it would kill the resell value.

To jump onto "Newton's party"

if the bag is white, you'll see it's dirty, so you'll clean it off, so it will actually be cleaner

at least that's how it works with my white sleeping bag

maybe re-sale value is less important than usability

but, like I said, maybe the real factor is white doesn't absorb sunlight so it doesn't dry out very good in the sun

Actually, my white bag has a black underside so I just face that to the sun and it probably dries okay

"It will just "look" dirty. It could get dirty and ugly enough that it would kill the resell value."

Good. I am tired of all the gear swap posts clogging up the recent threads list. They make all the BPL pages load slooooowly.

I've been using a white Cuben quilt for over 2 years. It isn't dirty. I sleep on top of a pad and ground sheet.

But you sleep in the desert

If you slept in the muddy Northwest you'de have a dirty bag : )

"But you sleep in the desert

If you slept in the muddy Northwest you'de have a dirty bag : ) "

I can't help it if I am smarter than the average bear. :)

"If you slept in the muddy Northwest you'de have a dirty bag : )"

I'd have a dirty tent bottom. ;-)

I sleep inside of a tent, on an inflatable pad and use a red outer and black inner top quilt.

Party On,

Newton

Some types of reviews are in-depth and technical, and based on enough field use to afford the opportunity to make judgments about performance. These reviews get review ratings.

Others are cursory reviews of gear that we may not have time to subject to extensive field testing. They get reviews that are more subjective in nature and I try to give authors as much latitude as possible when writing them. These reviews don't get review ratings attached to them. Such is the nature of this particular one.

We can't do technical reviews of everything, but there are indeed products, like this one, where we want to get *some* information out to you about the products.

@RJ

That makes sense (to me at least) as one could benefit from an "unboxing"+ hands on type of mini review (compared to just reading MFG specs) since it says something about quality of workmanship, final weight, ease of use of hardware (eg zips) and such.

I think you should just change the name as suggested to something like "preview" or "mini review" etc

RE vertical baffles with flow gates – I still am puzzled as I was when I first read about it.. would LOVE if someone who has insight (Caffin/RJ/RIchard N?????) would chime in on why this should be better in managing heat transfer in my body than my own blood stream.

Michael Cheifetz,

I also wonder how well this flow idea works…

We don't expect much heat to flow through the insulation on top of us or we would get cold. If we expect the 3 or however many inches of insulation on top of us to severely restrict heat flow and keep us warm, how much heat do we expect to flow 8, 15, 22 inches down our legs?

The only difference I can see is that the insulation on top of us is capped by a nylon shell and the insulation running down the baffles is not.. Well, there are the flow gates..

By 'extremity', I figure they mean legs. My arms stay in the torso touching zone.

Anyway,I am not sure I buy this reason for this type of baffle.

All this talk of flow has a Jack Johnson song stuck in my head

Sorry for the double post. I have trouble with the page timing out during submission. I go back to the thread, hit refresh, see no post, so I re-post,and then I see multiple posts…

I don't know that I buy into the design myself.

http://www.insotect.com/insotectflow.php

Depending on how often the flow gates are spaced I don't see that it uses much less baffle material. But it does make it harder to add more down to say just the top third of a bag or quilt (where most people need it) unless they make flowLESS gates too. ;-)

Personally I have hotter feet and a cold torso when I sleep. I would rather keep my precious body heat where it is, not send it down to my feet. I beta tested two winter bags that used this and they were not as warm as my "traditional" bags.

Of course the whole design is to get away with less down in the first place. Light weight rules you know…

I also tested a winter bag with the Insotect baffles last year, and, while it wasn't a bad sleeping bag, I am very skeptical about any supposed benefits from heat moving up and down the baffles. The whole think stinks of snake oil to me.

As Mike Cheifetz has already said, the human body does the work of transferring heat from the core to the extremities. What more can an insulated tube do than keep the air around your body from getting as cold as the air outside the bag?

The Clymb is offering the bag for $379.98. Not sure if that's been the standard discount for this bag but at least it puts it in the same ballpark with the Feathered Friends Swallow (unless similarly discounted).
http://www.theclymb.com/brand-event/173287/show-product/260723?f=mi