We haven’t even talked about the actual down yet which has a fill power of no less than 900. That basically means super high loft and thermal efficiency. Montbell state on their website that they’re careful about where their down comes from and only use feathers that are by-product of the foot industry – so no live plucking goes on.

The bag comes with a stuff sack that’s compressed with two toggled drawcords and also a storage sack that doubles as a laundry bag for machine washing. As for the zip, it’s slightly short, right-handed, anti-snag and has a water resistant laminate.

One thing it’s certainly worth knowing, at least for any tall people out there, is that the regular Montbell Seamless Down Hugger is quite a small sleeping bag. If you’re six foot or more, you’ll want to go for the Seamless Down Hugger Long.

Temperature Rating

On their website, Montbell state that this has a comfort rating of 4℃ with the lower limit at -1℃, that’s all based on the ISO 23537 standard. With that in mind this probably won’t be warm enough for every single night through early spring and late autumn – not in Britain anyway – but for the milder days in those seasons it’ll be fine.

Tester’s Verdict

Will Renwick, editor of Outdoors Magic

“My testing period for this sleeping bag hasn’t coincided with any extremely cold nights unfortunately, so I can’t really comment too much on its insulating performance. Perhaps the best test I put it through was a wet and suprisingly cold night in the Brecon Beacons a couple of weeks ago. It got down to about 4 degrees but I was warm, dry and snug with this. It does have a lovely loftiness to it and the materials seem of a very high spec, so I can see myself being happy to use it through most of spring and autumn though. When colder nights are forecast I’d probably just make sure I had some good baselayers and a good mat.

“It definitely ticks all the right boxes for me. I do a lot of UK long-distance walking and therefore I like kit that’s super light but that’s still able to deliver what I need from it. A few years ago I hiked the Cambrian Way through Wales in May and was glad to have chosen the Force Ten Vulcan for it. At 960g, that served me very well and I didn’t regret taking it, however, having now had this one from Montbell in my hands, I reckon it would’ve been even better for me. It might be a tad less insulating, but at just 541g it’s much, much lighter and also more packable as well.

“I’ve found it’s a comfortable size for my 5 foot 10 height. I didn’t feel at all constricted by it and found it easy enough to get in and out of. There was a fair bit of condensation in my tent but the outer fabric shielded the down and didn’t get saturated.

“That internal construction is certainly very impressive. It seems to work as intended; I didn’t feel the down migrated much, at least not enough to leave any cold spots. You’d probably want to give the whole thing a bit of a shake about before use though, just to get the insulation working as efficiently as possible.

“The outer fabric feels a little on the precious side and I did feel like I had to treat it with a bit of care. Still, I haven’t had any niggles. Due to its windproof material, I also found that it’s not the easiest of bags to compress down into a stuff sack. At least not at first anyway. Eventually I realised that it’s a bit like a sleeping mat and you need to squeeze the air out of it from the foot towards the hood where it can escape. Once you get that nailed down it’s very easy to bundle this into a tightly compressed package that takes up an impressively small amount of space in a backpack.

“I’ll definitely be taking this on my next long distance walk or fast packing trip.”