This is one of those down jackets that is incredibly lofty and that means it’s super comfy to wear – it’s like a duvet.
It’s filled with an 800 fill power down housed in stitched through baffles. 800 is a pretty good thermal efficiency; OK you can find plenty of jackets with the same price tag but also a higher fill power, but it’s still a decent rating and the jacket definitely feels warm. At 402g, it’s also a pretty decent weight and it’ll pack down to about the size of a pint glass too.
Who is the Salomon Elixir Ultra Down For?
This is a versatile jacket. During our tests during cold and windy conditions in the Cairngorms when there was snow on the tops, it was the ideal warm layer during a day of hiking. While it’s not technically made for skiing, we can also see it being useful to wear during sunny days on the slopes or as part of a layering system on the not-so-nice days.
Pros: Excellent warmth-to-weight,
Cons: Pockets cut off by hipbelt
It’s got a long cut, as you can see in the pictures, so if you’re looking for a down jacket to wear underneath a waterproof jacket, you’ll want to have a suitably long waterproof jacket too.
Features and Materials
One interesting thing about this jacket is that it has a reflective lining designed to reflect heat back to your body. Salomon explained to us that this is a vapour-deposited metallic coating that’s directly applied to the fabric. We’ve seen linings in jackets before – including the Rab Mythic Ultra and Columbia’s Omni-Heat range – but we’ve not seen them applied in this way.
The company behind the tech say that this helps to bring down the overall carbon footprint of the jacket as it reduces the need for extra insulation material within the fill – supposedly by up to 50%.
