Best performance quilt from a mainstream outdoor gear brand

Therm-a-Rest Vesper Quilt is an excellent ultralight backpacking quilt with a high warmth-to-weight ratio from a mainstream brand, and the best performance backpacking quilt sold at REI at time of writing.

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• Weight: 19.0 oz
• Price: $460
• Down: 900 fill power RDS goose down with Nikwax DWR
• Fill Weight: 12.5
• Fabric: 10D ripstop nylon with DWR
• Pros: Ultralight. Good warmth-to-weight. Widely distributed.
• Cons: Slightly underfilled with down. Overuse of horizontal baffles. Very narrow footbox.

Features

Vesper is made with premium ingredients that we would describe as great-not-best. That is, 900 fill power down with a name-brand Nikwax DWR hydrophobic treatment, 10d ripstop nylon. While you can definitely get a better quilt for $460, you can’t get a better quilt at REI, Backcountry, or anywhere outside the cottage industry.

As it should be, this is a minimalist design with few bells and whistles. It has the usual neck snap and cinch, as well as sleeping pad connectors, and that’s about it. We question the use of horizontal baffles along the torso which can lead to cold spots as down drifts away from high points.

But the product information notes “efficient box baffled construction with mesh walls,” so we presume there are interior blockades to keep plumes from drifting off the top center while in use.

Weighing only 19 oz, it’s actually lighter than two of top performers, and the third lightest overall quilt on our list. However most of our top ultralight quilts are comfortable into the 20s, and Vesper is much less warm because they did not fill it with enough down. We do not feel that this is a 20 degree quilt, and we think its comfort maxes out at freezing. It would definitely benefit from a couple extra ounces of additional down fill. It would be more accurate to call this quilt Vesper 25.

The underfilled baffles leads to a lower warmth-to-weight ratio than is optimally possible, and we suspect this quilt would lose loft after its first season, as the plumes receive a bit of use-damage from their first compression cycles and there is no extra down to backfill.

Of course, 900 fill power down is very expensive, so the fill amount as-is keeps the product below $500, which we are thankful for.

Verdict

But all in all, Vesper is an excellent product, and we commend Therm-a-Rest on a bang up design to help spread the gospel of backpacking quilts. It’s second only to the very top tier of cottage industry quilts.

View more quilts in our complete guide to the best quilts for backpacking, or the best sleeping bags for backpacking.