The REI Magma 850 Down Hoodie Jacket strikes an excellent balance between warmth, features, cost, and durability. Insulated with highly compressible premium goose down, it’s an ideal insulation layer for cold-weather camping and hiking when you need a warm jacket to enjoy summit views, star-gazing, or for extra insulation inside your sleeping bag or backpacking quilt. It’s also quite affordable, especially when coupled with a 20% Off REI member coupon, and makes a good crossover winter jacket that can span outdoor adventures or urban commuting.
RELATED: 10 Best Down Jackets For Hiking and Backpacking
Specs at a Glance
- Insulation: 850 Fill power goose down
- Weight: 12.5 oz
- Fill Weight: Not provided by REI
- Pockets: 3 (zippered)
- Adjustable Hood: Yes
- Internal Draft Collar: Yes
- Packable Pocket: Yes
The REI Magma 850 Down Hoodie is a luxuriously comfortable down puffy jacket with several outstanding features that make it quite suitable for hiking, backpacking, and camping use. Chief amongst these is an adjustable hood with a rear elastic cord that lets you shrink the hood’s volume to fit your head and prevent cold air from blowing in the sides around your ears. A lot of down and synthetic insulated hoodie jackets lack this feature and don’t keep you as warm.
The Magma 850 also has an internal draft collar, a design element often only found on sleeping bags or high-end down parkas, that drapes over your upper back and chest and wraps around your neck. It prevents the air warmed by your torso from escaping around your neck when you move around inside the jacket, called the bellows effect, keeping your core toasty warm, while elastic hem controls and elasticated wrists help prevent cold wind from chilling you.
The jacket’s construction is sewn-thru, which means that the interior and exterior shell are sewn together to create baffles for the down insulation. While the resulting needle holes can leak warmth, it’s done to keep the jacket cost affordable, as fully baffled jackets tend to be much more expensive. However, the front of the Magma 850 torso and the hood are lined which prevents cold air from leaking through where it matters most.
The Magma 850 has three pockets, all zippered. There are two spacious hand warmer pockets along the sides and an insulated chest pocket that’s good for keeping your phone warm. The jacket can be stuffed into its left-hand side pocket for packing and comes with a gear loop so you can attach it to a climbing harness.
Comparable Down Jackets
The REI Magma 850 Down Hoodie stacks up pretty well against the other leading down jackets we recommend for hiking and backpacking.
Recommendation
The REI Magma 850 Down Hoodie is a fully-featured down hoodie jacket that’s a great layer to pack for cold-weather hiking and backpacking. It’s insulated with high-quality 850 fill power goose down and comes with an excellent feature set including an adjustable hood and interior draft collar, which are premium features that hoodie down jackets often lack. If you’re in the market for a new down jacket, give this one a try. It stacks up very well against the competition in terms of warmth, weight, cost, and value.
Disclosure: REI donated this item for review.
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