The REI Magma 850 Down Hoodie Jacket provides 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 and makes a good crossover winter jacket that can span outdoor adventures or urban commuting.
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- Insulation: 850 Fill power goose down
- Gender: men’s (women’s also available)
- Weight: 12.5 oz (13.4 oz in size men’s large)
- Sizing: Generous for layering
- Fill Weight: Not provided by REI
- Pockets: 3 (zippered)
- Adjustable Hood: Yes
- Internal Draft Collar: Yes
- Packable Pocket: Yes
- Pros: Sleeping bag style hood, draft collar, high fill power down insulation
- Cons: No internal drop pockets
The REI Magma 850 Down Hoodie is a luxuriously comfortable down puffy jacket with several outstanding features that make it suitable for hiking, backpacking, and camping. 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. Many down and synthetic insulated hoodie jackets lack this feature and don’t keep you as warm. The hood is also extremely warm, on par with a sleeping bag hood in terms of insulation. If your head or ears get cold, this jacket is for you.
The Magma 850 also has an internal draft collar, another 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. At the same time, elastic hem controls and elasticated wrists help prevent cold wind from chilling you.
The jacket’s construction is sewn-thru, meaning the interior and exterior shell are sewn together to create baffles for the down insulation. While the resulting needle holes can leak warmth, this is done to keep the jacket affordable, as fully baffled jackets are much more expensive. However, the front of the Magma 850 torso and the hood are lined, preventing cold air from leaking where it matters most.
The Magma 850 has three zippered pockets. Two spacious hand warmer pockets along the sides and an insulated chest pocket keep 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 is comparable to 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 lighter weight down jackets often lack. If you’re in the market for a new down jacket, try this one. 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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