Aerogel vs Down: Is this the Jacket of the Future?
When choosing between jackets, you typically have two options: down, or synthetic. There are pros and cons to both. Down jackets are well-known for being the most lightweight, warm, and highly compressible layers you can buy, but they do have an Achilles heel: once they’re wet, they’re difficult to dry and lose their insulating power.
Synthetic jackets are water-resistant and in some cases, can insulate even when wet. But, this comes at a cost: they aren’t as lightweight, and they often aren’t as effective insulators as down. But now, there’s a new type of jacket on the market that claims to be one of the lightest and best money can buy.
Aerogel is an insulator that was developed by NASA to insulate from the frigid temperatures of outer space. It can contain up to 99% air–making it, in theory, one of the best insulators ever created. But, it works in a slightly different way than nature’s perfect insulator: down.
Down vs Aerogel: How do they Insulate?
Feather down works by trapping air pockets within the matrix of its own fibers, using your own body heat to hold warmth against you. Aerogel works in a similar way, except the air it traps is self-contained. The lowest-density aerogels are comprised of 99% air, which has led some people to refer to it as “frozen smoke.”
There’s just one problem with aerogel–instead of the soft, pillowy texture of down, it’s incredibly brittle. This means that it can’t be used to insulate jackets in the same way that down would be used in baffles. Instead, to make products using aerogel, particles of aerogel are instead embedded into the fibers of the clothing itself.
This type of synthetic insulation is called Primaloft®, and it’s the newest craze to hit the outdoor industry.
This Primaloft® synthetic insulation system claims to increase insulation by 11 to 52 percent warmer than traditional insulation–and when I ordered an aerogel-infused jacket from L.L. Bean, my initial reaction was one of complete disbelief. The jacket was so thin, it didn’t seem possible that it would insulate that well. That being said, it did weigh 13oz–about the same as the Arc’teryx down jacket I decided to compare it to.
Now, “feeling” warm is a very subjective thing, and my initial test of both jackets was in the same vein. To give both jackets a fair test, I decided to snowshoe into the woods, wait for my body temperature to cool down, then tried on each jacket for a set amount of time to see which one felt warmer to me. To see how that turned out, check out my video of the test below:
The moment I put on the Aerogel-infused jacket, I did instantly feel warmer. But, I wanted to wait outside in the shade to see when I started feeling cold again, and eventually I did. Over the course of several hours, I tried on the Aerogel jacket, then the Arc’teryx jacket, swapped out underlayers… and never felt significantly warmer in either. I may have allowed myself to get too cold for this test to be effective, but ultimately, the results were pretty inconclusive.
After trudging back home through the snow, I knew that I needed a way to test these jackets in a more subjective way. Enter… Fred.
Testing the Jackets in a Controlled Setting
I placed Fred the Mannequin in a deep freezer, where I tried to recreate an R-value test to the best of my ability. Gear companies test the R-value of sleeping pads by sandwiching the product they’re testing (like sleeping pads) between a hot plate, and a cold plate. A meter records how much energy the hot plate pulls in order to warm up the piece of gear from the cold plate’s steady leeching of warmth and energy.
To test this at home, I placed a heating pad on Fred’s chest, zipped him up in each jacket, and measured how much energy the heating pad pulled in order to keep Fred at a set temperature.
The results were exactly what I expected: when the heating pad was placed under the Aerogel jacket, it had to pull .030KWh for about 39 minutes in order to maintain the set temperature. When placed in the down jacket by Arc’teryx, the heating pad pulled .025KWh, for about 31 minutes, in order to maintain that set temperature.
The down jacket won this round by a large margin: when all was said and done, it consistently had a whopping 18-22% difference in insulating power.
Just to make sure, I picked out another Aerogel jacket from Black Diamond. This jacket had a little bit of an unfair advantage, as it weighed nearly a pound, meaning that it had more insulation than the other aerogel or down jackets I had tested previously.
But, even with this additional weight and insulating power, this jacket somehow performed even worse, pulling .034 KWh over the course of over 48 minutes.
Aerogel: Not worth the Hype
Pure Aerogel might be a better insulator than down in theory, but its brittle texture means that it must be fused to a synthetic material to become flexible. This fusion definitely takes away some of its insulating power, making it less effective than natural down. At the end of the day? It’s an expensive, and less effective insulator than down.
You don’t have to spend a lot of money to stay safe and warm in the backcountry. This simple, $12 hack will ensure that you’re able to use your favorite down jacket on your next hiking trip, without worrying about it getting wet. Click below to watch my video:
So, how does Primaloft ® get away with the claim that it’s 11-52% warmer than other insulators? This is likely because it’s being compared to other synthetic insulators, which makes sense. If you place additional insulation directly within the synthetic fibers of a jacket, it will perform better than a synthetic jacket without that additional insulation.
At the end of the day however, the Aerogel hype seems to largely be a marketing ploy. It’s an expensive, and somewhat gimmicky, and comparatively ineffective alternative to down.
