The puffer jacket offers the best warmth-to-weight ratio of any piece of cold-weather clothing you can own. It’s also an essential—when you need a good down jacket, nothing else will do. More times than not, a good puffer is the difference between comfort and misery.
To save you from that misery, we’ve spent months testing down parkas of all shapes, sizes, and down fill power to find the best jackets for around town, out on the trail, and in the serious, dangerous cold of high-altitude and high-latitude adventures.
Whether you’re headed to the top of the Empire State Building or Denali, we’ve found the best down jackets for you. Need more outdoor gear? Check out our guides to the Best Sleeping Bags and Best Tents.
WIRED outdoor experts Martin Cizmar, Chris Haslam, and Adrienne So also contributed to this guide.
What to Look for in a Puffer Jacket
The temptation with down jackets is get the warmest one you can. If you’re spending the winter in northern Wisconsin as I did while testing these, that’s not a bad idea. But if you’re just looking for a little extra warm during shoulder season trips, or even high altitude summer backpacking, you don’t need an 800 fill power, massively overstuffed winter parka.
We do suggest sticking with jackets that have a down fill power rating of at least 500 for light use, but there’s no reason to spend on a jacket with 900 fill power down unless you’re going to be out in below freezing temps (or you’re a perpetually cold person). If you mainly spend your time in less extreme climates, get a lighter jacket.
Also remember that, in the case of backpacking you’ll want to keep in mind how packable a jacket is and how much weight it adds to your pack. Unfortunately, the lightest jackets do tend to be higher fill power, since you can trap more warmth with less down, but again, be realistic about the temperatures you’re going to be in and you can get away with a cheaper jacket.
Down jackets are difficult to compare, but the best place to start is by understanding down fill power and fill weight, which we’ve explained in our guide to down fill power. That guide explains what the numbers mean (and don’t mean) and how you can use them to compare jackets. The short answer is that down fill power tells you what quality of down you’re getting, while the fill weight tells you how much of it is in the jacket.
Combining down fill power with the fill weight gives a rough way to compare jackets. For example, a 600 fill power jacket with 2 ounces of fill weight will be roughly the same warmth as an 800 fill power jacket with 1.5 ounces of fill (because 2 oz times 600 equals 1,200, and 1.5 oz times 800 also equals 1,200). There are other things to consider, like the baffle construction and how much loft height there is, but the fill power to fill weight gives you a good starting point.
Down fill comes from ducks and geese. The Responsible Down Standard is a voluntary effort to improve the welfare of ducks and geese used for down. The idea is to provide a way for you to know that the down you’re getting is taken from geese and ducks that were not mistreated. You can read more about what the Responsible Down Standard entails on the website. Note that jacket makers often abbreviate this as “RDS-certified down.”