I’ll confess I would have a nerdy admiration for ExpeDry down even if it worked, just for its use of basic chemistry, which even I dimly remember from high school but for some reason never made it into a product until recently. Better than that DOING work.

I don’t have a lab, and I’m not interested in what happens to one, but I’m a backpacker, living in a cold climate, who doesn’t like the cold. In the real world, where I live, if your jacket loses its length and you get cold, bad things happen. In my testing, the Vantage jacket lost almost no loft throughout the day, even when I was active and sweaty in it.

Better Than DWR?

Photo: Scott Gilbertson

Outdoor Vitals is not the first to use ExpeDry. Marmot, Katabatic Gear, and many others have a variety sleeping bags and jackets with ExpeDry down, but the Vantage was the first time I noticed a real difference. The Vantage has less fill than many other puffer jackets I wear regularly, but I stayed warm, if not warmer, thanks to minimal loft loss throughout the day.

Proponents of ExpeDry also claim that it lasts longer than DWR coated down (either chemically coated or wax coated) simply because it’s not coated, and therefore retains its high durability. I haven’t used any ExpeDry down products long enough to test this, but based on my experience with the Vantage Alpine jacket and the way it holds up under adverse conditions, this claim makes sense.

The second thing Vantage uses to reduce heat loss is Outdoor Vital’s Nova Zero Stitch fabric, which, as the name suggests, uses no stitches. There are baffles to keep the bottom in place, but instead of punching thousands of little holes like you sew, the baffles and other seams are woven into the fabric. Where the conventional method has the inner and outer fabric sewn (or bonded/welded), the Zero Stitch fabric is two pieces joined together. It’s hard to imagine how it works, but Outdoor Vitals released a video to explain.