Neve Gear Waratah Down Quilt 18F (-8C) Review

The Neve Gear Waratah Quilt is an ultralight backpacking quilt insulated with 850-fill-power down and comes with draft collars at the neck and foot box. Made with a silky 10d nylon shell, it has a comfort temperature rating (that’s the rating for women and cold sleepers) of -8C(18F). It’s available in multiple lengths and quite affordably priced at $300 USD. The Waratah is made by Neve Gear, a very small company located in Australia, but shipped from Texas, for US-based buyers.

• Temperature rating: -8C | 18F (comfort)
• Weight: 780g (Actual 816g or 28.8 oz)
• Insulation: 850 fill power duck down
• Insulation weight: 540g
• Shell: 10d nylon tafetta, line and outer shell
• Box Baffling: Yes
• Draft Collars: Neck and Footbox
• Compressed volume: 5.4L
• Footbox: Zippered w/drawstring closure.
• Measurements: Shoulder: 150cm, Hip: 130cm, Foot: 105cm, Length: 205cm
• Pros: Great value for the money, not drafty at all, easy to use
• Cons: No customization options

The Waratah has box baffles oriented vertically over the torso and horizontally over the footbox to limit downshift. The neck has a down-filled draft collar and closes behind the neck with two snaps. You can tighten the collar with a drawstring positioned in the front above your chest.

The footbox is zippered from mid-calf down to a drawstring opening so you can vent your feet at night if you’re too warm. The footbox opening also has a down-filled draft collar that bunches up and fills the opening when the drawstring is pulled shut. Since the foot box is zippered, you can fully open the quilt to form a rectangle, which is handy if you want to use it as a couple or on your bed at home.

Side drafts

Backpacking quilts can suffer from side drafts because they’re not attached to your sleeping pad, and air can sneak in along the edges and chill you. This is probably the main reason why people complain that the temperature ratings of their quilts are incorrect. Several quilt companies have developed various methods for dealing with side drafts, although most simply punt on the issue.

For example,

• Zenbivy covers the sleeping pad with a sheet that wraps over the edge of the quilt and blocks drafts.
• Warbonnet uses side elastics that keep the sides of the quilt close to your torso.
• Katabatic Gear uses “stretchy” edges to limit side drafts.
• Rock Front covers the sleeping pad with a sheet and sells quilts that zipper to the sheet, blocking side drafts.

Neve does something a little different. Their elastic pad attachment straps work like those from most companies: a loop wraps around your sleeping pad, with buckles on top that connect to your quilt. Only the buckles on the Waratah Quilt are positioned on the interior baffles, not along the edges of the quilt.

This bunches the first two vertical baffles so they lie along and under your side, thereby eliminating side drafts. It’s a weird system, but it actually works well and prevents side drafts. While you lose some of the insulation power of those two outer baffles, Neve puts a little less down fill into them, concentrating the down over your torso and in the foot box.

Neve’s side draft system works equally well for side sleepers and back sleepers because it gives you more quilt to “stuff” under your sides to block drafts. It’s also remarkably easy to add to a quilt, even an inexpensive quilt, because it just requires sewing a buckle to the outer shell fabric of a baffle. Given its simplicity, it certainly knocks the wind out of other approaches to solving the side-draft problem. I guess the big question is whether Neve has the means to protect the idea from competitors or whether other manufacturers will copy it en masse.

Recommendation

The Neve Gear Waratah Backpacking Quilt is a reasonably priced quilt, insulated with 850-fill-power down, that is well-made and features draft tubes at the neck and in the drawstring footbox for enhanced heat retention. But the thing that sets the Neve Gear Waratah apart from other quilts is the way its pad attachment system is configured to protect you from side drafts. Instead of connecting to the quilt’s side edges, your pad attachment straps connect to buckles in the quilt’s interior, making it easy to tuck the quilt along your torso to keep you warm. While simple in concept and implementation, Neve’s side draft protection could change how all backpacking quilts are made in the future.

Disclosure: Neve donated a quilt for review.