Exped Ultra -5 Sleeping Bag review

Light, warm and compact, this goose-down sleeping bag has a limit temperature of -5°C.

This is slightly towards the cosier end of Exped’s available sleeping bags – though they do make them for even colder temperatures too. I’ve not used it at freezing temperatures, but instead for temperatures more like 4°C to 10°C, inside a basic waterproof bivvy bag, and in a van around 1°C. My daughter also used it for her Duke of Edinburgh Gold practice expedition.

I’ve found this sleeping bag to be excellent. It’s easy to get in and out of, with the zip moving easily. This seems to be aided by the inclusion of a strip of webbing (which, along with the zip, is made of recycled PET bottles) along the inside of the bag – meaning you don’t catch the fabric in the zip. The inner and outer are both made of very lightweight Nylon. Apparently the grey outer is ‘Recycled 10 D ripstop nylon Pertex Quantum, bluesign approved, PFC free’ while the orange liner is ’15 D ripstop nylon Oeko-Tex® 100 certified, PFC free, DWR free’. Quite honestly though, the two fabrics feel practically identical. Being synthetic, the liner is a little bit on the sticky/sweaty size against bare skin. It’s nearly silky, but not quite. I’d recommend planning on wearing a thin layer of some sort to bed, particularly on your torso.

The down is trapped into what Exped calls ‘IBeams’. Basically, there are hoops of down that go around you. Down can move from your front to your back, but not from your shoulders to your belly. This means you can limit any cold spots or collection points, but also have a certain amount of room for fluffing up the down.

The smaller zippered pocket on the inside of the bag is a very welcome addition – ideal for storing your phone in your bag with you so it stays warm overnight. I often find that a cold night camping can leave me with a dead battery come the morning if I leave my phone outside my sleeping bag. This pocket meant I wasn’t annoyingly sleeping on my phone or chasing it around my feet come the morning.

It is super cosy to sleep in – on the coldest night in my van I struggled to sleep because my face was so cold, while the rest of me was plenty warm. Even with the drawstring adjustments and two sets of poppers, I’ve not found the hood terribly easy to keep in place, opting instead to wear a hat to keep my head warm on the coldest nights.

If you do get a bit warm, it’s a double zip, so you can vent from mid-way down the bag if you like. However, the zip doesn’t go all the way to the foot of the bag, so you can’t stick your feet out (often quite an efficient way of cooling off, I find).

I had thought that this sleeping bag might be overkill, especially given our many sunny days this spring, however UK temperatures do tend to drop overnight. It’s easy enough to unzip and vent a bit of surplus heat, but if you’re too cold there’s very little you can do about it. On my daughter’s Duke of Edinburgh trip, she was the only one who didn’t complain of being cold overnight, despite mid-twenties temperatures during the day. Unless you know your temperatures will be above 10°C at night, I think you’ll find this a comfortable option. Above 10°C I think you could start looking at a broader range of more budget sleeping solutions – it’s as you get to lower temperatures where quality and down like this really pay off. It is rated to -23°C as an extreme temperature – but this is just the temperature at which they reckon you will survive the night. There’s a big difference between ‘not dead’ and comfort.

The Exped Ultra -5 comes with a net bag to store it longer term without damaging the down insulation, and a drybag for more compact transportation. At first glance you may think the bag doesn’t actually pack up that small, however, get your bodyweight onto the drybag and you can squeeze out a lot of air, reducing the volume quite significantly. The drybag doesn’t appear to be super-airtight however, and I found that the package would re-inflate somewhat during the course of the day. If you’re trying to pack this into a very full backpack, I think this might be annoying. But, if you squash it down, add a compression strap, and get it into your bag before it starts to ‘grow’, it does make for a whole lot of warmth and comfort for not a lot of space or weight.

The bag is available in a few different sizes, and I had the Large. Perhaps I would fit in a smaller one, but I appreciated the room to wriggle around. For the sake of a few grams and mm of space, if I was buying this bag I would size up so it fitted all the family (one at a time!). Maximum use for your money, and all that. EXPED products carry a 5-year warranty on defects in materials and manufacturing defects, giving you a bit of security that your purchase will last, and they also conduct professional repairs should you have a mishap.

Overall

Unless you’re an extreme adventurer planning to do plenty of sub-zero camp outs, I think this Exped Ultra -5 is a great piece of kit for a wide range of British conditions. Lighter and packing down way smaller than non-down or budget options, it gives you the security of knowing you’ll be comfortable come the end of the day’s adventures. Yes, it’s a whole lot of money. But it’s very much the right tool for many jobs. Being able to be carry something warm enough to deal with whatever an adventure may throw at you is pretty priceless.

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