Pulse Endless Promise Ultralight Backpacking Quilt

The Pulse is Nemo's ultralight backpacking quilt - a sleeping bag with the back removed, on the reasoning that insulation squashed under you does nothing anyway. For thru-hikers counting every gram. Part of the Endless Promise range.

Who it's for

Gram counters, thru-hikers, and anyone who has worked out that the down underneath them is doing nothing. A quilt deletes it - no back panel, no zip, no hood - and the Pulse gets to 500 g in the Regular by pairing that with 1000 fill-power down.

Comfortable to 1°C, so summer and shoulder-season trips where the pack weight decides how far you walk.

Understanding the temperature rating

Two numbers matter, and the one to buy on is comfort. Comfort at 1°C is the temperature you stay warm through the night. Limit at -5°C is where a warm sleeper is curled up and holding on until morning. Plan your trips around the comfort figure and you will sleep; plan them around the limit and you will spend the night awake doing sums.

Both are ISO tested, so they compare directly against any other bag quoting the same standard - which makes them the only honest way to line two bags up against each other.

Shape and room

An open quilt rather than a bag, which means total freedom to move and no zip to fight at 2am. You attach it to your sleeping pad, and the pad handles the insulation underneath - which it was doing anyway, since down crushed under your body weight has no loft and does no work.

The trade is honest: a quilt needs a decent pad and a bit of technique to seal the edges on a cold night. Get both right and you carry hundreds of grams less for the same warmth.

Down or synthetic here

1000 fill-power down - the highest grade in general use, and the reason a quilt this warm weighs 500 g. 330 g of it in the Regular, under a 10D recycled ripstop shell.

Weight and packed size

500 g minimum weight in the Regular, compressing to 2.3 litres at 20 x 14 cm. That is smaller than most people's dry bag of spare clothes.

Sizing

Regular fits to 183 cm, Long to 198 cm.

How it compares

Endless Promise means Nemo built it to come back and be remade at the end of its life instead of going to landfill. It costs you nothing and it is a better answer than a bag that becomes rubbish in a decade.

One habit doubles its life: store it loose. Keep it in the big cotton sack it arrives in and save the stuff sack for the trail. Down that lives compressed stops lofting, and loft is the whole product.