 This Product
Feathered Friends Flicker 40 UL | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Awards |  Most Versatile Quilt |  Best Ultralight Hooded Mummy Bag | Best for Moving Fast and Light |  Best for a Tight Budget | Best Synthetic |
| Price | $469 List $469.00 at Feathered Friends | $550 List $469.95 at Backcountry | $449 List | $270 List | $200 List |
Overall Score  |
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| Star Rating | |||||
| Bottom Line | An awesome set of features allows you to use this bagin a surprising amount of different temperatures and situations | Stay warm and comfy in this excellently executed bag | The only mummy bag that uses more down fill in the foot box and less around the torso, to take advantage of the clothing you have with you | A functional, versatile, and well-featured quilt well worth the low price | Your best bet for an ultralight quilt if down fill just doesn't work for you |
| Rating Categories | Feathered Friends F... | Therm-a-Rest Hyperi... | Feathered Friends V... | Hammock Gear Econom... | Enlightened Equipme... |
| Warmth (30%) | |||||
| Weight (25%) | |||||
| Comfort (20%) | |||||
| Versatility (15%) | |||||
| Features (10%) | |||||
| Specs | Feathered Friends F... | Therm-a-Rest Hyperi... | Feathered Friends V... | Hammock Gear Econom... | Enlightened Equipme... |
| Manufacturer Stated Temperature Rating | 40°F | 20°F | 25°F lower half, 45°F upper half | 20°F | 30°F |
| Measured Weight (bag only) | 19.2 oz | 21.4 oz | 16.2 oz | 25.8 oz | 24.6 oz |
| Stuff Sack Weight | 0.8 oz | 1.6 oz | 0.8 oz | 0.6 oz | 0.6 oz |
| Stuffed Size | 7" x 10" | 6" x 8" | 7" x 10" | 6" x 10" | 8" x 17.5" |
| Manufacturer Claimed Weight | 20.0 oz | 20.0 oz | 16.7 oz | 22.2 oz | 23.8 oz |
| Fill Weight | 8.4 oz | 12.5 oz | 9.4 oz | 13.2 oz | 20.4 oz |
| Shell Material | Pertex Endurance UL | 10D Nylon RipStop w/DWR | Pertex Endurance UL | 20D nylon taffeta | 10d Ultralight nylon fabric, DWR finish |
| Fill Power | 950+ goose down | 900 fill RDS Nikwax hydrophobic goose down RDS | 950+ fill goose down | 850 fill duck down | 4oz/yd² Climashield Apex synthetic insulation |
| Style | Center zip mummy bag or unzip for quilt | Hooded mummy | Hoodless, zipperless mummy | Quilt | Quilt |
| Construction | Continuous baffles | Horizontal box baffle consruction | No hood, no zipper and a variable fill | Box baffle consruction | Baffle-less, no sewn-through seams |
| Shoulder Girth | 62" | 57" | 64" | 55" | 54" |
| Hip Girth | 48" | 49.5" | 48" | 50" | 47" |
| Foot Girth | 39" | 43" | 38" | 45" | 40" |
| Zipper Length | Full-length center zip | 1/2-length side zip at top | No zipper | 1/3-length at bottom | 1/4-length at footbox |
| Sizes | Regular, long, and wide | Small, regular, long | 62", 68", and 74" | Short, standard, long, short wide, standard wide, long wide | Short, regular, regular wide, long wide |
| Temp Options (degrees Fahrenheit) | 20, 30, 40°F | 20, 32°F | 25, 45°F | 0, 10, 20, 30, 40°F | 20, 30, 40, 50°F |
What exactly is the Flicker? Is it a quilt, a sleeping bag, or a blanket? With its full-length zipper and cinch-able footbox, it can be whatever you need it to be, given your conditions. Maybe you'll start a trip in temperate weather where a loose blanket is all you need to stay comfortable on a clear, calm night. The next week could see a sudden plunge in temps and a surprise six inches of snow falling overnight. But you're snuggled deep in a fully zipped up and toasty bag. That's the magic and joy of the Flicker 40 UL — the Pertex Endurance UL shell fabric is lightweight and naturally water-resistant with no coating to wear off, offering great first-line protection against condensation inside a tent. The 950+ goose fill down lofts up nicely and is supremely lightweight. Attention to design detail, such as adding more durable fabric to the zipper baffle and a neck collar to help seal in the warmth, further endeared this bag to our hearts.
The Flicker 40 UL uses 8.4 ounces of some of the highest quality 950+ fill goose down available to give it loft and warmth. The down is sewn into place using horizontal box baffles, so this bag's interior and exterior fabric never meet to create down “dead spots” or points without insulation. The Flicker has a number of other features that contribute to the overall warmth effect, such as the full-length center zipper lined the entire way by a reinforced draft tube and a down-filled neck collar with two buttons to hold it closed at the top of the zipper. All this creates a reasonably warm bag worthy of its 40°F limit rating.
We tested the Flicker over numerous nights at temperatures well above its 40°F limit and found it to be very comfortable in both blanket and quilt mode. We also used it for two nights fully zipped up when at, or even slightly below, the 40°F limit. While it did not keep us piping hot at those temperatures, we were still reasonably comfortable and not suffering like we were when we tested other quilts to their lower-end limits. To supplement the hoodless design, we suggest investing in a down hat to keep your head as warm as the rest of your body.
Our overnight hot water bottle test confirms that this bag performs well for its temperature limit rating of 40°F but does not over-perform outside it. Don't purchase this bag thinking you'll magically get a lower-rated bag.
Our size regular Flicker 40 UL weighed in at 19.2 ounces, slightly lighter than the 20 ounces advertised on the Feathered Friends website. The included stuff sack weighed an additional 0.8 ounces.
8.4 ounces of this weight is the 950+ goose down, making up 43.75% of the total bag's weight. This is a good, but not great, ratio. Much of the additional non-down fill weight is taken up by the full-length zipper, which doesn't add to the warmth of the bag directly but does add to the uncompressable volume of the bag. The 10D Pertex shell and 15D ripstop nylon liner fabric are both very lightweight materials.
According to Feathered Friends, our regular-sized Flicker 40 UL is 6'6" long in blanket mode and 6'0" long when the end is cinched. This should make it plenty long to suit a six-foot-tall person, and in our experience, this was true. With our feet comfortably in the bottom of the bag and the end cinched, the neck collar and baffle easily came over our shoulders and sat snuggly around our neck. We also found that when fully zipped up in bag mode, the Flicker was spacious and comfortable throughout, without the claustrophobic constriction inherent in some mummy bag designs. We found that the Flite 15D ripstop nylon inner material was plenty comfortable against our skin.
While certainly among the more comfortable bags in this review, we can't rate the Flicker as high as some of the other bags we tested. That said, while comparatively it wasn't the absolute best, we genuinely can't complain about comfort.
We define versatility as the ability for a sleeping bag to be effectively and comfortably used in different situations, and there is no doubt that this is where the Flicker 40 UL truly shines. As mentioned, we love the fact that this bag can be either a fully opened blanket or an enclosed mummy bag. That kind of adaptability can be really clutch in variable environments or on long trips.
One of the design premises of many of the quilts we tested is that laying on top of down insulation compresses it, rendering it ineffective. Quilts use this reasoning to not include a bottom side and are instead designed to wrap around a sleeping pad. Our hard-earned experience with these designs is that quilt designs that are fully enclosed are noticeably warmer than their non-enclosed counterparts, regardless of temperature rating. Simply put, air manages to leak in and out if you're not fully enclosed. Makes sense.
The Flicker received one of the highest scores for this metric too. When considering features, we assessed how useful the features were to the design of the bag and also how well they worked.
Besides the full-length zipper, we love how well the foot box drawcord works on this bag. With one pull, the Flicker goes from a fully flat blanket to having a completely enclosed foot box. Unlike similar designs, there is not even the smallest hole left in the bottom of the bag for air to escape, and we found the drawcord easily stayed tight through many nights of usage.
The Flicker is an extremely versatile bag for different seasons, temperatures, climates, and uses. Variations of this bag go down to a 20°F limit rating, making it a good bet there's a perfect one for you.
If you like the hoodless sleeping bag concept, there's also the Feathered Friends Vireo UL. The twist to the Vireo is that rather than a full-length zipper, it has no zipper at all. This saves an appreciable amount of weight, but you lose the incredible versatility of the Flicker.
If you love the idea of a quilt, the Hammock Gear Economy Burrow 20, Enlightened Equipment Revelation 20, Enlightened Equipment Revelation APEX 30, and Katabatic Gear Flex 22 all allow you to zip up approximately the bottom quarter of the quilt to provide a toasty foot box, while also having the ability to transform into a flat blanket.
