A name that you can’t seem to move for at the minute is Peak Performance.
It’s everywhere – mainly strewn across lovely, puffy outerwear that we see on Instagram, but on a recent Proper excursion to the capital, we also saw the brand’s name advertised on the side of a bus, so they must be doing something right.
Although Peak Performance is definitely creating a lot of buzz at the minute, the brand has actually been around since 1986 and boasts a rich history of producing some of the finest Swedish mountain wear known to man.
Naturally, with Proper being a self-proclaimed authority on everything outerwear, we felt the need to address the buzz around the brand, and the best way we felt for us to do this was to delve into the brand’s extensive catalogue of nice coats.
To say Peak Performance know what they’re doing when it comes to jackets is an understatement – the brand covers all bases – puffer jackets, waterproof jackets & waterproof puffer jackets that are enough to make even the toughest of men drool over their keyboard.
Although it’s safe to say that almost every jacket that Peak Performance offers caught our attention, one in particular spiked our heartrate more than the others, the Minus Degree Down Puffer Jacket.
Our attention was immediately captivated by the intriguing panels situated on the Minus Degree Jacket’s chest – What are they for? What do they do? We simply had to find out more.
It turns out that the front panels on the jacket are actually large mesh pouch pockets that offer easy-to-access storage, discovering this instantaneously led to a fully comprehensive research session about the Minus Degree Jacket, and instead of just regurgitating everything we learnt in our research, we’re just going to boil the jacket down to its most salient points…
Firstly, The Minus Degree Down Jacket is warm. So warm that it’s actually Peak Performance’s warmest jacket. This is attributed to almost entirely by the quality of the down within the garment, which comes from geese’s bums and has an 850-fill power (very high.)
The result of this is a fantastic warmth-to-weight ratio, with the weight of the entire jacket being a mere 0.77kg. All this means you can comfortably prance about in sub-zero temperatures, all while feeling like you’re wearing next to nothing.
Besides the central mesh pouch pockets, the Minus Degree Jacket offers zippered hand pockets as well as an inner mesh stash pocket, so you’re hardly pressed for adequate storage when wearing this thing.
It isn’t all just about warmth and pockets though, the jacket also has one of the best hoods we’ve seen in a while, it’s fleece lined, helmet compatible and incorporates an adjustable plastic wire that runs through the brim.
Thanks to the highly compressible down fill, the coat can also be compressed into a storage bag, making it the ideal secret weapon to chuck into a backpack and forget about when on a winter hike – sort of like a really warm jacket equivalent to a Transformer.
To avoid hurting Peak Performance’s feelings, we’d like to say that we don’t fall in love with a new jacket almost every other day, but that simply isn’t true. But don’t let our fraternizing take away from the fact that the Minus Degree Down Jacket is one of the nicest coats we’ve handled this winter so far.
To find out more about the Minus Degree Down Jacket, do so here.
