Slumberjack Esplanade 20 Review
Our Verdict
Our Analysis and Test Results
Likes
The Esplanade offers the comfort of a spacious rectangular bag and adds the warmth of a hood. This is the bag's best attribute; the hood adds five or more degrees of warmth to a hoodless bag.
Dislikes
Unfortunately, the benefit of a hood is partially offset by a series of drawbacks due to the bag's low quality and poorly designed features. The zipper is the lowest quality of any budget bag tested. It catches easily — one tester said that it caught every time he used the bag — and feels prone to breaking (in comparison to the 70 other sleeping bags we've tested). Although the hood adds warmth, it's not comfortable when cinched and creates a poor seal around the face and neck area; hot air escapes through convective heat loss, especially when you move around. Our testers found the bag to be warm to the low forties; a 20 degree rating is highly optimistic.
Value
The Esplanade's low price is appealing. The bag lies somewhere between the Wenzel Conquest and Wenzel Grande in terms of value. In general, we believe those offer a better bang for the buck but the difference is slight.