Women's Marmot Venus Down Jacket Tested

Marmot Women’s Venus Down Jacket

What's It For?

The word ‘down’ may be synonymous with warmth but there’s only so much down you can fit in an 340g jacket. So, although you get maximum warmth for weight in the Venus, it’s not an extreme cold weather jacket. Think of it instead as a spring or autumn jacket for a member of the ‘fast and light’ school who tends to get a little chilly.

Down is classified according to fill power, on a numerical scale. The higher the number, the better the quality of down, and the better the warmth to weight ratio. The Venus jacket uses 800 fill power down which is right up at the top of the scale, so you’re getting plenty of warmth per gram of jacket.

Down technology aside, Marmot have one of their own innovations in place in the Venus jacket, which is called Angel-wing technology. It’s basically a way of fitting the arms of the jacket so that you can lift your arms up without the whole jacket lifting upwards as well and giving you a cold draught.

The other thing that we think is rather neat is the way the drawcord tightens around your waist. Instead of positioning the ends of the cord at the front of the jacket, where you’d expect to find them, Marmot have placed them inside the pockets themselves so you can tighten them without exposing your hands to the elements.

We’ll yield to the inevitable and begin by commenting on the weight. This jacket weighs only 340g – yes, 340g – and that’s as bonkers light as you think. The figure is partly a tribute to the jacket’s materials and design. The 800 fill power down is some of the best on the market, with a great warmth to weight ratio, while the features include everything you want and nothing you don’t need.

Even great design and great materials don’t quite make for a super-warm 340g jacket though, so it’s important to disassociate the word ‘down’ from images of high Himalayan regions in your mind. This isn’t an Everest Base Camp at night kind of jacket; it’s a more of a summer Alpine affair. We’ve worn it on crisp autumn mornings and felt about right but we probably won’t be pulling it out of the cupboard in the middle of winter.

A milder weather down jacket may sound perfect for Britain, given that the seriously warm affairs aren’t much good for most of the year in this green and temperate land. There’s a hitch in that theory though – it’s actually a boggy, green and temperate land and down simply doesn’t like the rain. So, although the outer material is water resistant and does a good job of beading off the water from a shower or two, the jacket won’t be so keen on a Lakeland deluge. It’s something to bear in mind when you check the weather chart.

Once you’ve got those parameters clear, everything falls into place. As we’ve said, we like some of the features on the jacket, such as the drawcord fastenings on the insides of the pockets, which have already saved our hands from a couple of benumbing encounters with the elements. The zip pockets themselves are also nice and toasty, and we like the fact that you can stuff the whole jacket into its own pocket when you aren’t wearing it, so it takes up minimal room in your pack but you don’t have to carry the extra few grams of a separate stuff sack either.

The only features we weren’t quite sold on were the elasticated wrists, which were too wide for our little wrists and so failed to cling around them in an elasticated sort of way. Unfortunately, this made for a draught up our arms which didn’t do great things for the temperature inside. We should point out though that we do have rather skinny wrists.

The angel-wing technology does a reasonably good job too, although the jacket does inevitably still ride up a little when you raise your arms.

As for cut, we’ve seen more body-hugging cuts out there, which help insulate you by doing away with large air pockets between your body and your jacket, but this one isn’t bad. If you’re particularly tall then we reckon you might find the Venus a bit short, but if you’re average height or less you should be fine.

Judging by the displays in shop windows, we reckon it might just be fashionable at the moment too, although we aren’t too knowledgeable about those kinds of things so don’t quote us.

If budget’s not too big a concern and you’re looking for insulation with barely any weight or bulk then the Venus is a great option. Apart from draughty wrists, it’s well-designed and made from really high quality materials. Just don’t take it to seriously cold climates or high altitudes at night and you should be fine – so fine you’ll barely notice you’re wearing it.

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