Montane Anti-Freeze Hooded Jacket | Tested and reviewed

Micro-baffle down jackets are probably as common on the high street as they are on mountains these days, but they play a key part in layering when exploring on foot. The Montane Anti-Freeze Hooded Jacket is one such example.

It's a premium example from British brand Montane and it has all the hallmarks of a great insulated down jacket.

From features to fit to down quality, there's lots to think about, so it's a good thing we've got expert gear tester Matt Jones on the job to work out whether or not this is the one you should be splashing your cash on.

Scroll on down to read his full review and verdict.

Design and features

Montane’s Anti-Freeze Hooded Jacket is essentially the brand's take on the modern ‘micro-baffle’ down puffer, being an update on the brand’s older Featherlite Down Jacket.

These types of jackets have become increasingly common, offering lightweight warmth and the luxurious feel of down in a versatile and wearable silhouette.

You now see them everywhere from climbing crags to the freezer aisle of your local supermarket. Though it’s easy to scoff when you spot outdoor apparel on the high street, it also shows how easily they straddle the divide between casual wear and technical use.

And arguably, this offers better value for money, too, giving you one warm jacket that can pretty much go anywhere and do anything. After all, we’re not all sitting out in snow blizzards.

The previous generation of this jacket, known as the Featherlite, aimed to be all things to all people, but it tended to fall between two stools. For example, the helmet-compatible hood was great for climbers, but not so good for everyday wear if you just wanted a close-fitting, cosy hood.

The fit was roomy enough to layer but patterning and articulation wasn’t ideal for dynamic movement. Perhaps realising this, Montane has expanded its range of down jackets (and renamed them all in the process).

So, the core Anti-Freeze Hooded Jacket is now the staple piece of a capsule collection that all shares the same name. There’s also an Anti-Freeze vest that tech bros will love, a Lite version for gram-counters, a slightly more technical XT variant and a considerably chunkier XPD (‘expedition’) model.

There are two standard versions, one with a hood, one without. I'm reviewing the hooded jacket here, which seems the most suitable for all-round use on the hills and mountains, while balancing those all-important considerations of price, performance and weight.

On which note, this jacket has a RRP of £225 ($285). For that, you’re getting a well-made, stitch-through baffled puffer stuffed with 750FP moisture-resistant down. As such, it seems well specced for its price tag.

It tips the scales at 360g in a men’s size medium, and stuffs away into a supplied stuff sack that is a little larger than a standard one-litre Nalgene bottle.

Features are straightforward but effective, which fits Montane’s overall ethos of functional minimalism.

You get two zipped handwarmer pockets, plus a surprisingly roomy inner zipped security pocket – big enough to handle both a phone and a wallet. It’s a shame to have lost the older Featherlite’s outer chest pocket, but this presumably saves a little weight.

Cuffs are elastic bound, while the hem has dual drawcord adjustment. Up top, the Anti-Freeze features a close-fitting hood, which can be adjusted for a good fit around the face via two embedded cordlocks. The loose drawcords hang down inside the jacket so they won’t whip you in the face. It’s all very neat, unfussy and efficient.

The main zip is a reverse coil design backed with a slightly stiffened storm flap. The zipper is only a one-way design, so you can’t undo the jacket from the bottom, but this isn’t a big deal, and reflects the jacket’s less technical, more user-friendly focus.

Fabric and fill

The shell is made from one of the outdoor industry’s best known windproof and water repellent fabrics: Pertex Quantum Eco, a tightly woven ripstop nylon finished with a PFC-free durable water repellent (DWR) treatment. The material is fairly light but came through my month of testing unscathed, demonstrating good resistance to wear and tear.

The Anti-Freeze Jacket is filled with 750 fill power HyperDry moisture-resistant duck down, with a solid 90/10 down-to-feather ratio. It’s housed in baffles that are actually a bit wider than your standard down puffer, giving more space for the fill to loft.

In addition, that higher grade fill power slightly outperforms most rivals, which tend to use 700FP down (the Rab Microlight Alpine being a case in point). You get plenty of it too – 140g in a men’s size medium or a women’s UK 12.

Rab’s Microlight Alpine gives you 145g in the same size: so, a little more fill weight, but a lower fill power. All in all, I reckon the Montane Anti-Freeze is slightly warmer than the Microlight Alpine. It’s also about 100g lighter when you compare like-for-like sizes on the scales.

That HyperDry down makes this jacket more resistant to damp weather, too. It’s not a silver bullet – it’ll still wet out and eventually get sodden in persistent rain, being a poor second to most synthetic fills in such conditions. But it can cope with claggy days and general drizzle.

Performance and comfort

I’d describe the fit as ‘regular’. It’s definitely not cut as trim as some other micro-baffle down jackets on the market. In other words, it feels like an outer layer rather than a midlayer.

This means you can easily wear a chunky baselayer and fleece underneath it. But the baffles aren’t so chunky that you can’t also get a waterproof jacket over the top, which points to this jacket’s all-round versatility. It’s pretty much the ideal fit.

The scooped tail gives ample coverage at the rear, and drawcords at either side enable you to cinch in the hem to lock in heat. Up top, the hood is nice and cosy. It draws in well for a close fit around the face too, coming up well above the chin.

Sleeves are plenty long enough for my gangly frame and finished with an elastic binding that is neither too tight nor too baggy.

Compared to Montane’s older Featherlite jacket, the articulation of the Anti-Freeze is also much improved. You get minimal hem lift even when raising your arms above your head, which isn’t always the case with baffled down jackets.

On the hill, it delivers a good level of warmth – and again, outperforms most comparable rivals. I had it out on test throughout November in the mountains of North Wales, when we got the first snow of the season.

Temperatures in the hills hovered around -2°C and got as low as -10°C once factoring in windchill. The Anti-Freeze Hooded Jacket handled these conditions well when layered over a midweight base layer and fleece, with a shell over the top when things got really gusty.

It’s reasonably windproof and weatherproof if used as an outer layer, though inevitably the stitch-through construction does mean there are occasional cold spots. They’re most noticeable when you’re sitting down and the fabric is stretched taut against your back.

This is a failing of almost all lightweight down puffers. You can only really get around it by turning to a heavier-duty box-wall down jacket or a sheet fill synthetic insulated layer (e.g. a belay jacket).

The Anti-Freeze’s DWR-treated ripstop nylon shell can handle spotty rain and drizzle, but not steady or persistent wet weather. The moisture-resistant fill is noticeably quicker drying than untreated down, though, and seems to clump less, too.

Sustainability

The Anti-Freeze uses the latest Eco version of Pertex Quantum for its outer shell, which is 100% recycled nylon, a plus for sustainability. It’s finished with a PFC-free durable water repellent (DWR), which means it's free of the harmful ‘forever chemicals’ that have been shown to bio-accumulate in the environment.

The inner lining is also 100% recycled and, slightly unusually, is similarly treated with a PFC-free DWR. This should help to protect the down fill from absorbing sweat and odour.

Since it comes from ducks destined for the meat industry, the jacket’s down fill is obviously not a vegan-friendly choice. But it's certified by the Responsible Down Standard (RDS), which assesses down against animal welfare requirements and tracks it from source to final product.

It isn’t recycled though, unlike the down used in Rab’s Microlight and Glaceon jackets. The swing tag that comes with the Anti-Freeze jacket has a QR code that takes you to TrackMyDown, a service provided by Allied Feather & Down, one of the world’s biggest suppliers.

This gives you more details about exactly what’s in your jacket. I checked my test sample, which contained unbleached white duck down originating and processed in China, with a 90.3% cluster content and a tested fill power of 767 (i.e. both slightly higher than the minimum quoted 90/10 ratio and 750 fill power).

These are details you just don’t get with cheaper down jackets, because there’s no way of knowing where the fill has come from or whether the birds have been treated humanely.

As a brand, Montane has also been a member of the Fair Wear Foundation (FWF) since 2019. It’s currently classed as ‘good’ by that organisation under the criteria of their annual Brand Performance Check, but only scores 46/100 overall.

Price and competition

I've spent a lot of time in this review comparing the Anti-Freeze jacket to Rab’s Microlight Alpine, which is the closest rival in Rab’s current range, and pretty much the acknowledged UK market leader when it comes to the category of lightweight down jackets.

Is the Montane the better buy? On balance, I think so. Admittedly, it's RRP is £15 more expensive (£225 compared to £210), but for that extra cash you get a jacket that's not only lighter, but warmer too, thanks to higher grade down that offers superior warmth for weight. It’s also slightly more packable and comes with a stuff sack (which Rab has now ditched – admittedly for environmental reasons).

Both use the same shell fabrics and treatments, and both feature moisture-resistant fills, so there’s nothing to separate them when it comes to weatherproof performance or durability.

Overall fit and construction are very similar, though the Rab arguably layers slightly better thanks to its narrower baffles and clever patterning – but the Montane jacket still has a great fit that is vastly improved compared to the older Featherlite model.

I've also seen the Anti-Freeze on sale for as little as £130 recently, which makes it a bona fide bargain.

All in all, this jacket is ideal for year-round hillwalking. I tested it in the mountains of North Wales throughout October and November and it was certainly warm enough (with a couple of layers underneath) even when temperatures dipped below freezing.

If you need even more warmth for winter mountaineering or alpine adventures (and still want the light and cosy feel of down), you’ll probably need to spend more – for example, in the Montane range, there’s the Anti-Freeze XT jacket at £280, which basically just gives you bigger baffles packed with even more of that 750FP down.

You could also look at Rab’s new Glaceon Pro, which uses 700FP down but is slightly cheaper at £250. Or there’s the 800FP Berghaus Summit Nomad, which is warmer still but costs £300. And finally, there’s the exceptionally warm yet lightweight Salewa NXT down jacket, stuffed with 850FP down, for £345.

If you want to save a bit of money, look at a good quality synthetic jacket – the Sprayway Torridon Insulated currently being my best value pick at £180.

There’s also the Keela Solo (£165), which is another solid option. But since synthetics don’t offer the same warmth for weight as high-grade down, both are significantly heavier and bulkier.

Verdict

The Montane Anti-Freeze Hooded Jacket is a versatile down puffy that offers good warmth for weight, being lightweight and packable, with an excellent cut that works over or under a shell.

See our pick of the best insulated winter jackets for more warming options.

About the author

Matt Jones is a freelance journalist based in the heart of Snowdonia National Park, he’s a vastly experienced gear tester and self-confessed outdoor kit geek. Matt’s been one of our main gear testers for the last couple of years and is the first person we call with any complicated kit queries that need in-depth and forensic analysis.

Don't forget to subscribe to the Live For The Outdoors newsletter to get expert advice and outdoor inspiration delivered to your inbox!