Salewa NXT Down Jacket | Tested and reviewed

The Salewa NXT Down Jacket does a lot right. The fit is ideal, it's very lightweight and the down insulation offers excellent warmth. This all makes it an insulated winter jacket that comes highly recommended.

However, as with most products, it's not entirely infallible. For one, it's rather expensive, while the feature set is pretty stripped back, too.

Below, experienced gear tester Matt Tester gives his full verdict.

Design and features

New for this year, here's a premium-grade down jacket that forms part of Salewa’s flagship NXT collection, developed ‘to meet the demands of fast mountaineering’.

As you might expect from a brand that's long had a high alpine focus – Salewa’s tagline is ‘pure mountain’, after all – it’s a highly technical layer, developed to maximise functional efficiency and minimise overall weight.

Though this might seem a little niche, its super-warm, super-light qualities make this a jacket that will appeal not just to alpinists and mountaineers but also climbers and speed hikers.

Conceivably, the focus on lightweight warmth will also be a draw for wild campers and backpackers looking to cut their base weights when tackling tough, high-level treks over multiple days.

There’s also a focus on reducing the NXT collection’s environmental impact, which means this jacket has a partly recycled shell and ethically sourced down fill, while being completely free from harmful PFCs.

It's a pretty futuristic-looking jacket, with tech-forward styling and an unconventional design. In simple terms, it’s a stitch-through down puffer – nothing unusual in that. But unlike most constructions, which feature lines of stitching to create sealed baffles of down fill, the NXT jacket does things differently.

Interlinked ‘pockets’ of down are held in place by distinctive X-shaped stitching. It’s a bit like the pattern of buttons you get on a Chesterfield sofa.

I guess the intention is to minimise the number of stitched seams. This cuts weight and reduces down loss (as over time, it’s usually at the seams where fill tends to poke out and escape).

On the other hand, the down fill isn’t fully enclosed, which means it could more easily clump or migrate around inside the jacket. To mitigate this, there's a curved seam across the lower back, which prevents all the stuffing simply collecting at the bottom of the jacket.

Does it work? Well, the open structure definitely maximises space for the down fill to loft. As a result, the X-stitched areas are held away from the body, so you do get noticeably fewer cold spots.

Since this is a brand-new jacket for winter 2024, I didn’t get as much test time with it as I'd have liked, but I wore it intensively over the course of a couple of weeks in late November.

I didn’t notice any down leakage, which wasn’t the case with some other down jackets on test – but the jury’s still out on whether the down will stay exactly where it should over the long term. I reckon it might need regular shaking out and re-lofting.

Since the focus is on maximum warmth for minimum weight, features are understandably minimalist. That means the hem and cuffs use a simple (but effective) elastic binding, as does the hood – though it does have a rear halo-style drawcord to cinch it in tightly.

The main zipper comes right up past the chin but lacks concessions to comfort and practicality like a two-way zipper, a stiffened inner flap or a soft chin guard. Inside the jacket are two practical dump pockets for gloves or mitts, which is a nice touch.

Outside, you get two zippered hand pockets, which are cosy enough, but again, are not lined with microfleece or similar. The left-hand one doubles as a pack pocket and the jacket compresses nicely into a package about the same size and shape as a small camping pillow.

Overall weight is quoted at 310g for a men’s size L, which is impressively light. My test scales read 340g, though – still lightweight, but nearly 10% heavier than the manufacturer’s claim.

Fabrics and fill

The jacket uses premium 850 fill-power white goose down, certified by the Responsible Down Standard (RDS) and treated with a PFC-free moisture resistant DownTek finish. The fill also has a very high 95/5 down-to-feather ratio.

It lofts extremely well, trapping plenty of warm air. The face fabric is made from a very lightweight 15D ripstop nylon, also with an eco-friendly DWR finish. It’s fairly tough for its weight, and the ripstop construction also improves resistance to snags and abrasion, but still shouldn’t be treated too harshly.

The fact that both the shell and the down fill are treated with hydrophobic finishes greatly improves the jacket’s resistance to moisture, which has always been the traditional Achilles heel of down jackets.

The lightweight nature of the jacket means it isn’t quite as weatherproof as heavier rivals with similar treatments though, especially those that use a Gore-Tex Infinium face fabric or similar. It will cope with very light precipitation, but anything more than spotty drizzle and you’d be wise to put a shell over the top.

Performance and comfort

This jacket has an athletic fit that puts the down insulation close to the body for maximum thermal efficiency. It feels extremely warm for its weight, with body-mapped fill to further position the high-quality down fill where it's most needed.

Remarkably, it doesn’t feel too bulky. I think most users will end up wearing this jacket underneath a shell (if only to protect the thin nylon face fabric) and it layers very neatly when employed as a mid layer.

You are conscious of the jacket’s overall loft when wearing it, but it doesn’t restrict mobility and the sleeves and shoulders have been designed to accommodate dynamic movement. Salewa’s ‘free motion patterning’ ensures minimal hem lift when you raise your arms.

The jacket also does a great job of locking in warmth thanks to close-fitting elasticated bindings around the edge of the hood, the hem and the cuffs. There’s even a secondary layer of stretch fabric at the cuffs to create a near-perfect seal around the wrists. This all minimises heat leakage to keep you feeling seriously toasty.

The overall feel is also luxuriously soft and cosy, which makes this a great layer to wear in a tent when winter camping or bivvying.

I had it out on test in late 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 NXT Down jacket handled these conditions with ease when layered over a midweight base layer and fleece jacket, with a more protective waterproof jacket over the top when things got really gusty.

Sustainability

The polyamide (nylon) shell fabric of this jacket contains 84% recycled fibres. The garment also bears the Salewa Committed logo. This is the brand’s tag for products that are manufactured according to a strict set of socially and environmentally responsible criteria.

This means that the product should avoid harmful chemicals including PFCs, main fabrics and/or materials should be bluesign certified, and production/manufacturing facilities should have been audited for social standards and working conditions by a third-party with the last three years.

In this case, for example, the NXT Down Jacket employs down fill that is certified by the Responsible Down Standard (RDS) and finished with a PFC-free durable water repellent (DWR) treatment.

The ripstop nylon shell also has a PFC-free DWR. PFCs or perfluorinated compounds (sometimes called ‘fluorocarbons’) are the harmful ‘forever chemicals’ that have been shown to bio-accumulate in the environment, since they never break down, and which the outdoor industry is now almost completely phasing out.

As a brand, Salewa is a member of the Fair Wear Foundation and has been since 2013. It’s currently classed as ‘good’ by that organisation, under the criteria of their annual Brand Performance Check, scoring 66/100 overall.

Price and competition

With a UK RRP of £345 and a weight of less than 350g, this is a premium down jacket. It offers exceptional warmth for weight, so in terms of rivals you’re looking at the pinnacle lightweight and ultralight down layers from established outdoor industry brands, as well as some of the smaller manufacturers who specialise in down gear.

This includes Rab’s Mythic series, the closest competitor to the Salewa NXT in terms of price and specs being the Mythic Alpine Down Jacket (£320). There’s also Montane’s new Alpine 850 Lite Down Hoodie (£350), which we haven’t had a chance to test yet, but which looks like an excellent jacket.

Then you’ve got Mammut’s Taiss Insulated Hooded Jacket (£340). All these use minimum 850+ fill power down, with fill weights of at least 130g+.

If you’re willing to spend even more, you can turn to smaller specialist companies like PHD, Stellar and Montbell, who offer some of the best down jackets around when it comes to outright warmth-for-weight.

This generally takes you above the £400 mark though, which is serious money. And at that level you can also consider flagship jackets like the Rab Mythic G (£450), stuffed with ultra-premium down that has a ridiculously high 1000+ fill power.

But in all honesty, there’s no need to spend this much money on a down jacket if your adventures are primarily focused on exploring local mountains in winter. These types of jackets are specialist pieces best suited to ‘fast and light’ alpinism in the world’s bigger ranges.

So, if you don’t need the absolute lightest, warmest gear out there, save some cash and take a look at some of our other top insulated jacket picks, like the 750FP Montane Anti-Freeze (£225), the 700FP Rab Glaceon Pro (£250) or even the synthetic Sprayway Torridon Insulated (£180). All these are excellent all-rounders that are still light and packable enough for most users.

Verdict

The Salewa NXT is a sleek down duvet jacket with exceptional warmth-for-weight – but it might be overkill for all but the most tech-obsessed hillwalkers and backpackers.

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.

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