Does anyone have any input on this brand?
the reviews i have read are basically great for the price point but i am a bit concerned still. just looking to see if anyone has used their tents, sleeping bags, or anything else.
thanks
observations
I worked in the outdoor gear business for many years and have a pretty good eye for quality and an understanding of what needs to be done to make quality tents and sleeping bags. So though I honestly have never seen this brand in the flesh, I can give you some educated feedback from what I could detect in their product info.
While I MIGHT buy a water bottle from Winterial, I would be highly suspicious of the quality and utility of their higher ticket camping gear. Their produce line seems slanted towards novelty items like the “Michelin Man” type wearable sleeping bag, pop up tents (useless for anything but beach shade on a calm day) and tent-cots that mount on car roofs. These kinds of products are a red flag – serious outdoors people don’t use such hokey items.
As to the tents, they carefully neglect to give some important specs. The big one is that a good tent has aluminum poles. The fact that Winterial states the poles are “metal tipped” means that they likely are cheaper fiberglass, which can break under pressure or wind load and subsequently damage the tent itself. No quality backpacking tent has fiberglass poles these days. Second, they don’t state that the tent body has taped and sealed seams, only the fly seems to be taped. This is confirmed by the comments in the 3 reviews on the 2 man backpacking tent.
Their $200 “zipperless down” sleeping bag is a bizarre design and is not really a down bag at all. It apparently has a small built in "comforter filled with “90% duck down”, whatever they mean by that. Most quality down sleeping bags use goose down. And when you state a percentage like that, the standard means that 10% of something else is in there which is likely feathers. Cheapo bags tend to often be made of non-down proof nylon, which has not been calendered to reduce the holes in the weave. This means that the down fibers will start to leak through the fabric in time – if you have ever had an old feather pillow you’ll know what this means. If there are feathers in the mix too those have stiff spines and will poke out through the fabric constantly, being itchy and annoying. There is no “fix” for this - it’s a fundamental product flaw that renders it useless.
Also, the product description states further that the bag is “50% down” which I believe indicates that it only has down in that top “comforter” section while there is only a pocket in the bottom of the bag in which you have to insert an insulating pad. I gather the sides of the bag (orange in the photos) must have poly or some other insulation than down in them.
Furthermore, the text for the product descriptions sounds suspiciously like it was written by a non-native English speaker – garbled language and contradictory feature specs. I would bet money that these are poorly made Chinese products being marketed through a US broker. None of the few “reviews” that I read on the site seem to be from people with much experience with outdoor gear, and most may be fake. There are really few reports of actual usage in conditions.
My instinct is that these products are lousy and that you would have difficulty getting a refund if you were dissatisfied.
Campmor, OutdoorPlay and many other respectable vendors have good sales and specials on well made brands of gear in a range of price points that they will stand behind for quality. If you have a tight budget, you will do much better with them. I would avoid oddball, and likely off-shore, makers like this Winterial.