What is the Cobra 200?
The Cobra is a super lightweight, packable and highly technical down-insulated sleeping bag for fast and light excursions. Not only does it have one of the longest feature lists of any sleeping bag we stock, it weighs just 620g and is suitable for temperatures down to -4°C.
What is it made of?
Insulation: The insulation used is Vango's own Hydro Barrier Down, a 700 fill-power goose down which is ultra lightweight, packable and most importantly, warm! The achilles heel of down is that once wet, it loses virtually all of its warmth; Vango have countered this by treating it with a Hydro Barrier, meaning it stays drier 4x longer than untreated down.
Outer fabric: A 20D nylon outer fabric with a durable water repellent coating protects the down from the elements, ensuring it performs at its best and offers the highest amount of warmth.
What is the construction used?
Vango use a Welded Box Wall construction throughout the sleeping bag, providing maximum warmth and loft from head to toe. Rather than stitching two pieces of fabric together with down in between, this box wall construction, as the name gives away, stores the down in boxes, almost completely eliminating cold spots.
A 3D shaped hood wraps snugly around the head and reduces the amount of space you'll have to warm up in super cold conditions. The footbox is shaped to allow the feet to sit upright in their natural position without compressing the down, again, increasing warmth.
What are the features?
As well as a super technical insulation and baffle construction, Vango use an aluminiumised layer behind the outer fabric to reflect heat back to the user inside the sleeping bag; they call this 'Thermal Reverb'. The hood has multiple points of adjustment to seal in as much warmth as possible, while an insulated baffle sits behind the zip to prevent heat escaping. Even the zip has been scrutinised to almost obsessive levels — it uses its own Zip Guard to prevent the zip catching on the outer fabric and can be opened from the top or bottom for ventilation.
How does the Cobra fit?
The Cobra uses Vango's Omega shaping, meaning it's slimmer than your traditional sleeping bag to offer a smaller pack size, a lower weight and an overall warmer bag.
-
Hydrophobically treated 700FP down
-
Welded box wall construction
-
Thermal Reverb
-
Omega shaping
-
20D nylon outer fabric
-
Adjustable shoulder baffle
-
3D hood with multi-close adjustment
-
Included mesh storage bag
-
Two-way anti-snag main zip
-
Independently tested temp ratings
How warm a sleeping bag do you really need? We’ve tried to help you by grouping our sleeping bags by their recognised comfort ratings. These are the ratings supplied by the brands that indicate the temperature at which you will remain comfortable whilst sleeping on an insulated sleep mat. After all, comfort is what you want when it’s cold and wet outside, and you’re all tucked up in your nice warm sleeping bag.
We always recommend that you choose your bag according to the coldest conditions you will experience; you can always unzip a bag if it is too warm, but trying to sleep when you’re too cold is just miserable. Bear in mind that we are all individuals, so we all feel the cold differently and that our own resistance will fluctuate depending on a whole load of factors, including how much we have eaten, whether we have consumed alcohol, whether we need a wee or what kind of mood we are in!
Sleeping bags do not generate heat; they only trap the heat we produce, so it is vital that you get into your bag when you are giving off warmth, don’t go to bed when you are cold, have a hot meal or a hot drink or do some brisk exercise to get you nicely warmed up.
Traditionally sleeping bag manufacturers provided their own temperature ratings based on their experience, the product's intended end-use and the perceived environment. However, each brand tested their bags in different ways, and it was hard to find a fair comparison between models. So, in 2005 a European standard for sleeping bag temperature ratings, EN 13537, was introduced to give consumers a comparable guide to sleeping bag performance across a range of brands and models. The ratings have four different temperature ratings to give you an indication of the bag's performance.
Comfort Rating: This is the temperature at which an average female should experience a comfortable night’s sleep. On average, women sleep colder than men, so this rating is some degrees above the "comfort lower limit" for a man.
Comfort Limit Rating: This is the lowest temperature at which an average male should experience a comfortable night’s sleep whilst laid down in a curled up position.
Extreme: This is a survival rating where the user is likely to suffer health damage such as Hypothermia. It should be treated with the utmost caution and not be relied on for general use.
However, the EN 13537 European Standard does not apply to down-filled sleeping bags with a fill weight of more than 800g; for those bags, you will have to rely on the manufacturer's experience and technical expertise, which is often more accurate!
Most reputable brands still use their own rating system alongside EN 13537, for instance, Mountain Equipment's “Good Night’s Sleep” and Rab’s “Sleep Limit”. These ratings are often the most accurate guide to the overall performance of a sleeping bag being used by an average outdoor enthusiast because they are based on years of expedition heritage, field trials, technological experience, and constant feedback.
But please bear in mind that all ratings are only a guide and, as mentioned earlier, there are a huge range of factors that can affect your comfort; if you are just not sure, it is always wise to go for a warmer model.
The biggest difference you can make to your overall comfort is to use an efficiently insulated sleeping mat. Once you get inside your sleeping bag, you instantly compress all the filling beneath you, greatly reducing its efficiency. Therefore using a quality sleep mat will ensure you are properly insulated from the cold ground, and you will be a lot more comfortable... Basically, there is no point in buying a top-quality sleeping bag if you are just going to lie down on the floor.