Back in December, our chief accountant came into work wearing her birthday present – a battery-powered coil-heated jacket. I’ve dreamed about owning such a thing ever since Artemis Fowl wore a full body suit in his Arctic Adventure (that’s a non-Amazon affiliate link, in case you want to read it) and now suddenly I found it that it existed in real life. I ordered one there and then and it arrived the next day.
I’m a bit chunkier than I’d like to be. Mine is an XL and I was a bit concerned that it wouldn’t do up but it fits quite nicely. I’d like the sleeves to be an inch or two longer and perhaps for the hem to come down a couple of inches more. I’d also like a hood but then again, whenever I own an outer layer with a hood, it just gets in the way and annoys me 90% of the time so maybe I actually wouldn’t. It’s a reasonable weight in itself but it’s powered by a big chunky lithium battery that lives in a special inner pocket on the left-hand side which adds considerably to the weight and you also have to remember to charge it periodically.
After being charged all afternoon at work the day it arrived, the heated jacket’s first trial run was at 6.50am on election day when I put it on to run up the road in the cold and the dark and the drizzle to vote. I very quickly discovered that if you’re wearing something underneath with a hood, you have to pull it out otherwise the heating panel in the back will put all its efforts into heating the hood, which does no good to the wearer whatsoever. I’d expected to feel direct heat on my skin from the two panels in the front and one in the back but instead, it just heated up the entire jacket and made me feel oddly warm and sweaty. Sitting inside the rugby club waiting for the staff to figure out how to open the ballot box and count down to 7am on the dot, it got uncomfortably hot in that jacket.
Driving in it at night is not recommended. I’m ludicrously light sensitive and it has a little button on the front. You hold it down to switch the heating on and off and then you press it to cycle between three heat modes and the button lights up in red, white or blue to show which one you’re on. In a car in the dark, that little light is blinding. Depending on how you are with light, it might not bother you but for me, it totally whited-out my vision in my left eye. It also misted up the car. My car does have a habit of misting up as soon as I put my body heat in it. I get in the car after work and the car is clear and by the time I’ve reversed out of my space and got to the gate, it’s misted. Add body heat and heated jacket and the entire car mists over. The rear view mirror did it. I know that’s a possibility because I know heated mirrors exist. I don’t have anything so exotic in my little orange Panda but I think my dad has a heated mirror. But my dashboard misted up! I didn’t know that was a thing and I had no way to clear it. My fans can’t blow in that direction. So wearing a heated jacket in the car on a cold morning is not a great idea. I don’t tend to drive in outer layers anyway, they’re too bulky.
Next test was in York in the evenings. It was far too warm to wear it during the day. I got hot & sweaty walking to my apartment from the station but it was pleasant to wear to walk back from the pub on Friday night and it was a delight to throw on over pyjamas on Saturday night to run downstairs to the shop late in the evening. The less you wear under it, the warmer it feels because then you can feel that warmth directly on your skin. It’s eye-catching – no one can miss that LED button on the front and everyone who’s seen it has been delighted to hear that such a thing exists.
I haven’t worn it in proper rain yet but so far it strikes me as being about as water-resistant as my softshell jacket. I think it’s more than waterproof enough for my needs but I suspect I wouldn’t want to be wearing it for long cold wet hours where I’d be risking hypothermia. Also, it’s a lithium battery and I know from my caving days what happens when lithium batteries get water in them. I think it would probably stand up to pretty much everything everyday circumstances could throw at it but I don’t think I’d want to wear it for proper all-day or multi-day hiking in the mountains.
I wore it in Switzerland as well, so it’s now had a test in the snow of the reasonably-high Alps in winter. The results are much the same – it’s lovely and toasty but you can only really feel it when you’re not wearing much underneath, which makes it quite good for hiking.You can wear your base layer and a t-shirt underneath so you don’t sweat through too many layers and then in the event of getting cold, or stopping to sit on a bench for lunch for an hour, you can switch it on and warm up. It means you can control your temperature quite efficiency with minimal bulk, provided you don’t mind the weight of the battery pack in the pocket and remembering to charge it.
I think the real test would probably be standing out in the snow in the extremes of northern Europe, waiting for the Northern Lights until gone midnight, which is what I immediately envisioned when the thing first materialised in the office. I suspect I’d be the only person steadily removing layers until I could feel the heat. The company does heated gloves and socks too and the socks would certainly be useful for that Northern Lights hunt. They’re £40 and they’re powered by a separate battery which sits in a little pocket at the top of the socks. Right now, I think heated socks would be excessive but next time I find myself in a Lapland winter, I might well rethink that. I own a pair of heated insoles but they give out very little heat and they have separate battery packs which are strapped to my ankles with velcro and some things are just too ludicrous. I wouldn’t consider the gloves. Partly because they’re £60 and partly because they’re proper bulky ski-style gloves that I wouldn’t be able to do anything in.
In conclusion, I knew from the minute I laid eyes on it that I’d love this jacket and recommend it to everyone and after a few wears, I was right. If you get cold easily or you’re going somewhere cold, there’s no better investment.