Columbia Vent + OutDry and TurboDown Wave

TurboDown Wave

Last night in Denver, Columbia unveiled their Fall 2015 product lineup. In addition to a top of the line Titanium collection, two new product technologies worked their way into outerwear and footwear: Vent + OutDry and TurboDown Wave.

Last spring, Columbia expanded their Vent construction into non-water specific footwear. Midsole vents now meant extra breathability under foot instead of just water drainage. For Fall ’15 and most likely in response to the big Gore-Tex Surround launch, Columbia now combines the Vent construction with their OutDry waterproof/breathable technology in several footwear styles. This Vent + OutDry combination offers 360 degrees of ventilation for better temperature regulation while charging around in your winter, waterproof boots and shoes.

Just this last month, Columbia released TurboDown, the new insulation technology that uses a combination of synthetic insulation and water-resistant down in each jacket baffle, all lined with Omni-Heat Thermal Reflective, to give you the best of both worlds in terms of performance. Tweaking the construction a bit more for Fall 2015, TurboDown Wave looks to further eliminate the cold spots where body heat escapes in more conventionally constructed insulated jackets–basically the stitching or seams between the baffles.

Rather than creating a traditional seam by sewing the lining and shell together to create the baffle, Columbia developed a unique method of jacket construction by combining 900 fill water-resistant down with Omni-Heat Thermal synthetic insulation running through the jacket in a ‘wave-like’ pattern with the down on both sides throughout the baffles. The lining and shell are stitched into this internal wave, rather than into each other.

You can basically think of TurboDown Wave as almost a double layer of offset baffles or even as adding an offset layer of down baffles to the underside of the current TurboDown construction.

Columbia asked an independent third-party entity to test TurboDown Wave’s heat-retention capabilities against several competitors’ insulated jackets. Using a computer-controlled environmental chamber to regulate variables, Columbia’s Heatzone Jacket supposedly performed better; beating competitors by margins ranging from 3.1F to 9.9F warmer.

You can expect the new Columbia Fall 2015 products to hit market around this time next year.

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