The conditions the parka is sold for: still air, deep snow, and a wearer standing in it rather than moving through it. The frame is the bank's, and it shows weather, not a garment: our bank holds no photograph of a worn parka and none of the eight garments below, and the honesty section prints that gap and the harvest list rather than let a stranger's coat stand in for a ranked one.
Checked and updated October 2026
The verdict, up front: seven down parkas scored out of 100 on cloth and fill 30, construction 20, fit and coverage 20, value 15, longevity 15, plus the fashion parka sent home. Two garments tie at 85, and the tie is broken on the cloth row: the Feathered Friends Khumbu takes the top seat on a 28 to 26 cloth ruling, 900-plus fill power under a waterproof Pertex Shield shell at $749, while the Fjallraven Expedition Down Jacket shares the score as the field's most honest paperwork, both warmth numbers published, about 680 grams of down at $750. The finding underneath the scores is the count this page exists to print: seven of eight makers publish a fill power, two of eight publish a fill weight a reader can verify, the same rate the puffer Card found at jacket prices, and exactly one carries a temperature figure, a house scale. The parka sent home, at 39, is the Moose Knuckles Original Stirling Down Parka 2.0, whose maker's own page publishes neither number for the garment at CAD 1,395. The parka is sold on expedition imagery and temperature adjectives. This page grades the arithmetic underneath both.
First, know what a parka claims to be
A parka is a promise about standing still in deep cold. The puffer jackets of Verdict Card No. 46 are insulation layers: hip-length, made to move, graded there on the down record itself. The parka is the long species of the same family, and the boundary is physical, not verbal. Coverage runs past the hip toward the thigh, because the body loses the argument at the seat and the upper leg when it stops moving. The fill is expedition-weight, hundreds of grams of down rather than the jacket class's ounces. The hood is a system, not an attachment, and the closure is built to be worked with gloved hands and to seal the torso's full length. A garment earns this page by publishing that contract, and the record already holds the cautionary case: the Uniqlo Seamless Down Parka carries the species' name, was graded on No. 46 at 74 as the jacket it is, and stands here as evidence that the name alone promotes nothing. It is not re-graded. Nothing graded on No. 46 is.
The warmth claim, as No. 46 printed it and this Card repeats it at the parka's higher stakes: warmth is the product of two numbers, fill power times fill weight, and only of the two. Fill power is the quality of the cluster, the cubic inches one ounce lofts into. Fill weight is the quantity inside the garment. At jacket scale a missing weight hides a thin garment; at parka scale, where the fill is the garment's whole reason and half its price, a missing weight hides the product itself. Around the pair stand the shell, judged under the law of Verdict Card No. 44: waterproof is a structure, a membrane with sealed seams and a published figure behind it; water-repellent is a finish that fades on a wash count nobody prints; and a temperature claim is worth the test standard named behind it, which in this field, counted below, is none.
What the parka is sold as, instead, is a photograph and an adjective. The expedition imagery does the first half: the summit, the station, the dogsled, cold as scenery. The temperature adjective does the second: warmest, extreme, rated to a minus figure with no standard named behind it, because no garment standard for temperature exists to name. The nearest rated world is the sleeping bag's, where EN 23537 measures a bag on a manikin and prints the method beside the figure. The parka industry has no equivalent and prints the figure anyway, or prints a house scale, or prints nothing and lets the photograph testify. Every card below reads the record first and the imagery second, and where the record is silent the card prints the silence at the same size as the figures, because at these prices the silences are the findings.
How the scores work
Every parka is scored out of 100 on the same five rows, the basis of No. 46 argued forward for the species. Cloth & Fill (30) reads the down record as a claim: a published fill power scores, a published fill weight scores again, a named certification with a checkable basis scores above a house word, the shell is read as a structure or a finish under No. 44's law, and each withheld figure is charged in the open. Construction (20) reads the baffle architecture, box against stitch-through, the hood as built, and the closure system end to end: zip, stormflap, draft protection, cuffs a gloved hand can work. Fit & Coverage (20) is the parka contract: length past the hip as published, centre-back figures credited where a maker prints them, the stated cut scored as printed, and the size library credited where one is published. Value (15) divides the price twice where the record allows: by the published fill power point, and by the published gram of fill; where a maker withholds a number, that division is uncomputable and the row scores the fact. Longevity (15) is the decade audit: the model's continuity, the maker's repair bench, the shell finish's decay, and the down's migration at the seams. Row scores add to the total, on every card. Brand scores, where a house holds one on this site, are printed separately and never blended into a garment's number.
The ranking
Feathered Friends Khumbu Parka
The Winner, on the Cloth Row
US list price at last check: $749 at the maker's store in Seattle.
Buy it as the expedition reference: the highest published fill power in the field under a waterproof membrane shell, sewn in Seattle by the down specialist. This card ships without a buy pill: the maker sells direct, and its exact product page was not captured live in this pass, so the card goes without rather than with a guessed door.
The cloth: begin where this page always begins, with what the maker publishes. Fill power: 900-plus, the highest figure in the field, printed. Shell: Pertex Shield, a named waterproof-breathable membrane cloth, so the weather claim is a structure under the rain Card's law and not a finish asking to be trusted. The down is traceable and Responsible Down Standard certified, and the house prints its RDS certificate number, TE-99977174, on its expedition apparel pages, a figure a stranger can check. The fill weight needs an honest sentence rather than a number this desk will not invent: the house states as policy that it provides both the fill power and the fill weight, and its specification tables print a fill weight line across its expedition range, verified on its own pages in this pass; the Khumbu's own figure could not be captured on the maker's product page in this pass and is flagged for direct re-verification in the November pass, the same flag the Eos carried on No. 46. It is a capture gap, printed as one, and it is not scored as a refusal: the published garment weight, 2 pounds 2 ounces all-in, is the lightest expedition build here by a wide margin. The tie at the top of this Card is broken on this row, 28 to 26 against the Fjallraven below: a named membrane shell over the field's highest published power outranks a heavier fill in a plainer cloth, and the ruling is printed on both cards.
The build and the fit: tuck-stitched box baffles, the construction that keeps expedition down from migrating to the seam lines; a dual front zipper system whose second, internal zipper sits offset from the first so down overlaps the closure instead of ending at it, over an insulated draft tube; a double layer of PrimaLoft Gold, 200 grams, at the collar where breath condensation attacks first; Taslite reinforcement at the elbows and cuffs; sealed exterior zippers; a fixed hood on three drawcords that takes a climbing helmet; and a long, fully insulated hem on two drawcords. The fit is the expedition pattern, cut to go over everything a climber already wears, and the longevity row scores the specialist's terms: sewn in Seattle, guaranteed for life against workmanship and material failures, with a repair bench behind it, thirteen of fifteen, docked for the light shell cloth its own reviewers flag as the garment's delicate part. At about 83 cents per published fill power point, the value row prices the record's completeness with the garment's warmth; the per-gram division waits on the captured figure, and the card says so.
Fjallraven Expedition Down Jacket
The Other 85
US list price at last check: $750.
Buy it as the most completely published parka in the field: the only garment here whose own specification table hands you both warmth numbers, in a pattern that has been in production since 1974.
The cloth: the field's paperwork champion, and the record every other card is quietly measured against. Fill power: 700 CUIN, printed. Fill weight: 1 pound 8 ounces, about 680 grams, printed in the maker's specification table as its retailers carry it. Read that pair again, because no other garment on this page gives you both: 680 grams is expedition quantity, roughly six times the down inside the Arc'teryx below, and it is why a 700-fill parka outranks 750 and 800-fill parkas whose weights are secrets. The down is 90 percent goose down to 10 percent feather, ethically produced and traceable under the house's down promise. The shell is where the cloth row pays its charge: a plain polyamide with a water-repellent finish, no membrane, no sealed seams, a finish under No. 44's law at $750, which is why this row stops at 26 and loses the tiebreak to a membrane shell. The brand stands at 72 on the Scandinavian ranking as a derived brand record; this 85 grades the garment, and the two numbers are kept separate here as everywhere on this site.
The build and the fit: offset down channels, the architecture that keeps loft continuous over the seam lines; synthetic padding reinforcing the shoulders, where straps and weather press the down flat; a two-way front zipper behind a protective flap; the generous hood with its signature yellow adjustment cords; and a published centre back of 31.5 inches at a claimed weight of 3 pounds 12.8 ounces, the coverage figures printed where a buyer can read them before paying, which is why the fit row takes the field's highest mark, 17. The pattern is the 1974 original, the expedition design the house built its name on, still in production half a century later, and the longevity row scores exactly that: continuity no marketing department can simulate, a repairable build, fourteen of fifteen. The value row prints the field's most instructive pair of divisions: about $1.07 per fill power point, unremarkable, and about $1.10 per gram of published fill, the most down per dollar in the field by an order of magnitude. This is what the two-number law is for.
Montbell Permafrost Down Parka
The Honest Mid-Price
US price at last check: $399 at the maker's store.
Buy it as the cheapest published warmth in the field: 800 fill power at about 50 cents a point, in the lightest parka here, from the disclosure school No. 46 honoured. Read its shell caveat first. Its maker prints it; so does this card.
The cloth: the garment graded here is the current US-fulfilled edition, and its record is two honesties and one silence. Fill power: 800 Fill Power EX Down, printed, the field's second-highest figure. Shell: a DRYTEC two-layer waterproof-breathable construction, PFAS-free, and then the maker's own sentence in its features list, printed in full because this page scores makers who print their limits: not seam-sealed for complete waterproof protection. Under No. 44's law that caveat is decisive both ways: the house is credited for publishing the limit on the page that sells the garment, and the garment is charged for the limit itself, because an unsealed membrane is a claim with a hole at every seam. The silence: this garment's page publishes no fill weight, and the charge is sharpened by the house's own range, which prints fill weights where it chooses to: a Colorado Parka in the maker's own specifications carries 3.2 ounces of 650-fill, and the Permafrost Light carries 120 grams of 800-fill on the house's own range page. The school that taught this page its doctrine withholds the number on the parka flagship, and the cloth row lands at 23 with the withholding itemised. The brand stands at 73 on Brands Like Arc'teryx as a derived brand record, kept separate from this garment's 77.
The build and the fit: box construction, published, the baffle architecture that holds loft off the seam lines; a total weight of 550 grams, which is not a misprint: this parka weighs about what the Fjallraven's down alone weighs, and less than a third of the Canada Goose below, because the Japanese pattern is cut for climbers who carry their shelter on their backs. The fit is the parka contract at minimum mass, full length and hood, sized on the maker's own chart. One edition warning, printed for buyers: a European edition of this parka exists in a WINDSTOPPER shell at 729 grams; it is a different garment from the US edition graded here, and the shell and weight on the label decide which one is in the box. The value row is where the card argues loudest: $399 over a published 800 is about 50 cents per fill power point, the cheapest checkable warmth in the field, thirteen of fifteen. Longevity takes ten: the light cloth and the unsealed seams are the terms of the weight, and the house's repair record is thinner in print than the specialists above it.
Arc'teryx Therme Parka
The City Expedition
US list price at last check: $800.
Buy it as the best shell in the field wrapped around the least down: a sealed GORE-TEX parka for wet city cold, bought with its eyes open about the gram count on this card. No buy pill: the maker's US product page was not captured live in this pass, and the card goes without rather than with a guessed door.
The cloth: the strongest shell record on this page and the strangest fill record. The shell first: two-layer GORE-TEX ePE with a 200-denier face fabric and an FC0 DWR finish, a membrane structure under No. 44's law, the only fully realised weather system here besides the winner's. Fill power: 750, European grey goose down, printed. Fill weight: 112.25 grams in a medium, and the asterisk is the story: the figure is published, but it lives in the maker's own answers beneath the product page, where the house replies to a buyer's question, not in the specification table where the rest of the garment's numbers stand. This page counts it as published, because it is the maker's own figure in the maker's own channel, and prints where it lives, because a number a buyer must dig for is a different kind of publication. The same answers carry the field's most honest sentence about warmth, quoted because it deserves quoting: we do not assign specific temperature ratings to our products. No adjective, no house scale, a refusal to fake a figure. The cloth row scores the shell, the power and the buried weight together at 24. The brand stands at 73 in Brands Like Arc'teryx; this 76 is the garment's own.
The build and the fit: Down Composite Mapping, the house's signature architecture, places Coreloft synthetic insulation where moisture gathers, the hood, the collar, the cuffs' line, and down where warmth is the job; an insulated StormHood; internal cuff gaskets; a two-way front zipper; a published centre back of 75 centimetres in a long, hip-covering cut at 1,235 grams total. It is the best-engineered urban parka here, and the construction row gives the field's joint-highest mark, 18. Then the value row runs the division this Card exists to print: $800 over 112.25 published grams is about $7.13 per gram of down, the most expensive down by weight in the field, six and a half times the Fjallraven's rate, for a garment whose warmth, by its maker's own published arithmetic, is a fraction of the 85s above it. At about $1.07 per fill power point it looks ordinary; per gram it is exposed. Buy the Therme as a waterproof city coat with down in it, which is a good garment. Do not buy it as expedition warmth. Its maker, to its credit, never quite tells you to.
Patagonia Jackson Glacier Parka
The Sealed Institution
US list price at last check: $519.
Buy it as the institution's parka: the field's working waterproof build at a mid-field price, from the house with the repair bench. Accept the unpublished fill weight as the known gap in an otherwise adult record.
The cloth: the record, as published. Fill power: 700, printed, in 100 percent recycled down, the field's only fully recycled fill. Shell: the house's H2No two-layer construction, and the weather story is told by the maker's own collection copy with unusual candour: by applying lots of seam tape, the house says, it finally made the Jackson Glacier jackets and parkas waterproof. Read the admission inside the claim: the sealing is the structure, the structure is now published, and under No. 44's law a taped two-layer shell is a waterproof claim a reader can grade, which puts this garment's weather record ahead of membrane-free shells costing more. The silence is the house's standing one, charged on No. 46 and charged again here: no fill weight is published, so the 700 cannot be totalled, and the buyer of a $519 parka is asked to trust the institution for the quantity. The cloth row scores the sealed shell, the published power and the withheld weight at 22. The house stands at 83 in the American ranking as a brand record; this 75 grades the parka, kept separate as everywhere on this site.
The build and the fit: a full parka cut past the hip, an insulated hood, a two-way front closure and the house's regular fit across its standard library, built to be worn daily rather than carried to a summit. The construction is competent rather than expeditionary, sixteen, and the fit row credits the published coverage and the cut's layering room at fifteen. The longevity row is the institution's argument: the strongest repair culture in the field, a worn-wear market behind the garment, and a model line the house maintains across seasons, twelve of fifteen. The value row prints about 74 cents per published fill power point at the current $519 list, a price the desk notes has climbed from $449: mid-field money for the field's most serviceable record, the rate held back from the top marks by the same missing gram count that holds the cloth row. Buy it as the parka most readers will actually wear out, which is a longevity claim of its own.
Canada Goose Expedition Parka
The Price Test, Expedition Class
US list price at last check: $1,895.
Buy it, if you buy it, for the build: a genuine expedition garment with a half-century work record. Do not buy it as published warmth per dollar. Its maker prints a fill power, a house scale and no fill weight, at two and a half times the winner's price; the door below is a Farfetch listing at $2,004 with duties included, and the fur-ruff Heritage version has been discontinued, so check which garment the listing describes.
The cloth: the price test, expedition class, run on the maker's published record and nothing else. Fill power: 625, white duck down at an 80/20 down-to-feather ratio, printed. Shell: Arctic Tech, its composition printed at 83 percent polyester and 17 percent cotton, water-repellent by the maker's own description, which under No. 44's law is a finish, not a structure, at $1,895. Fill weight: not specified, anywhere; the phrase is the one its own spec sheets carry where the figure belongs. In its place the product story leads with the Thermal Experience Index, TEI 5, the top of a five-point house scale the maker maps to minus 30 degrees Celsius and below: the field's only temperature figure, and it is a scale defined, measured and revised by the house that sells the coat, which No. 46's doctrine grades as a refusal to be compared. The cloth row scores the published 625, the printed shell ratios and the absent weight together at 20. One boundary, printed because this site keeps it everywhere: Canada Goose holds no standing brand score on this site, and none is created here. The Crofton's 68 on No. 46 and this 71 are garment scores, each derived from its own published record at its own published price.
The build and the fit: what the record supports, it supports at the field's highest level. This is a working expedition garment, the pattern developed for scientists wintering at McMurdo Station: rib-knit cuffs that seal over gloves, a two-way zip behind a stormflap, a full hood system, pockets placed for mittened hands, coverage to the thigh in the field's heaviest build. The construction row gives 18 and the fit row 17, the coverage record matched only by the Fjallraven's paperwork. Then the value row runs the only arithmetic the maker leaves available: $1,895 over a published 625 is about $3.03 per fill power point, nearly four times the winner's rate, and the per-gram division cannot be run at all, because the divisor was never published. Three of fifteen. The longevity row credits a house that has sewn parkas in Canada since 1957 and repairs what it sells, thirteen. The verdict is not that the garment is poor; it is that its warmth, alone among the things $1,895 buys here, is sold on trust, and the imagery of Antarctic stations is asked to do the work a number declines to do.
The North Face McMurdo Parka
The Working Classic
US list price at last check: $450; the door below showed $157.97 at this check.
Buy it as the working classic at a street price: the longest coat its maker sells, a published fill power, and a waterproof claim this card grades as a claim. At the sale price on the door below, the value argument makes itself.
The cloth: the current model's record, as published. Fill power: 600, recycled waterfowl down, printed; the desk notes the figure has moved across generations of this coat, 550 in the older pattern, and prints the current number as the current claim. Fill weight: none published. Shell: DryVent two-layer, the house's own membrane, described in the maker's copy as fully waterproof, windproof and breathable, with no figure published behind the adjectives. Under No. 44's law the sentence is graded precisely: a membrane is a structure, which earns more than a finish, and a structure with no published standard behind it earns less than a sealed, figured one, which is the distance between this card's cloth row and the Therme's. The cloth row lands at 20, level with the Canada Goose above it by a different route: a lower published power and an unfigured membrane, against a printed shell composition and a house scale. The brand stands at 64 in the American ranking; this 70 is the McMurdo's own garment score, and the gap between the two numbers is a garment outscoring its house's average, which happens and is printed when it does.
The build and the fit: the maker's copy calls it our longest men's coat, and the coverage is the card's fit argument: a relaxed, full-length parka cut, a two-way VISLON front zip behind a stormflap, a removable faux-fur ruff on the hood, the working details of a coat that has been the default severe-winter buy at American retail for a generation. Construction takes fifteen, solid and unexceptional in print. A naming warning, printed because buyers trip on it: a McMurdo 2L GORE-TEX Down Parka now sells on the maker's own site at $950, same name, different shell, different garment, more than double this coat's list; the name no longer identifies the record, so read the label's shell line before paying either price. The value row prints about 75 cents per published fill power point at the $450 list, eleven of fifteen, and notes the door below showed $157.97 at this check, at which price this is the cheapest published warmth per dollar in the field and the row would argue higher; the desk scores the list, and prints the street. Longevity takes nine: the model's continuity is real, the house's repair record in print is thinner than the specialists', and the name's new double life is a resale hazard.
Moose Knuckles Original Stirling Down Parka 2.0
The Skip
Canadian list price at last check: CAD 1,395 at the maker's Canadian store.
Leave it, on its maker's own record: at CAD 1,395 the product page publishes no fill power, no fill weight and no temperature figure for this garment, only adjectives and hardware. It ships without a buy link, the way this desk sends home the garments it convicts.
The cloth: read the maker's own product page for its flagship parka, because the page is the conviction. The copy offers uncompromising protection and a rugged point of view, and lingers on the signature bold hardware. What it does not offer, at CAD 1,395, is a single warmth figure for the garment: no fill power, no fill weight, no temperature rating, nothing that can be checked, divided or compared. The house's brand-level warmth page goes further and thereby convicts deeper: it states that the line's fill powers range from 650-plus to 800, a range spanning 150 points assigned to no garment in particular, claims Responsible Down Standard down at the level of the brand, and quotes a 2018 magazine's verdict that the house makes the warmest parka in a comparison of three coats. A fill ratio for this garment, 90 percent duck down to 10 percent feathers, circulates in retail listings; the maker's own page does not print it. Set the record beside the field: the most expensive garment per published fact on this page, a range where the Fjallraven prints 680 grams, a magazine quotation where Arc'teryx prints a refusal and Feathered Friends prints a certificate number. The cloth row gives the brand-level claims their due, eight, and notes the garment itself was published nothing to grade.
The build and the fit: the object under the paperwork is a real parka, and the card scores what can be scored: full-length coverage, a hood, heavyweight hardware and a size library running XS to 4XL, the widest in the field, which the fit row credits at twelve. Construction takes eleven for a substantially built fashion parka whose published construction story is its metalwork. Then the arithmetic that ends the argument: the value row cannot divide CAD 1,395 by a fill power that was never published, nor by a fill weight that was never published, so both of this Card's divisions return the same blank the maker's page returns, and the row scores two. Longevity takes six: the down inside, whatever its power and however much of it there is, will outlast the fashion hardware's moment, and no repair or continuity record is published to argue otherwise. Moose Knuckles holds no brand score on this site and none is created here; this 39 is the Stirling's garment score, derived entirely from its maker's own published record, which is the emptiest record at the field's second-highest price. Expedition imagery is doing all the work on that page. This page declines to let it.
The claim table: what each maker actually publishes
Every cell below is the maker's own published position at this check. Where a maker publishes nothing, the table prints the silence rather than an estimate. Read down the fill weight column and you have read this page's findings; read the temperature column and you have read its second finding.
| Parka | Fill power, as published | Fill weight, as published | Temperature claim, as published | Price per published fill power point | Price per published gram of fill |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feathered Friends Khumbu | 900-plus | Printed in the maker's specification-table format across its expedition range; the Khumbu's own figure was not captured on its page in this pass and is flagged | None published | About $0.83 | Waits on the captured figure |
| Fjallraven Expedition Down Jacket | 700 CUIN | 1 lb 8 oz, about 680 g, in the maker's specification table | None published | About $1.07 | About $1.10 |
| Montbell Permafrost Down Parka | 800 | None on this garment's page; the house prints fill weights elsewhere in its range | None published | About $0.50 | Cannot be computed |
| Arc'teryx Therme Parka | 750 | 112.25 g, stated by the maker in its product-page answers, not its specification table | None: the maker states it does not assign temperature ratings | About $1.07 | About $7.13 |
| Patagonia Jackson Glacier Parka | 700 | None published | None published | About $0.74 | Cannot be computed |
| Canada Goose Expedition Parka | 625 | None published; its spec sheets read Not specified | TEI 5, a house scale, mapped by the house to minus 30 degrees Celsius and below | About $3.03 | Cannot be computed |
| The North Face McMurdo Parka | 600 | None published | None published | About $0.75 | Cannot be computed |
| Moose Knuckles Original Stirling 2.0 | None for the garment; the brand page offers a line-wide range, 650-plus to 800 | None published | None for the garment | Cannot be computed | Cannot be computed |
Now set the columns against the puffer Card's. Fill powers: seven of eight here, six of eight on No. 46; the jacket field's silent house published nothing, and so does the parka field's. Fill weights a reader can verify: two of eight here, two of eight there, the same rate at two to four times the prices, and one of this field's two lives in a question-and-answer reply rather than a specification table. Temperature figures: one of eight, a house scale. Temperature standards: none of eight, because for garments there is no standard to cite. The hypothesis this Card was built to test was that the parka publishes its warmth at the jacket's rate or worse. The count says: better on power by one garment, identical on weight, and worse in kind, because the parka's prices are expedition prices and its imagery promises expedition proof.
The minus-degree mirage
One garment in eight carries a temperature figure, and it is the field's most instructive cell. Canada Goose's Thermal Experience Index is a five-point scale the house defines, the house measures and the house revises, and its top mark, TEI 5, is mapped by the house to minus 30 degrees Celsius and below. As a way to sort one maker's own catalogue it is harmless. As a warmth claim it is a wall: TEI 5 cannot be set beside 680 grams of 700-fill, or beside any figure any other maker publishes, because the unit exists only inside the brand. No. 46 graded the same device on the Crofton and this Card grades it the same way at the Expedition's price: a house scale is not a lie. It is a refusal to be compared, sold at $1,895.
The rest of the field declines the figure in three different ways, and the ways are worth separating. Arc'teryx declines it honestly, in print: we do not assign specific temperature ratings to our products, the field's only published sentence on the subject, printed by the maker whose shell record is the strongest here. Feathered Friends and Fjallraven decline it silently and publish the arithmetic instead, the two numbers from which a reader who knows the conditions can reason. And the skip declines the numbers and keeps the conclusion: a brand page that quotes a magazine calling its coats the warmest in a three-coat comparison, a minus-degree reputation circulating in coverage of the brand, and a product page that publishes nothing a reader can test. There is no garment temperature standard hiding behind any of this. EN 23537 rates sleeping bags on a heated manikin and prints its method; no equivalent exists for coats, which is precisely why the honest positions in this field are a published pair of numbers or a published refusal, and why every minus figure without a method is an adjective wearing a number's clothes.
Cost per wear, printed in the open
The assumption, printed before the numbers: a parka in rotation is worn about 40 times a cold season. The life column is the service life our longevity row scores for, counted in seasons before migration, finish decay or hardware failure retires the garment from the front of the rotation, not a promise. The McMurdo is costed at its $450 list; its door's price at this check would cut its figure to about 56 cents, and the desk prints the street price on its card rather than borrow it here.
| Parka | Price | Scored life | Cost per wear |
|---|---|---|---|
| Montbell Permafrost Down Parka | $399 | 8 seasons | $1.25 |
| Patagonia Jackson Glacier Parka | $519 | 10 seasons | $1.30 |
| Fjallraven Expedition Down Jacket | $750 | 12 seasons | $1.56 |
| The North Face McMurdo Parka | $450 | 7 seasons | $1.61 |
| Feathered Friends Khumbu Parka | $749 | 10 seasons | $1.87 |
| Arc'teryx Therme Parka | $800 | 10 seasons | $2.00 |
| Canada Goose Expedition Parka | $1,895 | 12 seasons | $3.95 |
| Moose Knuckles Original Stirling Down Parka 2.0 | CAD 1,395 | 8 seasons | CAD 4.36 |
The table's shape is the ranking's economics in one view. The honest publishers cluster between $1.25 and $2.00 a wear. The Canada Goose's $3.95 buys the field's best work record amortised across the longest scored life, and still cannot show its working. And the Stirling's CAD 4.36 a wearing purchases, per wear, a warmth claim that was never published once: the most expensive undefined warmth in the field, worn forty times a season.
The skip: the Stirling at 39
Every house rule that governs this site's rankings lands on this garment at once, and it lands on the maker's own pages, which is the only place this desk convicts from. The specification is absent at the field's second-highest price: no fill power for the garment, no fill weight, no temperature figure, a brand page offering a 150-point range for the whole line and a magazine quotation from 2018 in place of a number. The comparison convicts it without outside witnesses: for about half its Canadian price in American dollars, the Fjallraven prints both numbers and 680 grams of down; for less, the Montbell prints an 800 power and its own shell's limitation in the same breath. The Stirling is not alleged to be a cold coat. It is alleged, on its maker's own record, to be an uncheckable one, sold in expedition's visual language at expedition's prices with a fashion house's paperwork. Probably warm is what CAD 1,395 buys when a maker will not publish. Buy either 85 and the arithmetic. Buy the Permafrost and keep the change. The down inside the Stirling is probably good down. Probably is the finding.
Which parka to buy
If you buy one: the Feathered Friends Khumbu, the expedition garment whose maker's record is the field's standard, bought direct from Seattle. If you want the most down for the money: the Fjallraven Expedition, 680 published grams at $750, the same score, beaten only by a membrane. If the budget is a working one: the Montbell Permafrost, the cheapest checkable warmth in the field, bought knowing its seams are unsealed because its maker told you so. If your cold is wet and urban: the Arc'teryx Therme, the best shell here, bought as a waterproof city coat and not as expedition warmth. If you want the institution: the Jackson Glacier, sealed, serviced and fairly priced. The McMurdo is the street buy: at its list it is the classic default, and at the sale price its door showed, it is the field's bargain, with the GORE-TEX namesake warning read first. The Canada Goose Expedition is bought for its build and its work record by readers who have read its rate and its blank weight cell on this page and chosen it anyway, which is the only honest way to buy it. The layer under all seven is ranked in Verdict Card No. 45, the jacket-length species in Verdict Card No. 46, and every layer in the wardrobe is mapped in the Body Map.
Questions, answered
What are the best down parkas for men?
Two parkas tie at 85 out of 100, and the tie is broken on the cloth row, 28 to 26, the ruling printed on both cards. The Feathered Friends Khumbu takes the top seat: 900-plus fill power, a waterproof Pertex Shield shell, box baffles, a dual zip with an offset inner zipper, and a traceable down record, at $749. The Fjallraven Expedition Down Jacket shares the 85 as the field's most completely published garment: 700 fill power and a fill weight of about 680 grams, both in print, at $750. The parka sent home, at 39, is the Moose Knuckles Original Stirling Down Parka 2.0, whose maker's own product page publishes no fill power, no fill weight and no temperature figure for the garment at CAD 1,395.
What is the difference between a parka and a puffer jacket?
Length, weight of fill, and job. The puffer jackets ranked on Verdict Card No. 46 are hip-length insulation layers, made to work over knitwear and under a shell. The parka is the long species: coverage past the hip toward the thigh, expedition-weight fill, a hood and closure system built to be the outermost layer in still, deep cold. The boundary is printed from the record, not the name. A parka-named garment already sits on No. 46, the Uniqlo Seamless Down Parka at 74, graded there as the jacket it is; the name alone does not promote a garment to this page. Every parka here is graded on its published length and coverage, its fill power and its fill weight, under the same five rows.
Why do two numbers decide a down parka's warmth?
Fill power is the volume one ounce of down lofts into: the quality of the cluster. Fill weight is how much of that down the garment holds: the quantity. Warmth is the product of the two, and a heroic power figure over a small weight is a light garment wearing a big number. Verdict Card No. 46 printed the law for jackets and found two of eight makers publishing a fill weight. This Card counts the parka field the same way: seven of eight publish a fill power, and two of eight publish a fill weight a reader can verify, the same rate as the jacket field, at prices up to $1,895. One of the two weights lives in a maker's question-and-answer reply, not its specification table.
What is a parka's temperature rating worth?
Across the eight parkas scored here, exactly one carries a temperature figure of any kind, and it is a house scale: Canada Goose's Thermal Experience Index, TEI 5, mapped by the house to minus 30 degrees Celsius and below, defined and measured by the house that sells the coat. Named temperature test standards: none of eight. No garment standard exists to name; the nearest one, EN 23537, rates sleeping bags, not coats. Arc'teryx prints the field's most honest sentence on the subject in its own product answers: we do not assign specific temperature ratings to our products. A minus-degree claim with no standard behind it is an adjective wearing a number, and this page grades it as one.
What does the down inside a parka cost, per gram?
Where a maker publishes a fill weight, the division can be run, and the field splits by a factor of six. The Fjallraven Expedition carries about 680 grams of 700-fill down at $750, about $1.10 per gram of fill, the most down per dollar in the field. The Arc'teryx Therme carries 112.25 grams of 750-fill down at $800, about $7.13 per gram, the most expensive down by weight in the field, inside the strongest shell record here. Per published fill power point the field runs from about 50 cents, the Montbell Permafrost, to $3.03, the Canada Goose Expedition; the Moose Knuckles Stirling's rates cannot be computed at all, because its maker publishes neither number for the garment.
How long does a down parka last, and what kills it?
A parka's down can outlive its wearer; its systems cannot. What retires the garment is the shell's finish first, the water-repellent treatment that decays on a wash count no maker prints, then baffle migration at the seams, then the closure hardware: zips, cords and cuff closures worked with gloved hands in the cold. The longevity rows here score the model's continuity, the maker's repair bench and the published care record, and the cost table prices the result: at forty wears a season, the ranked field runs from about $1.25 a wear, the Montbell Permafrost across eight scored seasons, to $3.95, the Canada Goose Expedition amortised across twelve. The sent-home Stirling runs about CAD 4.36 a wear for a warmth claim its maker never published.
How this ranking stays honest
The rests, the prose answers and the capture notes, printed. Woolrich is answered from its standing record rather than ranked: the brand stands at 53, derived, on the Italian ranking, whose own questions name an Arctic Parka at about $955 whose maker's copy names no cloth weight and no mill; graded on this Card's basis, that record enters the claim table with its warmth unfigured, and the desk rested the house rather than seat a heritage name on a record its own page already sentenced. Marmot stands at 65 and Peak Performance at 66 as brand records, both rested; neither house is scored here. Eddie Bauer, at 56, and Lands' End, at 75, keep the brand records and the jacket-level answers printed on No. 46; their parka-length coats were not graded, the field's seats being filled by records a parka buyer can divide. Rab stands at 77 as a brand record and its Microlight Alpine holds 84 on No. 46; no Rab parka was graded here. Montbell's Plasma line, honoured on No. 46 as the disclosure school's other member, is a jacket and stays there; the house enters this field through the Permafrost alone. H&M was rested deliberately, as the brief directed: its derived brand score and its running derivation stand untouched. On capture: the Khumbu's fill weight is published in its maker's specification-table format, verified across the house's expedition pages and stated as house policy in its own answers, but the figure itself was not captured on the maker's product page in this pass and is flagged, with the Canada Goose list price, for direct re-verification in the November pass; prices seen for the Expedition Parka in this pass ran from $1,595 at aggregators to the $1,895 list its current spec sheets carry, with the Farfetch door at $2,004 duties included, and the fur-ruff Heritage version stands discontinued, confirmed with the maker in February 2026, the regular version continuing with the same components. The Therme's fill weight is the maker's figure from its own product-page answers; older retail listings carrying 120 grams describe earlier editions and were set aside. The Permafrost graded here is the US-fulfilled edition; a European WINDSTOPPER edition at 729 grams is a different garment. The McMurdo's $157.97 door price and its $950 GORE-TEX namesake are printed on its card. Two cards ship without buy pills, the Khumbu and the Therme, for the reasons printed on them; the skip ships doorless. On photography: the magazine's bank holds two puffer frames and no photograph of a worn parka, no hood-up portrait and no baffle at macro range; the hero shows the weather the species is sold for, the body frame marks the fashion boundary, both captioned for exactly what they show, the cards run without images, and the harvest list names what is missing: a worn expedition parka on body in street light, a hood-up parka portrait, box baffles at macro range beside a ruler, and a parka worn over knitwear. Prices and specifications were checked against the makers' own listings in October 2026; where a figure could not be verified from the maker's page, the page says so at the figure's elbow. The full method is written out on the methodology page.