NEMO Pulse 20/30 Quilt Review

Nemo Equipment is perhaps best known for its line of lightweight freestanding tents, but over the years, have grown into a wide-ranging outdoor gear brand, offering everything from totes to sleep systems.

As their ultralight Osmo and Elite series have pushed the envelope on freestanding tent weights, they’ve also introduced an ultralight sleeping quilt and pad to match. This review covers the Nemo Pulse 20/30 quilt, their first entrance into the non-zippered sleeping bag market. Can they compete with the ultralight titans that are already established in the field?

Nemo Pulse Quilt At-A-Glance

Price: $550 regular size / $580 long size

Weights:

• Quilt only: 18.0 oz Regular (6’ 0”) / 20.6 oz Long (6’ 6”)
• Pad straps (x2): 0.9 oz
• Stuff sack: 1.45 oz

Materials:

• Shell: PFAS-free Ripstop nylon
  • They did not specify denier but I would guess it is a 10D base with a 15D or 20D ripstop.
• Fill: 1000FP (cubic inch/ounce) down with ExpeDRY treatment
  • Down type is not specified, but I presume it is goose down given its high Fill Power (FP)

Intended Use

The Nemo Pulse quilt is a lightweight bag meant for warmer weather. Its generous width and limited footbox length are better for sprawling, active sleepers.

Circumstance of Review

I got the Pulse quilt in August, which in most places is still firmly a summer month. However, most of my testing was above treeline, where fall was underway. I used this quilt for a series of weekend trips close to home in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness, as well as for a quick-hit section hike of the Colorado Trail.

Nemo Pulse Quilt Features

Karo Step Baffles

The most unique feature of the Pulse quilt is the Karo Step baffles. This probably sounds like word salad, but it’s worth breaking down to understand the key design points.

Baffles are the chambers of fabric into which down is stuffed to hold the feathers in place. Typically, they are sewn in long tubes, either horizontally or vertically, so that they cannot bunch up in one location inside the quilt.

Karo Step baffles are a unique design for keeping down in place using a two-directional grid of noncontinuous baffles. This reduces the amount of baffle material required while allowing all of the down to be redistributed anywhere inside. In theory this is a lighter construction methodology than continuous tubes of narrower baffles.

Draft Collar with External Sinch

This quilt has a substantial 5” wide draft collar, a feature sometimes absent on warmer weather quilts. Most draft collars are narrower but more overstuffed than the one found on the Pulse, but I found it to be effective enough for summer conditions.

The cinch cord sits just below the draft collar and uses a unique surface-mounted toggle to keep it tight.

Short Footbox

Measuring at just 12” from the foot end of the bag, the fully enclosed “footbox” is shorter than most quilts. Typically, footboxes are sewn closed tubes that end about knee high (about 15 to 22″ from the end), at which point the left and right sides split.

So why is the Pulse so much shorter? My guess is they are more worried about being too hot in a restrictive tube than being drafty from the large bottom opening. This matches both the summer-weight insulation and my experience using it in warmer temperatures. The open bottom is also more of a U shape than a V, meaning it widens out quickly.

Nemo Pulse Quilt Pros

Efficient Baffle Design

The Karo Step baffles (explained above) are designed to be weight-efficient, using less material to create the chambers than traditional designs. On sewn-through or short baffle designs, it also allows a fairly even down distribution, avoiding cold spots (or, more realistically, lines) where the shell walls are sewn close together.

The loft height is not listed, but my highly unscientific poke-and-feel methodology tells me these do have baffle walls (not sewn through) that are about a half-inch tall, and the center of each baffle “cell” is about 2.5” tall. The variation of the baffle height means some areas will feel warmer than others, creating a lower temperature rating compared to a quilt that was 2.5” tall throughout.

High Power Down

Stuffed into the baffles is 1,000FP, ExpeDRY treated down.

Fill power is a measure of how lofty and efficient down is, measured in cubic inches of space per 1 ounce of down. Essentially the higher the number, the more warm air it can trap with less weight and bulk. A score of 1,000 is at the top of the line, with consumer-grade down starting around 550FP.

ExpeDRY is a water-resistant treatment offered by Allied Feather and Down. This treatment was new to the market last year, using a dusting of gold particles to aid evaporation and wicking of moisture away from compromised down. While hopefully your bag never gets wet in the first place, this treatment should help keep the loft alive in humid, dewy environments.

Roomy Cut

Wigglers and rotisserie sleepers will appreciate the wide, blanket-like shape of this quilt. Measuring 55” across at the shoulder, it felt palatial over my stick-like frame and 20” wide sleeping pads. 

Over the last few years, 54” to 55” has become the “standard” width-at-shoulders for quilts, but coming from my go-to 44” quilt, it’s a pretty nice change for sprawling summer nights. The Pulse also keeps a relatively wide cut throughout the torso, tapering to a comfortable 48” around the hips.

Nemo Pulse Quilt Cons

Temperature Ratings are Confusing and Optimistic

My months of use with the Pulse left me with a confusing mental list of temperature ratings. The model name is “Pulse 20/30,” which would be easy to interpret as a 20°F limit, 30°F comfort rating. These are the conventionally listed numbers when describing a sleeping bag. In contrast, the published EN 13537 standard temperature ratings are slightly different at 34°F comfort, 23°F limit, and -8°F extreme.

In practice, I thought the comfort limit was more in the 38-42°F range. My nights out with forecasts of low 30s (validated by a frosty tent) left me consistently cold, even with light base layers. When I managed to drop elevation enough to get a high 30s/ low 40s forecast, I slept through the night substantially better.

I found the down was not super evenly distributed out of the box, often shying away from the edges and baffle line intersections. Some manual adjustment of down distribution may eliminate these cold spots and close the 4-6° gap in performance I experienced.

External Cinch Cord Is Hard To Adjust

Mounted just below the draft collar is a unique, surface-mounted cord lock by Cohaesive. Its a nifty piece of hardware that piques my designer brain’s interest, but ultimately did not improve much upon the simple drawstring toggle for this application.

My experience with this cinch design was always a little hassle. Its position below the 5” draft collar and located on the exterior of the bag made it hard to pull once the pad straps were already deployed. I would almost prefer the cord exited the other side, towards the face, and was paired with a shorter (and more densely stuffed) draft collar so that it can more easily be operated from the inside.

Pad Straps Don’t Stay in Place

The two pad straps included with the Pulse are made of flat, smooth 1/4″ webbing. Each has three pieces of hardware: a standard toggle to tighten around the pad itself, and two “hooks” that grab cords on the sleeping bag.

The positioning of the hook hardware is adjustable, allowing them to be pulled to different widths and for different-shaped pads. They are also designed to lock in place when the cord is tight, but in practice this never seemed to happen quite perfectly. The hardware always seemed to end up out of position: either it would end up underneath my body, creating a pressure point, or it would fall off the sides of the pad, creating a drafty air gap.

The multiple pieces of hardware were also a minor chore to set up and position in camp each night, something I became increasingly annoyed at with each use.

Down Redistribution May Be Difficult After Washing

I did not feel the need to wash this bag during my testing period, but having washed several quilts and bags in the past, I worry about what the process may do to the down distribution. With no completely sealed baffle chambers, the entire bag is essentially one big maze.

Washing down causes it to clump up and fall to the edge of baffles. It is entirely possible a wash cycle on the Pulse would lead to one or two large clumps that would need to be manually redistributed across the entire bag. This would be a frustrating and time-intensive exercise, and potentially difficult to get even again.

Weight Is Middle of The Road

For all the hype on the efficient, weight-saving design of the Karo Step baffles, the 21oz weight is not particularly impressive when the comfort limit is in the high 30s. I suspect the shell fabric is just thicker and heavier than the true UL options, and the baffle layout doesn’t reduce the material as much as expected. The generous cut width is a direct tradeoff of versatility and weight, which also makes it seem heavier on paper.

Value

The Nemo Pulse is a spacious summer-warmth quilt with a few cool tricks up its sleeve to achieve balanced performance. At $550 MSRP, it lands very high on the price spectrum for three-season bags. Its middle-of-the-road weight and minor annoyances are harder to overlook, given the high price.

If a friend asked, I would ultimately recommend one of the options listed below over the Pulse on account of weight, price, and user experience.

Shop the Nemo Pulse 20/30 Quilt

Comparable Quilts

Katabatic Chisos (40 comfort)

• MSRP: $319
• Weight: 17.3 oz

(6′ 850fp version)

Hammock Gear Burrow UL

• MSRP: $355
• Weight: 15.1 oz

(regular length/width, 30-degree version)

Enlightened Equipment Enigma

• MSRP: $330
• Weight: 17.7 oz

(regular length/width, 850fp, 30-degree version)

The Nemo Pulse Quilt was donated for purpose of review