Big Agnes

Torchlight 20 FireLine Core Recycled Sleeping Bag - Kids'

Total miss - Classic Overthinking

Familiarity:

I returned this product before using it

Let me start by saying, I generally have liked Big Agnes products in the past. In fact, my daughter uses a prior year Torchlight sleeping bag and likes it very much. I decided to stay within the series and try this one out - and it's an over-designed miss for a kids sleeping bag. My problem is both with the bag AND the marketing description, write up and features. First of all - the bag materials and fill quality feel good. Some extra kid's specific features - not necessary, but fine. The downfall of the bag is that there is zero insulation along the back of the torso of the sleeping bag. Zero. It's two thin layers of poly rip stop. That's it. It's not like they missed the fill in that zone, it's apparently designed that way, due to the fact that it CAN be used with the attached sleeping pad sleeve. It's great to have a sleeping pad sleeve / holder - great feature for a kid to have, but there are situations where the padding and the insulation of the back torso are wanted... for instance, sleeping on a queen mattress and rolling to one's side... So basically, by removing the insulation on the back, they've pigeon-holed a child to only be able to use their sleeping bag, with a perfectly sized sleeping pad (sold also by Big Agnes). It's a single use case scenario... which for a kids sleeping bag is not ideal - whereas it should be more of a universal thing for 99% of the population. My second gripe about this is that nowhere on the backcountry.com site is there anything about the lack of back insulation. There is no mention that a sleeping pad is REQUIRED to be paired with this bag. It's obvious it's an option with the design of the sleeve - but zero mention of the necessity to have on for comfort. I went back and checked extensively. The only place it's even mentioned on the Big Agnes website is in a small icon, buried in the features accordion - not even mentioned as a disclaimer or anything in the main bullet points. I feel that neither backcountry or big agnes did their job to properly communicate and inform parents of the critical details of this sleeping bag - that it is part of a required system... And it's also disappointing that BA didn't just include a few more ounces of fill in the back - it wouldn't have been a deal breaker on weight, packability, or cost. Ultimately, it wouldn't have impacted it's ability to used as a system or as a stand alone piece.