Sleep Tight: Cotopaxi Sueño Sleeping Bag Review

[leadin]The Cotopaxi Sueño sleeping bag is versatile, loaded with features, and perfect for car camping and backpacking alike.[/leadin]

Cotopaxi burst onto the scene in the last few years with a range of clothing and backpacks that emphasize putting its profits to good use. The company quickly expanded its lineup from a few select pieces of outerwear to tents and sleeping bags.

We got our hands on Cotopaxi’s new sleeping bag, the Sueño, to see how it held up in the mountains of Montana.

Cotopaxi Sueño Sleeping Bag

The heart of this bag is made up of 800-fill water-resistant duck down. With a 15-degree rating and weighing under 3 pounds, the Sueño is ideal for a wide range of sleeping situations—from fall, spring, and summer backpacking trips to mild winter hut expeditions.

The bag has a roomy hood with easy eyelock adjustment and a pillow pocket, pretty standard but nice design elements. A roomy foot-box ensures your feet have plenty of room to breathe.

It has a clever insulated media pocket integrated into a classic mummy shape, which is a nice touch to keep your phone from dying in cold weather.

A Night In The Sueño

I’m a cold sleeper. If the temperature dips below 45 degrees, I’m usually relegated to a 15-20 degree bag. I’m OK parting ways with most creature comforts to spend a night in the backcountry, but a warm sleeping system is a must. I need my Zs after a long day on the trail.

The Sueño seemed like a good fit for summer backpacking and camping in Southwestern Montana where the temperatures can fluctuate wildly throughout the night.

My biggest concern, besides staying warm, was that if the temperature remained above 50 degrees at night, I would swelter in the bag. And indeed, a few nights did stay relatively mild, leaving me uncomfortably warm wrapped in the Sueño.

At this point with most bags, I would start the process of unzipping and re-zipping the bag in an attempt to regulate my body temperature. With the Sueño though, this was not the case. The bag has a full-length two-way zipper on the right side and a half zipper on the left, allowing you to fold down the top third of the bag and sleep with your arms out. This was a far more effective way to regulate my temperature than fiddling around with the zipper every 20 minutes.

The two-way zipper goes all the way to the base of the bag as well, allowing you to vent the foot box if it gets too warm. A few of the nights I ended up sleeping with the top folded down and the foot box unzipped, providing airflow throughout the night and some of the best backcountry Zs in recent memory.

If you’re feeling really crazy, you can even unzip the whole bag and use it as a blanket.

Size and Fit

One of the other stand-out features of the Sueño was its perfect fit, not always an easy thing to find with a 6’1, 250-pound frame.

Now I realize that everyone out there is not 6’1. If you’re a smaller statured person (or bigger) this could be a different story. But for me, the Sueño is among the best-fitting bags I’ve tested. It allowed enough room for me to roll around at night without getting tangled in the bag but not so much empty air space that I was wasting body heat.

The hood provided copious room for a “pillow,” but also buttoned down nicely to make sure my noggin stayed warm. I could even cross and fold my arms while still in the bag, something that I’m almost never able to do. The Sueño fit like a glove.

Pros

• Roomy and comfortable design
• The roomy hood has extra real estate for a pillow
• The full-length zipper gives venting options
• The internal media pocket keeps phone toasty all night

Cons

• It’s a tad heavy, weighing 2 pounds, 13 ounces.
• It’s on the larger side, which could spell trouble for smaller folks
• At $350, the Sueño isn’t cheap. You can find less expensive bags

Overall Impressions

Overall, I have really enjoyed the Sueño. It packs all of the features that I enjoy in a bag into one package and there hasn’t been a night yet that I’ve wished for a different bag. Weight Weenies might scoff at the 2lb 13oz weight but, for me, it was a small price to pay for the extra features built in. Cotopaxi isn’t out to build the lightest or smallest bag with the Sueño and that’s what I like about it.

If you’re looking for a versatile cold weather bag with a few creature comforts built in, the Sueño fits the bill.

More Info // Buy Now