Roman Palm Passport sleeping bag: Tested
Roman Australia has been producing camping kit for Australians for more than 50 years and the brand knows a thing or two about resting your head in the Australian wilds. The Roman Palm Passport sleeping bag is the warmest in Roman’s Passport range and squarely aimed at users keen to pursue the manufacturer’s motto “Born to explore”.
Design
Rated to -5 degrees Celsius, the Palm Passport is suitable for solid three season use, and utilises a combination of Insufil Thermo® and Thermospace® insulation to provide maximum warmth to weight ratio, especially in damp conditions where it excels over down sleeping bags. A 40D/280T nylon diamond ripstop outer offers durability, and a Silk-tex 75D/210T lining delivers comfort.
Weighing in at 1.6kg and compressing to 32cm x 20cm, the Passport is both compact and lightweight (for a synthetic bag) and unfurls to a tidy 210cm x 75cm semi-tapered design. The semi-tapered shape helps to provide warmth around the legs, fits users up to 180cm tall, and the left and right double anti-snag SBS zip variants allow two sleeping bags to be zipped together to form a double sleeping bag.
In the field
There’s no doubt Roman has delivered a tidy package with its Palm Passport sleeping bag. The Palm Passport -5 is a great value for money three-season hiking/bikepacking sleeping bag that can handle frigid nights (for warm sleepers) but we suggest using it predominantly for conditions above water-bottle-freezing temps. The Insufil Thermo® and Thermospace® fill provide bang-for-buck when it comes to keeping the tootsies toasty on milder winter nights and the Silk-tex 75D/210T lining provides ample comfort.
The oversized zippers open and close seamlessly without snagging on the draft collars (a pet hate of ours) and the separate foot zipper not only allows for venting and cooling on those balmy nights but adds the benefit of the iconic campfire shuffle for extra warmth on chilly evenings by the fire. The full side zipper enables the bag to open to a blanket.
The Palm Passport is not niggle-free, however. Anyone built for the rugby front-row should forget this bag as it predominantly suits those who are relatively palm-sized in stature as well, with its internal girth of 140cm chest area and 100cm in the foot area. The internal stash pocket only just fits an oversized smartphone and is sealed with a single Velcro tab (we’d like to see a zipper).
While this bag is tested to EN13537 standards (European Standardised temperature ratings for sleeping bags) and rated at minus-5 degrees, we suggest the comfort rating of this bag leans more toward the warm sleeper over the cooler sleeper. That said, unless you’re heading into the alpine regions of Oz in late autumn or during the big thaw of early spring, the bag will keep you snug.
The final word on the Roman Palm Passport
Roman is on a roll at the moment (see our Roman Cradle 2-Person Hiking Tent review, here) and the Palm Passport keeps that momentum going, delivering an affordable compact synthetic sleeping bag for those who venture out in cool temperatures. In short, it is the epitome of what a three-season sleeping bag is meant to be.
RRP: $209 See OZtrail for more info on this and other Roman products.
