Review: Zenbivy Bed 25-Degree Sleeping Bag and Quilt System

The best days in life seem to start in a sleeping bag. Sure, you wake up sheathed in slick nylon, staring up at a wall made of more nylon, but once you escape your shiny sleep prison, you’re usually somewhere amazing—the High Sierra, lakeside on Superior, in a tree house in Laos.

I’ve never been fond of the sleeping bag part, though. Fortunately I am not the only person who feels this way. The designers behind the Zenbivy sleep system came up with a solution: a modular sleeping system that’s one part sleeping bag, one part Grandma’s quilt, and just about the perfect way to sleep outdoors.

The internet is filled with superlative reviews of the Zenbivy. It’s almost universally praised with comments like it's “the best sleep I’ve ever had in the backcountry.” I’ll confess, this made me skeptical. At this point, whenever I see something universally praised I assume that praise is being paid for by the company.

Except with Zenbivy, influencers aren't the ones praising it; it’s actual users on Reddit and professional reviewers I trust. Having now spent a few weeks in the Zenbivy, I am here to join them. The 25-degree version of the Zenbivy original ed is the best sleep I’ve had in the backcountry, in a tent, and possibly anywhere else.

I might be divorced and disowned if I leave my wife and kids to spend more nights in the Zenbivy sleeping bag. Fortunately, I sent it back to Zenbivy before it became an issue. But I miss it. I want one. I may never go backpacking without one again.

Let’s start with what makes the Zenbivy system so great: It’s a sleeping bag, it’s a quilt, it’s a sheet, and it’s several things in between, thanks to its modularity.

Photograph: Zenbivy

There are a few different Zenbivy systems. I tested the complete Zenbivy Bed, which uses a two-piece quilt and sheet design common to all their systems, but also includes a sleeping pad, pillow, and dry bag with compression straps. While the extras are nice to have, the core genius of the system is the fitted sheet and zippered quilt combo.

The Zenbivy system works by wrapping a fitted sheet over your sleeping pad. The sheet also has the hood portion of the sleeping bag attached to it. Then you lay the top quilt over that. This is the coolest, loosest way to use the system and how I did most of my testing since I sleep rather warm. However, should the temperature drop, you can zip the quilt footbox up into a mummy bag configuration and zip the upper sides to the bottom sheet. I did this on a couple of cooler nights in the Keweenaw Peninsula when it got quite frigid.

Most of the time, I slept in quilt mode. Because the hood of the bag is part of the bottom sheet, you can keep quite warm even if you don’t zip up the bag. It also eliminates the need to sleep in a hat, which I’ve never liked.

As any ultralight hiker will tell you, quilts are nothing new. There are two things I think that make the Zenbivy special. The first and foremost is the sheet and fabric. The fabric on the sheet is a polyester 50D microfiber Pongee, which eliminates all the noisy slip-slip-slip of sleeping in nylon. It somehow manages to feel very close to regular sheets. I'm not being entirely accurate, though. The fabric feels like your bed at home in the same way that some food you wouldn’t touch at home becomes pretty tasty when eaten fireside while you watch the reddish glow of mountain peaks reflecting on the surface of an alpine lake. Which is to say it’s damn comfortable in the backcountry. I didn't slide around, and as someone who moves around a lot in their sleep, I didn't constantly wake myself up fighting to turn over. I slept like I was at home, in my own bed. I would say I slept like a baby, but that's something people who've never had babies say. I slept like a teenager.

What I didn’t like as much was the sleeping pad that comes with the full Zenbivy Bed. It’s plenty comfortable, but it’s also very heavy. I used it for a few car camping trips, but if you’re primarily interested for backpacking, skip it and find something lighter. The sheet fit well on the Nemo Tensor, our top pick ultralight sleeping pad, as well as a few other pads I was testing at the time. It’s worth double-checking the dimensions of your pad (if you already have one) against the sheet, but I did not run into any that gave me problems.

Photograph: Zenbivy

The Zenbivy quilt and hood are made of 700-fill-power Hyperdry down, which uses a wax-based compound to achieve water resistance. That means there’s no fluorocarbons, and Zenbivy meets the Responsible Down Standard, so (as much as possible) the down is harvested in cruelty-free ways. I found the temperature rating to be reasonably accurate, though I did not test it in temps all the way down to 25 degrees. I also sleep very warm, so if you sleep cold, go with the 10-degree bag for three-season use.

Much as I love this system, I probably wouldn't use it for winter or high altitude, severe weather trips. For those, I would crawl in the uncomfy -40 mummy bag and console myself with the thought of how good the world will look in the morning.

The quilt portion of the Zenbivy Bed uses very short baffles (chambers) of down, which the company claims maximizes thermal efficiency by minimizing down-shift. I can vouch for the fact that the down doesn’t shift around in use. The design uses vertical baffles around the upper body, which stops down from sliding off your shoulders in the night. From the waist down the quilt has horizontal baffles. As noted above, the foot box area, to just below the waist, can be zipped up, then drawn together with a drawstring and snapped in place to become the equivalent of a mummy bag foot box. The upper portion of the quilt also zips to the bottom sheet for cooler nights. There’s even an optional pillow that’s quite comfortable and fits into the bottom sheet’s hood.

The 25-degree bed in size large—which is what I tested and found fit my 5'10" frame well—weighs 2 pounds, 14 ounces. The 10-degree bed size large (not tested) weighs 3 pounds, 15 ounces. Neither will get an ultralight hiker excited, but both are acceptable considering how well I slept.

I know what you’re thinking, there must be something wrong with the Zenbivy?

I thought the same thing. Then I spent pretty much the whole summer sleeping in it—and I really have nothing negative to say, aside from the weight. My only other hesitation would be temperature, but that’s easily dealt with by getting the warmer bag.

Even the price isn’t bad, at least compared to the competition. At $329 for the sheet and large quilt (all you really need), that’s actually cheaper than many other backcountry quilts I’ve tested. You can get a high-end quilt for a little less (the popular Hammock Gear 20, for instance, is $250), but Zenbivy is priced within the price ballpark. Throwing in the pillow and a compression dry bag brings the total to $425—not cheap, but not any more than a quality mummy bag.

If you hate sleeping bags but want to spend more nights in the backcountry, this is the sleeping system you want.