Fjallraven Keb Jacket Review: The Keb Touring Down, Tested

The jacket in this review is the Fjallraven Keb Touring Down Jacket W, a 470 g (16.6 oz) 800-fill down jacket, and it is not the same garment as the Fjallraven Keb Jacket. Both are in Fjallraven’s Keb family and they do opposite jobs: the Keb Touring Down is an insulating layer with no weather protection to speak of, and the Keb Jacket is a hard-wearing G-1000 trekking shell with no insulation at all. If you came here looking for one of them, the next section says which.

Fjallraven sent me the Keb Touring Down Jacket to review, and I said yes immediately, because I am someone who gets cold standing still and anything promising to fix that has my attention. I wore it across several winter trips before writing this, and the testing was done before mid-2019, so the specification and price below are checked against what Fjallraven sells today rather than against what was on the label then.

Keb Jacket or Keb Touring Down Jacket?

The Keb Jacket is a trekking shell and the Keb Touring Down Jacket is a down midlayer, so the two are not alternatives to each other. They share a name because Keb is a Fjallraven product family covering jackets, trousers, fleeces and packs, not a single garment. The differences are set out below.

Buy the Keb Jacket if you want one hard-wearing layer for walking in cold, wet, windy weather all year. Buy the Keb Touring Down if you want warmth that packs small and goes over or under whatever else you own. Wear both together and you have Fjallraven’s intended system, which at list price is roughly £680 of jacket.

Everything from here on is about the Keb Touring Down Jacket.

Fjallraven Keb Touring Down Jacket specifications

The Keb Touring Down Jacket W is a light, compressible down jacket built to go over or under a shell in cold weather. Its published specification is listed below.

Two numbers there are worth pausing on. A fill power of 800 with only 120 g of down is a warmth-to-weight specification rather than a warmth specification: it buys you a jacket that packs small and weighs nothing, not a jacket for standing still at minus twenty. And the men’s version carries 150 g of fill to the women’s 120 g, so a man and a woman in matching Keb Touring Downs are not wearing the same amount of insulation.

The double layer of fabric across the shoulders, the lower back and the lower sleeves is the detail that separates this from a supermarket puffer. Those are the places a rucksack strap and a harness wear a down jacket out first.

Sizing and fit

The Keb Touring Down Jacket is true to size, and a size small fits me the way a small usually does. That is the short answer, and I have worn it long enough to be sure of it rather than to be guessing from one try-on.

The cut is more shaped than a down jacket usually is. The waist comes in slightly, which stops it looking like a duvet with sleeves, and the back length of 68 cm (26.8 in) takes it over your backside, which matters far more than it sounds: it is the difference between being warm and being cold every time you sit down on something.

The fabric is compressible enough to sit close to the body and flexible enough to go over a fleece or a thick jumper without pulling across the back. Fjallraven cuts it as a regular fit in six sizes, XXS to XL, and lists it as a women’s garment; the men’s version is a separate article with more fill.

What the Keb Touring Down Jacket is like to wear

The jacket is warmer than its weight suggests and worse in rain than its price suggests, and those two sentences cover most of a winter with it. The sections below go through what that means in practice.

Warmth

The Keb Touring Down is warm enough to wear as your only jacket on an ordinary winter day and light enough to disappear under a shell when it is not. That double role is the point of it: 470 g (16.6 oz) of jacket that works as a midlayer between a base layer and a waterproof, or as the outer layer on its own.

The heat controls are more thought out than on most down jackets. There is a protective flap behind the main zip with poppers running up it, so you can close the jacket on the poppers alone and leave the zip open, which vents far better than a full zip does. Add the adjustable hood, the fleece-lined collar, elasticated cuffs and a drawcord at the hem and you can shut out a cold wind completely.

The surprise is how warm it is for the size, and it cuts both ways. If you run warm, do not layer underneath it the way you would under a thinner jacket; you will overheat.

Pockets

The Keb Touring Down has six pockets, which is not obvious from the outside. Two large mesh pockets sit inside the jacket, big enough for gloves or a hat.

Inside the left mesh pocket there is a small velcro-fastened pocket holding two patches of repair fabric, for covering a snag before the down starts coming out. That is the kind of detail that tells you who designed the jacket.

On the outside there are two hand pockets, fleece-lined, and the right one contains a zipped security compartment. That zip is the one to use for a phone or a key with gloves on, because a fleece-lined open pocket will happily let things fall out when you sit down.

Hood

The hood stays on in wind, which is the only thing a hood has to do. An elastic fastener tightens it around the top of your head rather than only around your face, so it does not blow back the moment you turn into a gust.

It is cut large enough to go over a climbing helmet and still tightens down far enough to fit a small head, which is a wider range than most hoods manage. The front zips right up to your nose, leaving a slit for your eyes, and the fabric over the lower face is fleece-lined so it does not rub raw after an hour.

Water resistance

The Keb Touring Down is water repellent and not waterproof, and that distinction is the single most important line in this review. The fabric is treated with a DWR finish, which Fjallraven now produces without PFAS, so light rain beads and brushes off.

Stay out in a real downpour and it will soak through. That matters more on a down jacket than on any other kind, because wet down clumps and stops insulating until it dries, and it takes a long time to dry. This is a jacket to wear under a shell when the weather turns, not one to argue with the weather in.

Packing it away

The Keb Touring Down rolls into a ball and drops into a rucksack, which is what you want from a jacket for days that start cold and warm up. Down is compressible by nature and 120 g of it does not take much room.

The low weight does as much for this as the compressibility does. Carrying it is barely different from not carrying it, which is the reason it ends up in the bag on days you are not sure you will need it.

What is wrong with the Fjallraven Keb Touring Down Jacket

Three things would stop me recommending it to everyone, and the first is the one that will affect you.

1. It is not waterproof. I have never actually been caught out in it, and I can name plenty of trips where I would have picked this jacket over a proper winter coat for everything else about it and then spent the day watching the sky. If your winters are wet rather than cold, this is the wrong jacket on its own.
2. It is not a deep-cold jacket. Between the 120 g fill weight and the stitch-through construction, where the down is sewn into channels rather than boxed baffles and so has less loft along each seam, this is a jacket for ordinary winter rather than for icy wind and sustained sub-zero temperatures. Fjallraven’s own description calls it a reinforcement layer, which is a fair way of putting it.
3. The price is a lot for an insulating layer. £450 (about €524, $608) buys a very good down jacket, but it buys one that still needs a shell over it when it rains, and plenty of down jackets at half that will also keep you warm on the school run.

None of that is a fault in the jacket. It is a jacket doing exactly what Fjallraven says it does, sold to a lot of people who want a winter coat.

What to buy instead

The obvious alternative is a proper waterproof winter parka, because that is the gap this jacket leaves. I reviewed the Arc’teryx Patera parka separately, and a long waterproof parka is what I reach for when the forecast is wet rather than cold. The two do not compete: one is a shell you wear in rain, the other is warmth you pack.

Within the Keb family, the other insulated piece is the Keb Padded Hoodie, which sits on Amazon at $250 (about €215, £185) and ships now. Fjallraven no longer lists it on its own site, so what is on Amazon is remaining retail stock rather than current-season product, and sizes and colours will thin out rather than come back.

If it is the Keb Jacket you actually want, Fjallraven lists it at $310 (about €267, £229) on its US site. It has been updated with a refined fit and details designed to be easier to repair, and it is a G-1000 shell rather than an insulated jacket, so read the comparison at the top of this page before you buy the wrong one.

Where to buy the Fjallraven Keb Touring Down Jacket

Fjallraven still sells the Keb Touring Down Jacket W, and where you live decides how easy it is to get. It is listed at £450 on fjallraven.com’s UK site in black, in sizes XXS to XL, and it does not currently have a product page on Fjallraven’s US site at all, which is why American readers keep finding this review and then finding nothing to click.

On Amazon, the Keb Touring Down Jacket in Stone Grey and Black is listed as a single colour in a single size rather than as a full size run, so check that what is showing is actually your size before you get attached to it. Outdoor retailers in Europe carry it more reliably than Amazon does.

Neither the jacket nor its price is a reason to rush. This model has been on sale since at least 2017, it is still on Fjallraven’s own site, and nothing has replaced it, so there is no end-of-stock clock running on it.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

The 4 tips below come from a winter of wearing this jacket and from Fjallraven’s current published specification.

1. Check which Keb you are buying before you pay. The Keb Jacket (F89892) is an uninsulated G-1000 shell at $310, and the Keb Touring Down (F89282) is a down layer at £450. They share a family name and nothing else, and the names are close enough that people order the wrong one.
2. Close it on the poppers, not the zip, when you are moving. The flap behind the main zip has poppers all the way up, so you can shut the front without sealing it, which is the difference between arriving warm and arriving sweaty. It is the feature I use most and the one nobody notices.
3. Take the leather pullers off before you wash it. Fjallraven’s care instructions for this jacket say to remove them, wash it separately at 40°C (104°F), skip the fabric softener, tumble dry at a low temperature, and apply a fluorocarbon-free impregnation afterwards. Do not dry clean it and do not iron it.
4. Find the repair patches before you need them. There are two, in a small velcro pocket inside the left interior mesh pocket. A snag in a down shell starts leaking feathers quickly, and hunting for the patch on a mountain is not the moment to discover where Fjallraven hid it.

About the author. This review is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the first-hand notes here come from a winter of wearing the Fjallraven Keb Touring Down Jacket W, which Fjallraven supplied for review, across several cold-weather trips. The team covers outdoor and travel clothing for independent travellers, including the winter parkas worth the money, and updates this page when a model’s price, specification or availability changes.