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Nomadix Puffer Blanket: An Ultra-versatile Blanket For Minimalist Overlanders and Travelers

“Own Less. Do More” is more a manifesto than just a tagline for Nomadix. They call their first and most popular product The Only Towel You Need. In short, it’s designed to work for everything you could possibly use a towel for.

Nomadix’s original towel is lightweight, super-absorbent, odor and sand-resistant, and dries quickly. And it’s made of over 80 percent post-consumer recycled materials. The company has slowly expanded its product offerings to include festival blankets, ponchos for changing and drying, and smaller towels for backpacking and lightweight travel.

For the past month, I’ve been using the newest offering from Nomadix, their Puffer Blanket, coming in October 2022. Of course, it’s more than just a blanket, as you’d assume of anything from Nomadix. The company is certified as Climate Neutral, is a 1% For the Planet contributor, and the blanket is made of 100 percent recycled materials.

The Puffer is a sleeping bag, cloak, and blanket rolled into one. Plastic snap fasteners on webbing along the edges allow you to attach any two points on the blanket together, unlike a zipper. With these snaps, you can wrap the blanket around your shoulders and secure it across your chest as a cloak. Or fold it over, as you would a sleeping bag, and snap it closed.

Of course, you can just lay this blanket out as you would any other. When flat, you can stake the corners in place with anchoring corners made of paracord loops. This way, you don’t have to worry about your blanket blowing away on a windy beach. Nomadix states that this blanket is “sand-resistant,” but I wonder if its smooth ripstop shell material is any different than other nylons used in sleeping bags. Sand doesn’t stick to the Puffer, but this is also the case with every sleeping bag I’ve taken to the beach.

The unique feature of the blanket is how easily it can be worn as a cloak. A wearable sleeping bag is one of the coziest and most comfortable ways to lounge outside when the temperature drops. The Puffer keeps you from having to dig around for more layers if you don’t want to sit with a blanket wrapped around you to stay warm. I’m 5’9”, and when I drape the longer side over my shoulders, I can walk without the blanket dragging on the ground. If you’re much shorter than me, the blanket will drag as you walk.

While I wouldn’t want to rely on only the Puffer as a cold weather sleeping bag, it’s definitely warm enough to use on warm summer nights. The recycled nylon insulation isn’t incredibly lofty, and Nomadix doesn’t give a temperature rating. If it were to be rated, I’d guess it’d be about a 50-degree sleeping bag.

The Puffer blanket is for those chilly nights around camp and much more. Pack it into the included stuff sack and throw it in your bag for the next adventure. It’s an excellent choice for travelers, overlanders, and anyone who wants a blanket that does more.

$100 | Nomadix.co

For further details, visit nomadix.co/pages/puffer-blanket.

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Sam Schild is a writer and outdoor adventurer based in the American West. His first outdoor love was adventure travel by bike. After a 7,000-mile bicycle tour ended at the Pacific Ocean, he confirmed he needed to make the West his home and moved to Colorado over a decade ago. He’s kept the adventures going: bikepacking the Kokopelli Trail and Colorado Trail multiple times; bikepacking countless other bike routes across the Southwest; thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, Continental Divide Trail, Grand Enchantment Trail; and more. He camps in his converted Honda Element, which serves as a basecamp for the next adventure. And if he’s not out somewhere, he’s scheming where to go next. IG: @Sia_lizard.