Stio Hometown Down Hooded Jacket | Testing & Review

The Stio Hometown Down jacket features technical construction and ample comfort to be considered as your go-to winter down jacket.

Stio was born in the shadows of the Teton mountains in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and the Stio Hometown Down jacket reflects the needs of mountain-town residents there and elsewhere. With a healthy amount of down insulation for true winter use, the Hometown Down balances function with legit mountain-town style. The weight, cut, and durability of the fabric allows the Hometown Down to serve as both a winter work jacket as well as a worthy option for going out on Friday evening. It can easily keep you toasty warm with just a T-shirt - even with temps in the 20s.

Materials & Construction 

The Stio Hometown Down uses 20d (denier) HTD 100% recycled ripstop nylon. At 39g/m2 (gsm), the fabric falls squarely in what we consider an ultralight fabric, which we feel is anything under 50gsm. The denier is in line with the Patagonia Down Sweater (20d) (full review), but not quite as burly as the Arc'teryx Thorium Hoody (full review), which features a 30d face fabric, 20d liner, and 750-fill down.

The HTD™ (Home Town Down) fabric from Stio is a proprietary recycled nylon that features a very tight weave. Remember, not all 20d fabrics are created equal. With materials this light, construction plays a huge role. We’ve found the fabric on the Stio Hometown Down jacket to be quite durable, showing no signs of wear and tear from activities like running the snow thrower and stacking wood. We also like the matte finish.

Pockets

The Hometown Down features two external handwarmer pockets and a zippered chest pocket. All three have a fleece lining, a welcome detail not found on many other jackets in this segment. These pockets are noticeably warmer than those on other jackets we’ve tested. The Arc'teryx Thorium (full review) is the other in our comparison set that has fleece-lined pockets (note that the Thorium's chest pocket is not fleece-lined) with this feature.

On the inside of the Hometown Down is a large mesh dump pocket for larger essentials. There's also an interior chest stash pocket. One of our few complaints with this jacket is that the zipper on the interior chest pocket can be difficult to use - a combination of loose fabric and a small zipper.

Zippers

The Stio Hometown Down jacket uses YKK VISLON series zippers for all pockets except the interior chest pocket. The VISLON series is a plastic molded-tooth zipper, as opposed to a coil zip. They’re generally lighter than coil zips. We've found the exterior pockets and main zipper to be snag-free and easy to use. You’ll also find zipper garages on all exterior zippers, most critically at the chin for comfort.

Warmth and Insulation

To keep you warm, the Stio Hometown Down jacket has 198 grams of 800-fill 90/10 RDS certified goose down in the medium size. The 90/10 ratio refers to the percentage of down clusters to feathers, and 90/10 is pretty standard for a high-quality down garment. The amount of down is this jacket is on the high end for midweight jackets, making the Hometown Down one of the warmest in the category.

A note on the Responsible Down Standard (RDS) - The RDS standard is developed by the Textile Exchange to ensure humane practices are used in the harvesting of down, and to provide manufacturers and consumers traceability of the source of their insulation. Almost all outdoor products source RDS-compliant down, and you should always make sure that is the case with any purchase.

Here's a table comparing the down fill power and fill weight of the Stio Hometown Down against two popular alternatives.

Weather Resistance

The recycled HTD™ nylon features a PFAS-free durable water repellent (DWR) coating. As a reminder, PFAS are synthetic chemicals that have been used to repel water in consumer goods since the 1940s and are commonly referred to as "forever chemicals." Stio has committed to completely removing PFAS from all of its products by the end of 2025, and the Hometown Down is ahead of the curve. Between the tight weave of Stio's proprietary fabric and the DWR, this jacket has performed very well at repelling water during weeks of testing. 

In addition to the DWR coating on the fabric, the Stio Hometown Down jacket features Allied HyperDry PFC-free water repellent coating on the down clusters. Over the past decade we’ve seen the introduction of numerous water-repellent coatings for down insulation, and it has been a game-changer for performance. Allied Feather and Down is one of the largest down suppliers, and they developed HyperDry. You can read more about it here.

Why water repellent down is important: Down is a fantastically light and warm insulation. It's also useless when wet because it completely loses its loft and therefore its ability to insulate. The DWR coating on the face fabric of the Hometown Down provides all the protection you need for exposure to light and limited amounts of water, like a brief snowstorm. If you are out for hours in snow or rain, the fabric on the jacket will eventually wet-out. This is when treated down becomes important.

Another very common way that down gets wet is from sweat and condensation in below-freezing temperatures. Working hard in cold weather or using a down piece for a multi-day ski tour can lead to poor performance. Treated down makes a huge difference. While there are many down jackets using water-repellent down, the primary alternatives from Patagonia and Arc'teryx lack this technology. The Stio Hometown Down takes the win here.

Fit & Feel

The Hometown Down features a regular cut. I find that at 5’9” and 150 pounds, I’m right between a size small and medium for most down jackets and ski shells. You’ll see on the Stio website that the models wearing a men's medium are often over 6 feet tall. Stio's size small has the length and waist I want, but the sleeves aren’t long enough and the shoulders are slightly too tight. My first impression of the size medium was that it looked too big on me. But after using it daily for a couple of weeks I’m actually very happy with it. In the depth of winter when the daytime temperature stays in the single digits, I may want a lightweight pullover underneath, so the size small would have been a mistake.

Stio describes their regular fit as: "A casually shaped design that’s not too tight and not too baggy."

Here is the size chart from Stio: https://www.stio.com/pages/mens-size-guide-table

Waist: The waist of this jacket is adjustable via an elastic cord at the hem with a single adjustment point. This adjustment allows you to shorten the torso length of the jacket.

Hood: I’m very opinionated about hoods. First, I almost never wear a down jacket without one (though I understand many people are just the opposite). There is nothing that ruins a jacket faster for me than an ill-fitting hood. If the hood falls over my eyes without the ability to adjust, the jacket is a non-starter. The Stio Hometown Down jacket has a great hood. It isn’t huge, but it doesn’t hug my face like Little Red Riding Hood, either. My flat brim fits under it, and I can also use the single-point adjustment cord to quickly cinch it out of my view. No complaints on this one.

Stio Hometown Down Jacket - Conclusion

The Stio Hometown Down hooded jacket is a great looking midweight piece with premium construction. Featuring recycled nylon and a PFAS-free water repellent coating on both the fabric and the 800 fill power down insulation, this is a true winter jacket. Realizing that midweight jackets don’t have the athletic cut found on ultralight jackets, we’d like to see the Hometown Down be a touch slimmer at the midsection. Style preference aside, this jacket proves to be a high-performing winter workhorse. The fleece-lined pockets are a standout feature, missing from many competitors.