UKC

Hi, I'm looking to buy my boyfriend a down jacket for his birthday, and I was just wondering if anyone knows how the Alpkit jackets size up. He's about 5'6 and 70kg and would probably wear it over a fleece or two.
Medium, large?

Also if anyone can recommend other down jackets of a similar price, I'm not 100% set on alpkit.
Thanks

In reply to katiep:

The mistake you made with this post is that you said it was for your boyfriends birthday. This post is dead to all the single climber guys on ukc. Now if you said it was for your sexy identical twin sister then you would have had a lot of responses by now :p

In reply to katiep:
I have a 'medium' and am 6'0 & 70 kg, so I think he'd be wanting a large. I definitely couldn't get a fleece under mine, (well, not a chunky one) never mind two of them. It's pretty warm though and not sure you'd really need anything other than a decent thermal or ultra-light fleece, unless you're doing some long-term hanging about in very chilly conditions.

If I were in the market again, I'd probably get a Mountain Equipment Lightline which doesn't cost that much more but felt like it had slightly better design features. These are just small things, but definitely noticeable.

http://www.mountain-equipment.co.uk/lightline-jacket

If bang for the buck is what you're after though, the Filo is probably your best buy, unless you can find a Lightline at a knock-down price.

Edit: just checked the Lightline price and it's now more than I'd seen last year...by quite a bit! (I'd tried one on sale at £149) It's not a direct / fair comparison then, so you can ignore my earlier comment above.

In reply to Fraser:

Thanks for the advice.
I'll keep a lookout for other discounted jackets, but if not I guess it's a large filo jacket and I suppose he could always swap it for a smaller one if required.