Milwaukee electric heated jacket review:
I received the jacket. Here are my thoughts:
1. It's very bright red. I don't like to wear clothes to draw attention to myself, so it's a little bright for me. No one really seemed to notice that in person though, so that's just me having social anxiety, lol. It's a very sharp jacket though and looks really good.
2. The activator button is cool - it's like a Star Trek chest communicator. Press & hold for a few seconds to active, then choose between low, medium, and high.
3. The button glows when the jacket is on, which I think is cool, but also a little embarrassing. It's a fairly bright glow - white, blue, and red depending on the heat level. I got a few funny looks when I was wandering around in public with it. On the flip side, I kind of feel like Ironman with the glowing chest widget
4. The battery is surprisingly non-intrusive. It uses a small power tool battery (the M12), which plugs into a cord in a pouch on the rear left side of the jacket. It's fairly large for a jacket battery (that sounds absurd), but hasn't bothered me like I thought it would due to the weight/size.
5. It requires pre-heat time - 10 or 15 minutes to really warm up. It's just like an electric blanket. So it's not like you turn it on and it's instantly warm, it takes a few minutes to warm up. You also get used to the heat fairly quickly, which is what I found to be the same case with electric blankets - it's not like standing under a hot shower and you stay hot and toasty, you just kind of warm up to a point and then you feel more or less normal or room temperature instead of hot. I guess that's actually a nice feature because then you don't stay hot and start sweating.
6. The coils are on your chest and back - left chest, right chest, upper/mid back. If you put your hands in the pockets, they are somewhat warm but not hot. I got a size larger than I am and noticed it was hotter if I was sitting in a chair with the jacket pressing against me; so if you got one that was a tight fit, I think you would toast up faster because it was making flush contact with your body.
There are no coils on the arms or the bottom of the jacket. However, this did not bother me - if your chest area is warm, it seems to keep the rest of you warm. Only my hands were cold, but I have gloves for that. I was surprised at that - I thought that would be a negative, having no heat in the arms, but it was fine.
7. The standard battery is $35 and the extended is $70. I didn't want to pay $70 but now I wish I had, since the stock battery only lasts maybe an hour or two at maximum heat. Fortunately they sell a combo wall/car charger for it, so you can plug the battery into your car to charge. You can't be wired into the wall or 12V plug directly though. They advertised up to 6 hours of heat, but I'd imagine that's on the low setting and probably with the extended battery. Stupid expensive batteries.
The combo wall/car charger was like $70 at Home Depot, so it was $120 for the jacket, $40 for the battery ($35 at Amazon, $39 at Home Depot), and $70 for the wall/car charger (make sure you get that one! Home Depot sells just the wall charger for $70, so you can get the car adapter for the same price), so the total was $230 for the jacket when bought separately. Wow, that sounds horrifically expensive. At least I can use the charger/battery on some power tools! :awe: And a good quality jacket goes for about $100 anyway, so an extra $20 or so for electronic capabilities isn't bad, at least not too bad if you're using Milwaukee power tools too.
They sell the set for $170 on Amazon, which includes the jacket, a battery, and a quick charger (you can buy an inverter on your own). I wish I had done that, but I had the jacket shipped to my in-laws and bought the batteries in a store, and since I don't have a better winter jacket right now I'm just going to eat the cost. Ah well.
8. The jacket is thin but surprisingly warm on it's own. If it was like zero degrees outside and you had it pre-heated, you wouldn't need a huge winter jacket - just some good gloves to go with it. I really like that because you don't have to lug around a big, bulky jacket to stay warm.
9. I got one size larger than I normally wear (large - I got extra large) because most jackets are usually not quite as big as advertised. Also, I work in an cold office and wear a sweater all day, so I wanted something that I could wear over my sweater when walking to and from the office and my car, but so that I wouldn't have to take my sweater off and then put it back on. Works great both ways. So something to think about as far as sizing goes.
Ideally, I would like a jacket that pre-heated instantly (like in under a minute, maybe like 20 or 30 seconds) and had coils all over the jacket to be ultra-warm, and also had a ridiculously long battery life, but without having a bulky battery, I don't think that could happen. I was thinking maybe if they got a long NiCad-style pack, like battery in a flexible rubberized sleeve, then you could insert that around the bottom sort of like a belt and distribute the weight, but as it is it works pretty good and uses off-the-shelf parts, which is nice.
So, in conclusion: it's a little bit attention-getting for my tastes (glowing button and super bright red), but not really too bad in practice, and I really like the design & thin material. It does a good job heating up; just remember to preheat it before you go outside. I'm going shooting with it this weekend (film & video) and I'm really looking forward to being warm while I do that, haha. The girls at work really liked the warmth, but I don't think they would buy one, whereas I think a few of the guys went to Home Depot after work to pick one up. If you're doing camping or hiking in the wintertime, I bet this plus some thermal underwear would be super awesome for staying extremely warm all over. Plus being able to swap a battery out of your jacket into a power tool is just cool
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