Amazonas Ultra-light Silk Traveller Techno review: a good light hammock for summer use

First impressions

The Amazonas Ultra-light Silk Traveller Techno will bring back memories for those whose experience of the best hammocks comes from travels in South America or Asia. It’s colorful, packs small (it’s the second most compact hammock on test) and has jungle-cred. Rather than the skin being gathered in at each end, the hammock is hung on a web of fine strings running to eyelets which allow it to spread out wider.

The breathable ‘parachute silk’ (actually nylon nowadays) is a boon in hot weather and this, allied to the tiny size, simplicity, and ease of hanging makes it an ideal piece of kit to throw into a day pack for a siesta or lounging option on a summer’s hike. Use a closed cell mat and a light sleeping bag (choose one from our best sleeping bags guide) and a summer night under the stars becomes a possibility.

In the field

I used my own ropes to hang the hammock – note that you’ll have to do the same or include Amazonas’s add-on buy suspension system – for a quick and easy set up. The myriad individual strings that run between skin and suspension eyelet are the traditional way of supporting a hammock and allow for a wider spread rather than bunching at both ends; the Amazonas’s system is the more comfortable. But beware – if you tangle those strings it can be as frustrating and challenging as solving a Rubik’s Cube to sort them out. 

When you take the hammock down a useful tip is to keep the strings at either end stretched out and then twist them gently into two ‘ropes’ before packing everything into the stuff sack. 

Even in a cold winter’s wood the fabric was soft and comfortable, whilst from experience I know that on a hot day a breathable skin stops sweaty overheating.