I would personally choose the Mtn Hardwear. The Phantom uses 800 fill down while TNF uses 700 fill. Bottom line on that is the Phantom is a warmer jacket that weighs about the same as TNF.

TNF Elysium is not water resistant. The Phantom is not DWR but it can handle a bit of rain.

The Phantom has two handwarmer (meaning soft feeling) pockets, a chest pocket and an internal pocket. The Elysium has two pockets where you can warm your hands but TNF jacket doesn't provide you with the extra comfort a more elegantly designed handwarmer does. TNF also lacks the internal pocket.

The difference in the quality of the down is a major factor. The other major factor that leaps out at me is the difference in the fabrics used in each jacket. TNF uses a 100% nylon fabric. The Phantom uses a 15 denier ripstop nylon. Denier is the unit used to measure the strength of a fabric. (There is a formula for measuring denier -- 1 denier = 1 gram of mass per 9000 meters.) Anyway, the higher the denier, the stronger the fabric.

Ripstop nylon is also stronger than simple nylon. Those little squares you see on a ripstop jacket are produced by first inter-weaving the threads and then diagonially over-weaving them to make a crosshatch pattern. This process stops or limits rips and tears. In theory -- I've never managed to tear any type of nylon.

I think a med would fit you, but check your chest and waist measurements before you decide.

You might want to consider one other factor which neither of these two jackets address: rain, wet snow, sleet. I live in the foothills of the Appalachians. In theory, drought has dominated the weather for the last 4 years. But every single time I hit the trail, it rains. Or snows. Or sleets. I took the cheap way out and found an used Patagonia gore anorak. It only weighs a couple of ozs and does double duty as the threshold for my tent.

I hope all my yadda, yadda, helped a wee bit.

Chest pockets are useful for many things: in town, I use a chest pocket to hold my subway pass, outside of the city I use it to hold my binoculars, or sometimes I stash a trail map in it. I always carry some money, some hurricane matches, memory cards/batteries for my camera(batteries run down quickly in the cold and the chest pocket allows my body heat to keep the batteries useable). In other words, use the chest pocket for anything you want to keep secure.

The zipper is one of those design features that make our lives easier. The zipper opens by pulling it *down*. This means that my keys, matches, money, and so on don't fall out. The flap over the zipper is there simply because you cannot make a zipper waterproof.

The inner pocket may not look rugged, but it is tough enough to hold my cell phone, and for those who use them, MP3 players. When I'm camping in the winter, I use the inner pocket to hold a pair of clean socks -- I can change socks and thereby stay warmer or, if I lose a glove, hey, a sock makes an okay mitten.

I hope that helps a bit.