Gear Review: Rab Electron Jacket

As the cold days are drawing in and the hours of sunlight diminish, the need for a solid warm layer becomes important once again.

Over the winter months here in the UK I’m often out on personal trips and climbs, ranging from the forests to the mountains, refilling my own adventure quota having spent the year focusing on courses. It’s on these trips that I like to travel light, walk far, and go places I’ve not been before. I get a lot of my articles written, and take plenty of photographs. At any given time I can be sat still for an hour waiting for the right lighting for a shot, or pounding hell for leather across a high plateau in an ice filled gale. Having clothing that can handle the environment is critical, so when Rab sent me their Electron Jacket and asked me for my thoughts on how it held up during those trips I was happy to oblige.

Down

Insulative down is one of the original natural insulation materials, with a long history of use in gloves, jackets and quilts. Rab uses a European Goose down that’s certified and traceable to be ethically sourced. The down fill on this jacket is well balanced, certainly packed with enough to keep you warm, but light enough to allow you to hike and move around without bursting in flames from overheating. As I was out on the Kinder Scout plateau for a night nav exercise at -3C it seemed a good way to break in the jacket. At a steady pace with just a base-layer and a light fleece under the Electron was comfortable hiking uphill unzipped without needing to drop a layer. During several stops from between 10 and 30 minutes each, I could sit with the hood up and my hands in the pockets waiting to the camera’s long exposures to shutter while retaining a perfectly warm upper body.

What I quickly realised was how little of the cold wind cuts through the jacket, I stood on a few occasions with my hands in the pockets under the down layer only to quickly scramble for gloves when I pulled my hands out to use the camera.

The chief worry with down always and really it’s only downside, is that it’s worse than useless when wet, no major revelation for anyone familiar with down jackets and sleeping bags. Here in the UK we can pretty much expect rain on any day, and I do advocate the benefits of synthetic or wool insulation in conditions when you’d anticipate a high likelihood of getting wet.

Progress is being made with down in this area, with eco-sensitive hydrophobic treatments Rab are working to limit this issue alongside pairing the down with water-resistant face fabrics. The way I see it is that I’d largely opt for down when I know it’s going to be truly cold, cold enough to prevent rain, or if I’m climbing into the snow level and need a lightweight option to put on once I’m there. Down jackets in general make for excellent light and small pack-sized layers that you can put on when needed, the Electrons low profile design too I’ve found very comfortable under a hard-shell when it did start pouring in the lowlands.

Face Fabric

Being a Sheffield based company, Rab are more than aware of our changeable northern climes and as you’d expect they’ve not left you completely exposed should the weather shift during the day. The Electron’s outer fabric is a water resistant Pertex which makes for adequate protection from light showers and rain over short periods; meaning if you get caught out on the hill or need to cover that last mile or two before getting to a bothy you don’t wind up immediately weighed down with a soaked, sorry looking shell. For me though, the true value of this outer fabric is it’s supreme wind-proofing. Down is such an excellent insulator because it traps air close to the body and holds that air as still as possible to minimise the transmission of heat through the layer; all that counts for nothing if the wind can blow through and carry that heat energy away. As anyone who’s attended our Itinerant Course will know, we go to great efforts in shelter building to construct a space in which the warm bubble of air we generate is held still against the wind, you should try to achieve the same concept with your warm clothing. Rab’s done a great job at this here.

The Pertex inner fabrics are pleasantly soft to the touch which I’ve found comfortable next to the skin with just a short-sleeved T under the jacket. The outer fabric is tough yet slick, you can feel the high winds whip around you without any drag pulling at you. After a full day walking at tangents to the wind that smooth airflow shows in the soreness of the muscles when you get home!

The hand pockets are huge, sitting high to allow for a rucksack waist-belt underneath (something I look for in every outdoor jacket I wear), which means storing gloves in a warm place ready to use is easy and convenient.

Features

Carrying the hallmarks of Rab’s simple, effective design this jacket has a short list of features which hollar to experience of the team in the mountains. This jacket is all about the insulation, worn to be warm. The baffles that hold the down in place are spaced and sized to maximise heat retention while providing an excellent range of motion. The arms are slim, allowing for a base-layer and fleece underneath without crushing the down, but not puffy and baggy either.

The cuffs are a woven elastic which hug the wrist to again help retain warm at those key areas. I’ve been spoilt recently with many of my trekking tops having integrated ‘hand-warmer’ cuffs with a thumb loop so I was reluctant to go out with a ‘normal’ cuff, but I needn’t have worried. The woven cuffs fit neatly enough while also stretching to allowing a glove to be tucked inside to protect against the wind. The sleeves are also profiled to fit under a heavy mitten for complete coverage in bad weather, overlapped to create a good seal from wind and snow.

The hood is fantastic, a major boon to keeping warm and out of the wind. Again this carries some neat design tricks to make it truly functional outdoors. Wearing a hood when hiking often means closing off your range of vision as you move your head leaving the hood in place you end up looking at the inside of the fabric. Not so here, the front pull-down toggles sinch the opening up easily (even with gloves/mitts) while the wire rimmed peak sets the aperture at eye level wide, leaving a good deal of peripheral vision minimising the need to move your head batman style in order to look around. And those little touches, like the soft fleece by the chin to save chaffing on the zip don’t go unnoticed either!

There’s also a inner pocket for a phone etc. which I found was great for keeping batteries warm at 1am sitting atop Kinder Scout waiting for the clouds to clear.

One criticism I would offer would be the zip, which although robust and free moving even in the cold, lacks a two-way system to open the bottom of the jacket. By no means a deal breaker but I like to be able to access inner layers, pockets etc without dumping my body heat by fully opening the front zip. It would also help when using this jacket with a climbing harness.

The jacket also packs neatly into a stuff-sack that Rab supplies with the jacket, showcasing the other benefit of down…it packs down to a tiny size!

Being able to carry such a warm layer in so small a package means that pretty much anytime of year you could squeeze this into a day pack, then an unexpected cold spell or even an unplanned overnight on a hike would be much more manageable.

My only issue here, and by no means limited to Rab, is that I’d love for these supplied stuff sacks to be the roll top waterproof pattern that are available everywhere. As I pack layers like this to ensure I have a warm garment to put on should I really need to depend on it, I always pack them into waterproof dry-bags to guarantee I have that warm layer no matter what weather/river I’ve travelled through.

summary

The Electron Jacket is a great option if you need a highly packable, lightweight warm layer and want to encapsulate a fully protective layer in one garment. It’s a warm jacket for everyday use, while you may need a ‘mother-ship’ jacket in extremes while stopped at sub -10C for longer periods, this is an option that you can live in. I’ve practically not taken it off for a fortnight now, as the weather has certainly turned wintry. It fits very well, and is comfortable without being bulky so hanging around during the school run or walking to work, hiking up a mountain or hundling by a drystone wall catching sunrise pics, the Electron fits the bill.

Thanks to Rab for supplying the jacket, I’ll be wearing in constantly for the next few months I imagine!