REVIEW: Arc'teryx Aptin Shorts & Phasic Evolution T-Shirt

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 UKC/UKH Gear 20 Jun 2017
shorts montage, 3 kbThe Aptin Shorts and Phasic Evolution T-Shirt are new to the 2017 Arc'teryx line-up; they may not be a budget option, but they go well together for running and warm weather hillwalking, says Dan Bailey

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 JR_NL 20 Jun 2017
In reply to UKC/UKH Gear:

With items like these I always wonder if they are really worth their price point. With bad weather gear I can see that higher quality is going to help (to a certain point) in keeping you dry and warm.

With t-shirts and shorts the weather in general is good so you are doing to sweat, and if weather turns bad you're going to get wet either way. Is Arc'teryx really that much better in these circumstances?
 GarethSL 20 Jun 2017
In reply to JR_NL:
> Is Arc'teryx really that much better in these circumstances?

No, not at all. In fact there is very little about these that warrant the Arc'teryx price tag or the marketing spiel.

Adidas climalite football shorts, about 10 quid a pop and come in a great range of colours are by far the best warm weather/ exercise clothes I've ever worn and that's coming from a die hard member of the dead bird brigade. Especially for sweat management. Yet to see or even feel the ominous ballsweat patches you can get with the Arc'teryx shorts that seem to absorb and hold water.

As for Arc'teryx shirts, their phase t-shirts are ok as they have an amazing fit which is great for climbing, but the rest are no different to anything you will find in a normal sports shop.
Post edited at 13:43
 JR_NL 20 Jun 2017
In reply to GarethSL:

I expected as much, but always good to hear other people's opinions
Removed User 20 Jun 2017
In reply to JR_NL:

I doubt it. I have a rather pricey thin Odlo baselayer that cost around €40 (I think), and I have a bunch of Quechua (Decathlon) baselayers of varying thicknesses and sleeve lengths that cost between £4 and £10. The £4 shirts (Techfresh50) are the best warm weather baselayer/running shirt I have ever owned. Thin, incredibly light and soft, yet decent quality (washed a couple of times now, no apparent changes).

As you said, with bad weather gear I still prefer to spend a fair amount (my hardshell is an Arc'teryx Beta AR), but with stuff like shorts and shirts, I don't see the difference - if you do your research first, of course, because there's also a bunch of rubbish out there.
 SteveSBlake 20 Jun 2017
In reply to UKC/UKH Gear:

I clicked on this hoping to be surprised. A T Shirt and Shorts that cost £115...... At that price I would at least expect them to make me look like a Greek God, say Zeus or Apollo, perhaps even a lesser god...... I'm not really fussy.

Sadly, I note that nowhere in (inordinately) long review is there any suggestion that they are anything other than a 'T Shirt and shorts'...........

This is particularly disappointing given the cutting edge design and manufacturing house that produces them. As to the idiotic 'price point!' Get a 'f******* grip'.

I could just about have a long weekend in Spain for that. Please do not publish this sort of bollox - it does you no credit.

Bemused of Newcastle.
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 SteveSBlake 20 Jun 2017
In reply to UKC/UKH Gear:

I clicked on this hoping to be surprised. A T Shirt and Shorts that cost £115...... At that price I would at least expect them to make me look like a Greek God, say Zeus or Apollo, perhaps even a lesser god...... I'm not really fussy.

Sadly, I note that nowhere in (inordinately) long review is there any suggestion that they are anything other than a 'T Shirt and shorts'...........

This is particularly disappointing given the cutting edge design and manufacturing house that produces them. As to the idiotic 'price point!' Get a 'f******* grip'.

I could just about have a long weekend in Spain for that. Please do not publish this sort of bollox - it does you no credit.

Bemused of Newcastle.
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In reply to UKC/UKH Gear:

Arcteryx are having a giraffe these days. If you pay £50 for a synthetic t-shirt you just got mugged.
Removed User 20 Jun 2017
In reply to purplemonkeyelephant:

They are a company, they operate for profit. If they can make something, offer it at a ridiculously high price and people buy it, they will. That's how businesses work.

As long as they still make serious gear (hardshells, harnesses etc.) that is as good or better than anything else out there, I don't mind if others are paying a premium for some of their more overpriced stuff.
 BnB 21 Jun 2017
In reply to SteveSBlake:

> I clicked on this hoping to be surprised. A T Shirt and Shorts that cost £115...... At that price I would at least expect them to make me look like a Greek God, say Zeus or Apollo, perhaps even a lesser god...... I'm not really fussy.

You don't think Dan looks like a Greek God in those pics?

 JR_NL 21 Jun 2017
In reply to BnB:

Would you like an honest or a socially acceptable answer to that?
 SteveSBlake 22 Jun 2017
In reply to BnB:

Nah, he doesn't, nor does he look embarrassed. But then he didn't actually buy them did he!
 TobyA 22 Jun 2017
In reply to SteveSBlake:

We don't have to pay for UKC because the site takes advertising, part of that is that the advertisers can ask to have things reviewed. The reviews aren't adverts because as reviewers don't get told what to say or not say, but it's a commercial reality of having a site free to users that advertisers get their products reviewed first. I'm sure Arc'teryx knows lots of us would say "how much?" looking at these products but I guess some lucky people somewhere don't need to. I guess Arc'teryx are happy to have a fairly written review, pointing out the good points, along with the considerable cost of these items, for people who are willing to spend that much to read.

You don't need to read the reviews, but understanding how UKC is funded so we can all use it for free doesn't seem too much to ask and your earlier comments seem a bit harsh in that light.

TLDR: Agreed - bloomin' expensive for shorts and t-shirt, but thankfully I get to use the logbook system and have interesting debates here, because Arc'teryx and other firms find advertising and having gear reviewed commercially worthwhile here.
 Hat Dude 22 Jun 2017
In reply to BnB:

> You don't think Dan looks like a Greek God in those pics?

Hephaestus or Bacchus?
In reply to Hat Dude:

I was going for Apollo but guess I fell short somewhere around Poseidon - a mature man of sturdy build (according to the goddess of knowledge Wikipedia)
 SteveSBlake 22 Jun 2017
In reply to TobyA:
Hi Toby, thanks for reminding me about how UKC is funded. I hadn't noticed
All the adverts and reviews in the past. It's all shockingly clear to me now.....

I would have been less critical if somewhere in the review I'd got a sense
Of the value offered by these garments...... you're right though I probably
Shouldn't have bothered to read it - I guess I just needed to be amazed.

So, while I understand the financial imperitives behind reviews I think
we users of the site (and it's our clicks that underpin the ads surely?)
should call out this kind of silliness. I could perhaps have tempered the tone
with an emoji..... :-0

Love and peace to all, including reviewers.
Post edited at 17:05
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 GarethSL 22 Jun 2017
In reply to TobyA:

I think we're all just moody that gear reviews just aren't as critical as they used to be. Mainly because they are intended to present a product in a favourable light with very limited input on the negatives.

You never hear about how Arc'teryx's build quality has slipped substantially over the last few years any more, or how horrendously inconsistent their sizing is. Or that their synthetics absolutely stink after half a days use...

We don't want adverts, we want you to take stuff out, f*ck it up and tell us if we should consider spending money on it. We want juicy, nasty, brutal, reviews that really make the designers think. Where every tiny detail is scrutinised. Especially now brands are getting very big and stepping out of their niches.
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Removed User 22 Jun 2017
In reply to GarethSL:

> You never hear about how Arc'teryx's build quality has slipped substantially over the last few years ...

Has it, though? My 2013 Beta AR is impeccably made and still looks almost like new after 2.5 years of relatively regular use.

 3leggeddog 22 Jun 2017
In reply to TobyA:

Granted, UKC is funded by advertising revenue.

This is the case so be honest, call the review what it is, an advert.

An advert with the facility for forum users to comment upon. Don't get upset when your customers use this facility.
 TobyA 22 Jun 2017
In reply to 3leggeddog:

> This is the case so be honest, call the review what it is, an advert.

But it's not, because we're under no pressure as to what we say about a product. With one of my reviews the company said they would prefer if it just wasn't published, but Alan at UKC HQ insisted that it was. That product disappeared the next season.

With other products companies have told me that they changed their design after the reviews (considering reviewing is for me just a hobby, I'm still absurdly proud that DMM told me they changed two products just a tiny bit to resolve issues I identified in reviews! ) and in other cases, next season's version of jacket X had been improved on the basis of what my review and others had said.
 TobyA 22 Jun 2017
In reply to 3leggeddog:

> Don't get upset when your customers use this facility.

Can you be a customer of something free?

 TobyA 22 Jun 2017
In reply to GarethSL:

> or how horrendously inconsistent their sizing is.

I've made that point about a number of Marmot products - but that's the one brands that I've tried enough different products from over a number of years in order to notice that. I guess that's why threads like this are very helpful as it sounds like you've bought enough Arcteryx stuff to notice that for them!
 GarethSL 23 Jun 2017
In reply to Removed UserFuchs:
Actually since the outsourcing disaster around 2009 and 10 when quality went to shit, their hardshell gear is excellent. As well as still being way above almost every other brand.

The problem is that set a standard for their gear and one expects that attention to detail to be paid to all products across their range, and not just a selection. I have noticed in their more casual wear and less technical ranges the quality simply does not justify the price tag any more. It used to, but no longer. It's the price of their popularity.
Post edited at 07:30
 3leggeddog 23 Jun 2017
In reply to TobyA:

> Can you be a customer of something free?

Of course, without readership (customers) UKC has no advertising revenue.
In reply to GarethSL:

Hi Gareth

The difference between a review and an advert should be obvious. If not, then either we're not doing our job properly, or the reader isn't reading it properly before drawing conclusions. My money is obviously on the latter.

You want us to f*ck gear up? Sounds great in theory, but I'm not sure how we could make that work as policy:

1. Once in a while a review item will fail during the review period, but it's rare. If it happened, we'd say so. Most gear these days is pretty decent in its intended use.
2. The turnaround time between us receiving a product and publishing a review is often a matter of a couple of months. We do longer term tests when we can, but in terms of content scheduling it's very tricky, and a big danger if we were to do so as policy would be that by the time a review came out the brand would have ceased selling that particular line. Stuff gets updated alarmingly quickly.
3. If you've only got two or three months to use something before writing it up, the chances are you're not going to destroy it. That's unfortunate, but we do try to be explicit about how long we've had something on test, and what we've used it for, and we also try to make allowances for this when commenting on durability etc.

You want juicy and brutal? How about fair and honest... We're not going to pull punches if we find something to criticise, but by exactly the same token we are not setting out to be nasty simply in order to come across as tough reviewers. We prefer to give credit where it's due, but criticism when warranted.

In the case of these shorts and t-shirt, it'd be hard to test them to destruction while using them for their intended purpose. How many t-shirts have you destroyed? Pretty sure I did go into every tiny detail - and I was surprised how long this review of a couple of simple items turned out to be as a result. The simple fact is, I didn't find much negative to say. I mentioned the price, at least twice, and that's clearly the biggest downside. I wasn't convinced about a pocket. The smell got a look-in. Other than that, all good. Is that bad? Would you have preferred we were unfairly critical?

I'm not going to comment on Arc'teryx's sizing consistency, or lack of - I've no idea about that. And re. build quality, I've never had cause to complain.

I don't want to come across as argumentative, but we take this reviewing thing seriously, so when someone says it's all just fancy advertising then that needs addressing.

If you still think we're just a mouthpiece for advertisers then I'll finish with some recent reviews in which some products do not fare at all well:

Rope bags: https://www.ukclimbing.com/gear/review.php?id=9482
Assisted braking belay devices: https://www.ukclimbing.com/gear/review.php?id=9402
Trekking poles: https://www.ukclimbing.com/gear/review.php?id=8866
 tony 23 Jun 2017
In reply to Dan Bailey - UKHillwalking.com:
> In the case of these shorts and t-shirt, it'd be hard to test them to destruction while using them for their intended purpose. How many t-shirts have you destroyed? Pretty sure I did go into every tiny detail - and I was surprised how long this review of a couple of simple items turned out to be as a result. The simple fact is, I didn't find much negative to say. I mentioned the price, at least twice, and that's clearly the biggest downside. I wasn't convinced about a pocket. The smell got a look-in. Other than that, all good. Is that bad? Would you have preferred we were unfairly critical?

It's a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, Dan. Do we really need a review? Just because they're from Arcteryx doesn't make them worthy of a review - waterproofs and fleeces and technical stuff, where details might make a difference are certainly worthy of proper reviews - but an expensive t-shirt and a pair of running shorts?
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In reply to tony:

Hey Tony, 'Need' is a relative thing with all gear, surely? We do an awful lot of reviews, on average two per week, and that spans everything from a pair of shorts to technical shells to hardwear.

You're not obliged to read it, but 2000+ people have in the last few days.
 tony 23 Jun 2017
In reply to Dan Bailey - UKHillwalking.com:

I read it to see (a) if it had the usual Arcteryx pricing (i.e. high) and (b) if (a), whether the high cost could be justified. I spend far too much time looking at shorts and I always wonder how much faster I'll run if I have a pair of £70 Salomon shorts instead of a cheap pair of Adidas shorts bought from sportsshoes.com.

And I've given up buying t-shirts - run a few races and you get them in the goody bag. I've already got four this year.

So, I'm happy to admit I'm not the ideal target audience for the review. And, given the state of my legs at the moment, I'm probably not going to be in the market for more shorts any time soon.
 SteveSBlake 23 Jun 2017
In reply to Dan Bailey - UKHillwalking.com:

Hi Dan,

Thanks for the broader response. Rest assured, if I ever develop a simple Beanie, or perhaps a fourth generation cord to replace the one that always gets lost in the waistband of pants. Then I'd want you to review them. To paraphrase some bloke. 'Never has so much been written about so little'.

Steve

(Just to make sure)
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