UKH

Hi everyone 

Looking for a lightweight but durable hillwalking jacket. Looking at Arcteryx Beta LT and Mountain Equipment Shivling possibly. Does anyone have experience of either jacket or can suggest other jackets worth looking at? 
 

Thanks

One that fits…and does the job for you with the right amount of pockets etc in the right places….

You don’t have to spend silly money lots of good jackets reasonably priced these days look around and try on!

My craghoppers jacket

https://www.craghoppers.com/mens-waterproof-orion-jacket-black-1/

 is as waterproof, breathable and light as any of the mega ££££ brands. Ideal as a lightweight summer jacket. The hood is a little small and I can wear a petzl meteor climbing helmet under the hood but a caving helmet + lights is too big for the hood.  It doesn't have the room in the cut for wearing a lot of insulation so not Scottish winter or Alpine. But 2 or 3 season UK ---> perfect.

Occasionally wash in cold water with nikwax tech wash and then treat with nikwax tx direct.

Currently £65 for a surprisingly decent jacket

Correction: it's discounted and now only £54

Also if you can't decide between 2 sizes go for the bigger as they come slightly snug

Agree with the comment “one that fits”. My daughter took our advice and tried lots of different brands and models before resting on a purchase. You might be amazed at things like; what the different types of zips feel like in use, where the pockets are, how deep they are, the length of the sleeves, the size of the hood etc make to your comfort.

We have reviewed lightweight waterproofs on UKC but not for a few years. It might give you some ideas though. https://www.ukclimbing.com/gear/clothing/waterproofs/lightweight_waterproof... I still use the Marmot and the Jöttnar jackets from that review - although being light it's often just taking them along in my pack "just in case".

Then there is the recent cheaper waterproofs review that does include some light models https://www.ukclimbing.com/gear/clothing/waterproofs/mountain_shells_around...

Toby, was that the wrong link above? you said cheaper but it links to an article titled "Mountain Shells Around £200" with a list of jackets between £140 and £269.95.

I fully understand that good kit can cost and I'm not going to go away (and survive) on a serious expedition with just hoodie I found in a Sports Direct bargain bin. But for 3 season lightweight and durable hill walking waterproof the £50 to £120 is absolutely doable for lightweight hillwalking with decent kit. Sure a lot of cheap stuff is "cheap" in both senses of the word, but that's where a reviews are useful, amongst the cheapo which ones are actually good.

Is there such a thing as a cheap waterproof jacket? (that could be your title) is it a false economy?

Maybe if you contacted Alpkit,  Craghoppers, Montane , Berhaus  and other companies and told them you are doing an article on £50-120 waterproof jackets for 2/3 season hillwalking, scrambling, cragging etc to see if anything in that range can be any good they'd send you some kit to review?? They all have some decent stuff in that price band

This has been picked-up before in previous threads relating to reviews and the lack of bargain items covered. Quite rightly UKC relies on advertising to make it a going concern and to keep it free at point of use for us non-paying members. As such UKC primarily reviews the products gifted by the advertisers/those companies who know that a review on UKC will drive sales with their preferred demographic. These tend to be the mid to high-end manufacturers touting for (supposedly) cash rich/gear nerd denizens of UKC. The reviews are pretty damned down the line and don't show favouritism, in fact I've seen a fair few scathing reviews that must have stung the manufacturer and their design teams when read.

Where this approach falls down is the sub £150 clothing retailers/manufacturers who cater to Joe Public. These tend to be Karrimor (Sports Direct) Mountain Warehouse, Regatta, Trespass, and so on. These guys don't need UKC's reviews to sell product, and don't gift products for review as a result.

What could be done to close this gap is to create a topic which is specifically for our consumer reviews, and this would include the far less spendy, but still useable kit that doesn't get formal review by UKC. Topic/channel could be split up in to ropes/hardware/boots/waterproofs and so on, to stop it being a stream of consciousness mess.

There is the Alpkit Gravitas in the other article I linked from a few years ago, and there is a Berghaus (RRP 150, but, as I noted in the text of the review, available for 75 quid in some colour/size combos on Berghaus's website and discounted heavily in loads of play) and a Montane (RRP 190 but Google shows ads for them as low as 114) jackets in the review - so I'm not sure exactly what your point is? If you go to Decathlon you'll find a decent coat for less than that too, but as it says at the top of all the reviews, UKC only reviews products from brands that have taken out adverts on the site, as that's how the site is funded . 

Oh yeah - "cheaper". Compare these prices to the bombproof winter shells where the average seems to be heading to 500 quid! The Alpkit one is the only one that can be called anything close to cheap in that category but it's still over 200 quid IIRC.