Rab Men's Prosar Down Jacket

Product Information

The material the product is made from is often a sign of the quality for Christmas Gifts. Take a look at the product details over at Go Outdoors to get a feel for this. I did further testing on subsequent days with the pit zips open and found internal moisture much reduced. Breathability is just as important, because many man-made polymer fabrics can be waterproof (e.g. polythene), but if it doesn’t breathe at all then you’re just going to sweat inside and get wet anyway. When buying Christmas Gifts, the quality of the product is going to be one of the factors that you really scrutinise before you commit to buying. The bonded box-wall design means that none of the main panels of the coat have any stitching or seam taping within the panel and so are remarkably waterproof.

That got us thinking though, that we’re looking at every possible item from Rab so it would be good to narrow our search down even further and only look at Rab branded products within the Christmas Gifts category. The cost of Rab Christmas Gifts I’m really not sure why this is because if you study the specifications of Rohan gear (and in particular their Barricade technical fabric – i.e. their Gore-Tex equivalent), you will find it is head and shoulders above their competitors. I only recently discovered that Rab, the upmarket outdoor clothing design house, are based just up the road from us in Alfreton, Derbyshire. We are based in Birmingham. For some reason I had always imagined Rab to be a Scottish company, owing to their founder Rab Carrington being a proud Scot. I felt a little deflated – Derbyshire just doesn’t seem as glamorous as ‘the Highlands of Scotland’ to my impressionable mind. Their gear is still rather good though!Rohan are a UK outdoor clothing brand with over 50 stores in the UK and yet are not really talked about in the same way as other brands such as Arc’teryx, Mountain Equipment or The North Face for example.

The Kaon uses Rab’s ‘Slim Fit’– this sits snugger to your body than Rab’s Regular fit so you don’t get any extra weight, bulk or excess material flapping in the wind. It can fit a couple of thinner layers on underneath it but isn’t designed to go over bulkier layers. Each of the sleeves has cinch-able (is that a word?) cuffs using Velcro tabs to secure the end of the sleeve and make it as tight around your wrist as you require.

The zips are all-round excellent on the Ventus, with a great Aquaguard YKK zip on the front which zips right up to the top of the hood, covering your chin and protecting you from the wind. You can adjust the hood with the zip fully zipped up into a makeshift balaclava which is useful when the weather is bad. I bought the Valiance at the perfect time for testing it – the nights had begun to draw in around November time, and freezing rain was hammering Sutton Park (my local stomping ground) on a regular basis. Size-wise, I went for the Men’s XL which fitted me well at 6ft3 tall and average build. There are however some methods that you can use to determine a product’s quality without needing to physically have it.

The downside to buying online is that you can’t actually get hold of the product to try it out first. Another factor that can be a great indication of product quality is the brand. Brands like Rab are of course extremely well known, especially for Christmas Gifts.

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As well as their down insulation, Rab have also used Stratus synthetic insulation in areas that are prone to getting damp and compression – that’s over shoulders, cuff area and hips.