Gear

Does anyone own or have an opinion on the Montane Mantra Powershield jacket?

It seems to be a pretty straight forward design and LFTO gave it a decent write up but I can't find much else about it and it's not available locally.

Thanks,

Adam

My opinion?

Get the Sabretooth or some other hooded Powershield jacket, or get a cheaper 'nice looking fleece ' if that's why you're choosing it.

I don't understand the point of wasting the potential protection available from a high-tech weatherproof fabric by using it in a jacket  that doesn't have a hood and is so short in the body. 

If you have something suitably protective on your head and on your legs/hips anyway, why carry the extra weight and pay the extra cost?

For rock climbing on a bracing, windy day I'd much prefer something like that because it'll be lighter and give better freedom of movement.

Pete.

There's a really pretty detailed review of the sabretooth on the LTFO website so use that and mentally remove the hood/consider the different pocket arrangment

(otherwise seem very likely to be identical.).

Plenty of pretty similar options around the place of course so do make sure it fits right.

Thanks for the comments. 

The lack of hood didn't initially put me off as I tend to wear a hat and only put up a hood if I really need to. That said you have got me thinking about exactly what situations I might use this in, which is probably a good thing.

I probably wouldn't be considering this at £100 plus but at £60ish I'm thinking it may be worth a go.

I think the Mantra is made in a lighter weight version of Powershield than the Sabretooth. I also saw it for 60 quid, but in the end decided that it was a bit too specialist for me; seems like it really wants to be used out climbing, and I don't seem to be doing an awful lot of that nowadays. Biggest problem I have with warm softshell stuff like this is that economically it doesn't beat fleece/windshell combinations given their versatility.

If you do buy one, let us know what its like

I was going by the garment weights - 520 vs 430 - which seems like roughly a hoods worth.

But it would be nice to know for sure Powershield comes in a mass of 'flavours' which really can vary an awful lot. Montane are normally very good at giving such data, but not this time

I did decide to get this so a couple of early thoughts:

The cut is snug but with quite long arms compared to other Montane bits that I've tried/owned. The material is quite thin, an (apparently) robust outer with a bit of stretch to it and a very fine inner fleece coating.  I'm yet to do anything too exciting in it but I have been out and about in some wet and windy conditions and it has performed well so far. I'll have to do some more active stuff in worse weather before I can tell whether it offers anything extra over other bits I have though.