Just In - Rab Shadow Hoodie

Kudos to Rab, that looks really nice. Good to see more people using Windpro, it's a nice fabric with a good feel to it. From what I remember it's something like 85 percent as breathable as regular fleece and about 5/6 times as wind resistant (50 CFMs as opposed to around 300). A close cut is always good too, the Arc'teryx equivalent, the Tau, is nice but ridiculously baggy.

The Touchstone is nice. Apart from the hood, which was clearly designed for very big heads. On normal people it's all floppy and the overall effect is not unlike a DARK LORD OF THE SITH stalking up the mountain on the way to assassinate a few more Jedi.

With the hardface technology, isn't this very, very similar to the Montane Sabretooth? While I'm a fan of convertional Windpro fleeces I'm not certain about this variant. Montane call the Sabretooth a soft shell rather than a fleece. Its certainly nowhere near as warm as a fleece of the eqivalent weight but then again its also not particulary windproof or water resistant either.

I do wish Montane and RAB would stop dabbling around with the shaggy dog version of Windpro and this hardface version and just bring out a simple lightweight conventional Windpro microfleece. I haven't seen one of these for years now and mine are rapidly wearing out.