Arc'teryx Sirrus SL Jacket

Matthew Thoelke
Reviewed: 09 August 2004

SUPERB

Incredibly light, truely breathable, waterproof, and tough

Stella price tag, pit zips unnecessary

The price seems incredible for a jacket that weighs a little over 300g but the cut is superb, the choice of materials is excellent and compared to other versions of paclite this jacket is very robust (2 weeks of ice and rock, no wrips, more then can be said for other paclite gear being used), if you are going to spend 150-180 on a lightweight waterproof, seems worthwhile to send the extra to get something that will survive it's first contact with rock/ice tools/barbered wire...

Martin McCallum
Reviewed: 13 June 2003

DOESN'T FEEL LIKE YOU'VE GOT A SHELL ON.

As ususal for Arc'teryx the cut is superb. This combined with the use of Paclite gives you this feeling that you don't really have a shell on in the same way that some of the ultra-light jackets do. The difference here is you stay dry as the material doesn't leak and breathes quite well. Haven't had any leaks through the waterproof zips either and I was a little nervous of these as its the first jacket I've had that uses only this type of zip.

The velcro wrist closures are quite narrow (<1cm) so you have to take more care than normal to close these. Bit of a pain.

A great lightweight shell. I'm still wary of the Paclite material and am a little worried about scraping it up a route in winter, but to be honest I bought it more for summer anyway. Doesn't have a normal 'shell jacket' feel when you wear it so I'm quite happy to put it on where before I'd wait to see how heavy the rain got! The price is steep, I managed to get mine for $220 in the US and its worth that, I'd have to think a lot more to pay £250.