Ride Admiral Jacket

Comments about Ride Admiral Jacket:

This season I was searching for a new riding jacket for myself. Key aspects were: cool variation of green color at least on the part of the jacket, high tech specs and good fit.Previous years I've been wearing Burton 3L and Volcom Bjorn V Co-Operative jackets. As Volcom (imo) gets more and more uglier design each year, I've decided to get something new that i've never tried before.Finally I picked up this jacket and now have already tested it in Alps for 2 weeks.Great things:- Dope color. It is not that bright that makes your eyes bleed, but still your folks will not loose you on the hill.- Fit. I'm 175cm-70kg so I picked up medium, being tired of the baggy look. Jacket is slightly longer than average (which is actually good,your bottom is covered). Would say it was rather tight around hips when impact shorts and snowboard pants were on, but wouldn't consider this as something inconvenient.Overall would say that this is the look I was searching for.- Pocket on the left sleeve - I've never had this kind before on my previous jackets, so would say that it is convenient. Even a paper ski card didn't have much damage inside it, however it would be better to go with plastic one.- Snow skirt. First time I see the snowskirt that could be closed this tight on your hips and bottom (didn't use it though)- Vents. They are not going straight under your arms, but more diagonally, chest to back. It was easy to open and close them.- Hood is pretty comfortable.Frustrating things:- Thin material. I naturally expected this jacket to be more on a thick kind. Comparing to Volcom Bjorn 2007 jacket Ride could be considered more as a shell. There is no insulation on the inside.Make sure you have solid layers beneath if it is going to be rough on the slopes.- Quality of the material. I got two cuts on my right side pocket during the first week. That's the side I'm carying my board while walking. To be honest I had a radio transmitter in my right hand pocket and antenna was making the pocket stick out - I guess at this particular place cuts appeared from the contact with the board's edge.Nevertheless, my Volcom jacket doesn't have any cuts, but saw much more abuse during past 2 seasons.- Inner lining on the sleeves got torn during the first week as well. The place is right at the inner side of the wrist, where I got my gloves' velcro. I always put a sleeve above the glove and I guess that is not something extra for the jacket that should damage it. Unfortunately there is no way that I could carefully fix this up, as it looks really messy now. - Here we slowly went to the punch line. Inner media pocket, TA-DA!!!! I gues I hardly can remember anything as stupid as this. Ok, jacket has a front chest pocket. There is some kind of a clipse and a piece of material to wipe your mask inside this pocket. That's it. There is no headphones hole or anything more. Because there is a separate media pocket inside this jacket, where you can put your music device, zip up the jacket and enjoy the sound..Until you decide to change/ skip the track. If you do not have a kind of remote control built in your headphones, you need to zip down the jacket a little bit, take of your glove, open up the inner media pocket and finally change the goddmn track...It is not a fastandeasyaccessible pocket for the media. You have to stop and start opening up your jacket each time..that's frustrating, really.- And there is no loop for your headphones somwhere around the neck.From my point of view it would be better to include media pocket into a chest pocket (easy access). And on the inside they could have made a separate pocket (same as on the right inside) or even a zippered inside pocket.- Additionally at the end of each day wrist areas of the sleeves were wet, making me put this jacket for a dry on the central heating.Overall I have doubts on the performance of the jacket if it's going to be really wet outside. For two weeks I had a cold (up to -20C) and sunny weather. No pow, no wet days. Wind is not a problem for the jacket.- When jacket is zipped up manhole doesn't cover the lower part of your face which I like (you can see this in Bonfire and Volcom jackets for example), making this manhole fold at your neck area.Opinion on not tested things:- All zips look like they will let the water in if you get in really wet conditions.- Zip interface to attach the pants. I guess it should work with Ride pants which I actually do not own. Overall this feature by Ride looks poor, compared with Volcom zip-tech.Conclusion:This jacket is one of the most expensive in Ride's collection and it doesn't worth [$]. 3 main reasons why I got it are color, fit and new brand (I wanted to test something new). If there were any other jackets, offereing better look/color options then I wouldn't buy Ride - inconvenient.Feel free to ask anything. All of the above is just my opinion.

Comments about Ride Admiral Jacket:

Very lightweight and easy to layer if you don't find it warm enough. Fits great with ride pants (zip in). Awesome design and good fit, not too baggy.