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Jun 14, 2023

Why I Didn’t Want to Review My Favorite Jacket

The Ventus is a quarter-zip synthetic insulated jacket that’s wind- and water-resistant, moderately warm, and has underarm perforations for temperature regulation. Great warmth to weight ratio //

The Ventus is a quarter-zip synthetic insulated jacket that’s wind- and water-resistant, moderately warm, and has underarm perforations for temperature regulation.

Great warmth to weight ratio // Packs down into size of softball // Roomy in the shoulders for good climbing performance // Flexible fabric hangs well on the body when climbing.

Sleeves are too tight for some testers to slide them up their arms // Hood does not fit over a helmet // Perforated underarms allow airflow but also mean that, when the wind howls, you’ll need to supplement with another wind layer // Packs into itself but doesn’t have a loop to clip onto a pack or harness.

For this reviewer, the Ventus has an every-season function: It’s great as an underlayer on cold winter days, great as a warm layer on chilly summer nights, and at its prime in the fringe seasons. The Ventus’s primary flaw is that its sleeves are too small for some climber forearms. But if it works for you, or if it’s cold enough that you don’t need to roll up your sleeves, the Ventus’s low-weight combination of warmth and breathability makes it a win.

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To review or not to review. That was the question. I’ve been sitting on (i.e. wearing constantly) my Ventus Active Hoodie for nearly eight months now. I’ve worn it while bouldering, sport climbing, ice climbing, running, hiking, and skiing. I wore it often on my evening dog walks last summer and fall, and then wore it all through the winter as a midlayer under my heavier down coat. The Ventus is one of my favorite pieces of apparel ever. And yet, I held off writing this review—and for a time I resolved that I would never write it—because of a single glaring design flaw: I couldn’t slide or roll the sleeves up past my wrists.

Then I got injured, was unable to climb for five months, and experienced every climber’s worst fear: My forearms, never all that impressive to begin with, shrank down. Suddenly I could wear the Ventus with the sleeves bunched up to my elbow, and that helped me realize that, if it fits your forearms, the Ventus—which is light and breathable yet also durable and warm—can be excellent climbing attire.

So after letting some similarly-sized friends wear and comment on the Ventus, I’ve decided to review it with one huge caveat: If you’re a rock climber with big(ish) forearms, make sure you either (a) try this item on before buying it or (b) make sure you can roll the sleeves up before you throw out the receipt and tear off the tag.

The Ventus is very light (just 7 ounces for a men’s medium), but it also—and as importantly—feels light on the body. This is largely a function of the fact that the ripstop nylon outer is very pliable, which makes it one of the few jackets/midlayers that I feel absolutely unencumbered while climbing in. It’s also intensely durable. I’ve put some 60 days into the Ventus—most of them bouldering, sport climbing, and hiking through forests of cactus—and have yet to tear a hole in the outer layer, which is certainly a record for me.

The Ventus’s insulation system is deliberately uneven—Outdoor Vitals calls it “Body-Mapped Insulation”—which channels warmth to the parts of the body that tend to get cold while increasing airflow to the parts that tend to get overheated. In my experience, this works great up to a point, but the lack of customizability reduces the jacket’s performance at either extreme. For instance, when your body kicks into high gear, the breathability gets overwhelmed by the insulation and you overheat. I tried going for some runs in the Ventus, but the jacket is simply not designed for that kind of long-duration high-intensity movement: I still froze if running in temperatures under 20 degrees, yet I roasted when it was warmer than that, and it didn’t feel like there was much of a middle ground. This problem was exacerbated by the fact that (a) the Ventus only zips down to the sternum, and (b) I couldn’t roll up my sleeves. Luckily, that critique doesn’t apply much to climbing: though it might be frustrating on long steep approaches.

Similarly, the perforated underarm vents are not adjustable (i.e. there’s no zipper, as there is in Outdoor Vitals’s NovaPro Jacket), which decreases the jacket’s weight and bulkiness while increasing the breathability—both of which are good things. But the vents are pretty small, so if you get going hard, they don’t cool you as much as a zipper might; and conversely, when it’s cold and the wind blows, the vents cool you down far too much.

As noted above, the Ventus’s grand flaw (from a climber’s perspective) is the sleeve size. The Ventus has half-stretch cuffs, which means that half the cuff stretches while half doesn’t. But the cuffs aren’t what limit my ability to roll up my sleeves: It’s the cut / girth of the sleeve itself. I could probably have upsized—the men’s medium is on the European side of perfect for me—but, sleeves aside, I like the fit, particularly because I often wear the Ventus as a midlayer under heavier down coats. So I’m mostly just hoping that Outdoor Vitals re-thinks the design of the cuffs / sleeve in their next model. In the meantime, I’ll stick with the Ventus on days when I’m not worried about being too warm.

Though not perfect for extreme conditions or activities (for me anyway), I think most climbers don’t operate in those places—and those who do aren’t operating there 24/7. Most of the time we want something that’s comfortable, light, and useful in a wide variety of situations—and that’s what the Ventus is. Doing some technical winter alpine routes in the Canadian Rockies? Running a mountain marathon? Going backcountry skiing? You’ll want gear designed specifically for those activities and conditions. But when I went bouldering last week—and when I head to Rifle this summer and the Red next fall—I’ll be bringing the Ventus.