The cut is good. Sleek and athletic without great wads of unnecessary excess fabric, but still allowing easy movement and as we’ve come to expect from Rab, slightly longer than average sleeves works well for climbing and scrambling. There’s no tendency for them to rise up anyway, but if your ape index is substantial, it’s good to know. Demon Pit-Zips!

An updated classic, a hard-wearing, hard-working rain shell, you know you can rely on regardless of what the weather has in store for you. Rab says: The stretch material combined with a spacious and non-constricting fit means the Firewall was an optimal choice for activities like ice climbing that require a lot of mobility in an upper-body garment. On top of that, the fabric feels lovely and is pleasantly quiet in use too, which makes a nice change. Our experience of Shield+ is that it’s appreciably more breathable than the original Pertex Shield (no ‘+’) fabric and on a par with all but the very best rival materials’I preferred my Berghaus Changste, with its tight, athletic fit, for lighter and faster hikes, but when the heavens really opened I often reached for the Rab Kangri. It was the durable, hard-wearing and high-performing waterproof I needed for such tough conditions. Plus the conventional PU-coated water-resistant YKK main-zip isn’t as smooth flowing as the swankier molded-tooth YKK Vislon type, but we can live with that.

Sleeves are articulated, providing extra fabric where you need it most to improve freedom of movement and arm lift. Sleeve articulation helps to stop the sleeves from riding up when they are fully stretched, helping you to stay fully covered on steep ascents. The cuffs are adjustable, they have a hook and loop system to adapt the fit around the wrists or gloves. When buying Waterproof, the quality of the product is going to be one of the factors that you really scrutinise before you commit to buying. It’s a completely waterproof material, unlike the brand’s classic windproof fabrics, and uses a PU membrane.

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Classic Velcro-tabbed cuffs work over or under bulky winter gloves and characteristic longish sleeves don't ride up either - Photo: Lukasz Warzecha (lwimages.co.uk) A lightweight, versatile 3-layer Pertex® Shield hardshell. Waterproof and with a slight stretch, it has a helmet compatible, stowable hood, refined sleeve articulation and deep underarm vents, great for winter hillwalking and mountaineering. Testing the hood with a helmet on in the shower, we found the collar to be perhaps a bit too wide open, while the wire brim of the hood wasn't quite wide enough. More disconcerting was how little effect the DWR coating on the Firewall had.

The Firewall comes up in a regular fit, leaving plenty of room underneath for layering without being too baggy and oversized. The Firewall is described as a regular fit (sized to allow layering underneath) and I found this to be a generous fit for my 40 inch chest at size medium. I could comfortably layer a base layer and a couple of mid weight synthetic layers underneath. The downside to buying online is that you can’t actually get hold of the product to try it out first. The hood, which can be cinched right down to a very tailored fit, has a large wired peak that does an excellent job of keeping the rain out of your eyes,as a glasses wearer this is a huge win for me. One fully vented pit zip sits underneath the arm, on each side, sealed with a YKK® AquaGuard zip. AquaGuard zips are taped to help prevent water seeping through the seams, offering maximum water repellency in more vulnerable sections of the piece. The pit zips are lengthy to provide maximum ventilation during intense activity - perfect for when you're working up a sweat in the mountains.

Rab Firewall Jacket – Verdict

There are however some methods that you can use to determine a product’s quality without needing to physically have it. Outdoors Magic: Demon pit-zips, nice, quiet fabric with stretch, decent breathability, good cut and at a super-competitive price too. The fabric feels lovely and is pleasantly quiet in use too. No more sounding like a plastic bottle being blown down the street every time the wind gets up’ Another factor that can be a great indication of product quality is the brand. Brands like Rab are of course extremely well known, especially for Waterproof. That got us thinking though, that we’re looking at every possible item from Rab so it would be good to narrow our search down even further and only look at Rab branded products within the Waterproof category. The cost of Rab Waterproof