At around 500g, the Rockrider ST 700 Rain Jacket is not a lightweight garment but when the conditions require a proper jacket, weight saving goes out of the window. Comfort and morale are everything.
- Price: £69.99
- Sizes: S, M, L, XL, 2XL
- From: decathlon.co.uk
This product was selected for our Editors’ Choice Awards 2022, as published in Singletrack Magazine Issue 146
Benji: “What’s not to love about this jacket? Seriously. It is the perfect UK winter jacket. It’s waterproof (STILL waterproof after months of washing machine cycles). It’s tough. It’s a great colour. The sleeves are a good length. There’s a hang tag on the inside for, you know, hanging it up. Can’t abide a jacket that can’t be hung up on a substantial loop. It has all the venting you need: two modest pit vents (the main zip on the front can do the rest if need be). One Napoleon pocket for a phone, one generous pocket on the rear for other stuff. And yes, it has a hood that goes over a helmet, because sometimes that is a flipping godsend. It costs £70!”
Original Review:
Three things I loved
- Holy trinity: weatherproofing, breathability, rugged
- Good fit
- Price
Three things I’d change
- Some people won’t like the colour
- Erm.
- Uh.
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Let’s wind the clock back a few months. Here’s what I had to say about this jacket when it arrived at Singletrack Towers back in February…
“The fabric looks like it’ll be good. I like the colourway (yes, colourway). But… the fit is very much a tale of two halves. A top half and a bottom half. The bottom half looks to be a bit too high at the front for MTBing. And the top half is… mahoosive. Great if you want to look like Wilfrid from the Bash Street Kids – and good that you can properly fit it over a peaked helmet in awful weather – but feels rather OTT and oppressive when the hood is not deployed. It’s hard not to have it sit up to your nose and down to your eyebrows. Letterbox stylee. Needs to be ridden in to see if these fears are unfounded.”
Fresh Goods Friday 586
I was partly right (it is a lovely colour) but mainly wrong. Essentially this is one of – maybe THE – best jacket for mountain biking I’ve ever used. No, I didn’t expect that either.
The key thing, unsurprisingly, is the fabric. I’ll get on to its (5000mm) waterproofing and breathability in a moment. The first thing to say is that the fabric stays where you put it. Which is a weird thing to say.
Stay with me. Fundamentally you can adjust the fabric a bit like stiff paper card.
Please keep staying with me here.
The jacket works best when the zip is fully done up BUT you don’t have to live like Bash Street Kids’ Wilfrid; just fold the collar down and it stays there. It doesn’t slowly erect itself again. It stays where it is positioned.
You might think that such a fabric may feel stiff and restrictive when cycling but I’ve not found that to be the case. It’s a great weight of fabric for mountain biking. It moves. It doesn’t bunch or cinch. But it also doesn’t flap about.
It’s a tough fabric too. It’s weirdly reminiscent of denim in its feel. Not as coarse or thick but it definitely has that relatively stiff matte finish feel of denim. Not everywhere mind. Turn the jacket inside out and you can see that it’s made up of at least two differing types of material. Or at least two differently lined versions of the same exterior fabric.
The cut, which I snobbishly rubbished in February Fresh Goods, has turned out to be bang on.
The front is not too high at all. It mates well with modern riding trousers.
The sleeves are a perfect length. The modest extra bits that extend a bit over the top/forward of the wrist do an effective job of helping to keep chills and dampness from getting inside the sleeves. I didn’t mind the lack of adjustment of the cuffs (they’re simply elasticated slightly).
The droptail is one of the less annoying ones if used (again, minimal flapping about) but still does a good job of preventing filth getting into/on to your lower back zone.
I’ve not entirely sure the rather dinky zipped vents do much but hey, they’re a nice placebo and don’t add anything in the way of extra bulk or discomfort so I can live with them.
The Napoleon pocket is a good size for what it needs to do. Which is hold a modern smartphone and maybe a key. Again, the relatively stiff nature of the fabric is also great here as it stops this pocket’s contents from jangling around excessively or being lumpy against your chest.
There is also a fairly capacious rear pocket on the rear but I must confess to never really using it. If I have stuff to carry I wear a hip pack. Apparently you can stow the whole jacket back in on itself inside this rear pocket but I’m not really sure anyone would ever need to. It’s hardly a stuffsack-size garment.
One of the best things about this Rockrider ST 700 Rain Jacket is that it still works and looks like new. It hasn’t lost its ability to bead and thus shed away water droplets. It hasn’t had to be visited by the Gorilla Tape fairies to repair rips from bushes/crashes. No zips have bust. No zip pulls have come off.
Again with the fabric, I’d just like to add that it doesn’t feel too hideous when it comes in contact with bare skin. Some jackets can feel horribly clammy and freezing when they touch your bare forearms or around your neck. This jacket feels fine against skin. More kind of matte/canvassy/cotton feeling as opposed to dead-frog pelt.
Finally, hoods on mountain jackets are an essential. Don’t trust anyone who says otherwise! Even when just on keeping-it-local rides I’ve been so pleased to have a hood to call upon when the weather truly turns on you.
The hood on the Rockrider ST 700 Rain Jacket has a most excellent trick up its… er, sleeve. It pulls over the front lip of your helmet peak; it’s held in place by an integrated flap of fabric. What a great feature. It really does help keep the hood in place when riding in blustery winds.
Overall
Great fabric, great cut, great features, great price, great colour.
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