I bought the Valiance at the perfect time for testing it – the nights had begun to draw in around November time, and freezing rain was hammering Sutton Park (my local stomping ground) on a regular basis. Size-wise, I went for the Men’s XL which fitted me well at 6ft3 tall and average build. Breathability is just as important, because many man-made polymer fabrics can be waterproof (e.g. polythene), but if it doesn’t breathe at all then you’re just going to sweat inside and get wet anyway. Each of the sleeves has cinch-able (is that a word?) cuffs using Velcro tabs to secure the end of the sleeve and make it as tight around your wrist as you require. The inner depths of the Valiance is where things get interesting. Rab have used a bonded narrow box-wall design for the Valiance, filled with 800 fill-power goose down insulation. These are just about the best down feathers that Rab supply (in terms of volume or ‘loft’), and they are from ethically reared geese. A word on the Barricade specifications – these are extremely impressive. From a waterproof point of view, the fabric can withstand a hydrostatic head of 20000mm. This is huge when you consider that the British standard for fabric to be considered waterproof is 1500mm. The Ventus is more than ten times as waterproof. Breathability

The material the product is made from is often a sign of the quality for Christmas Gifts. Take a look at the product details over at Go Outdoors to get a feel for this. When buying Christmas Gifts, the quality of the product is going to be one of the factors that you really scrutinise before you commit to buying. As well as their down insulation, Rab have also used Stratus synthetic insulation in areas that are prone to getting damp and compression – that’s over shoulders, cuff area and hips. Rohan are a UK outdoor clothing brand with over 50 stores in the UK and yet are not really talked about in the same way as other brands such as Arc’teryx, Mountain Equipment or The North Face for example.As I said earlier, you can have the most breathable fabrics on earth but if you’re massively exerting yourself on a wet day then there is just no way the amount of moisture produced by your body can escape.

The downside to buying online is that you can’t actually get hold of the product to try it out first. To give that price some context we then looked at all of the products available from Go Outdoors in the Christmas Gifts category. We found 172 items in total. What’s the price of Christmas Gifts? 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 Christmas Gifts category. The cost of Rab Christmas Gifts 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 Christmas Gifts.

I’m really not sure why this is because if you study the specifications of Rohan gear (and in particular their Barricade technical fabric – i.e. their Gore-Tex equivalent), you will find it is head and shoulders above their competitors. Insulation is where it all began for Rab®. From the early days in Patagonia and Sheffield where Rab Carrington harnessed his knowledge of outdoor clothing and equipment design, through to present-day Derbyshire, our team continues to redefine the future of insulation technology. My next test was on the following weekend with rain forecast. We set off for a 7 mile walk in the Shropshire Hills and I wore a similar setup but with a Mammut Goretex waterproof shell over the top. By the end of the walk I had remained warm, but water had soaked the bottom of the Prosar as it is slightly longer than the Mammut shell. In addition, on removing the layers, I found that the Prosar was actually damp everywhere – I put this down to sweating internally as well as high humidity in the air. You can’t defy the laws of physics, but the Rab Prosar accomplishes it’s main goal of maintaining warmth in challenging conditions.