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Teknic freestyle jacket review
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August 31, 2009 at 2:47 pm #3376WeaponZeroParticipant
Teknic Freestyle Textile Jacket –
At first glance the jacket appears to be of very high quality. It has rugged armor on the outside of the jacket in addition to softer armor on the inside. It has a CE-certified back protector that looks like it will hold up well in a get-off, an abundance of pockets, and an integrated waterproof/windproof liner. It also comes with a quilted vest liner. Everything about the jacket seems like excellence in design.
However, the jacket turned out to be yet another example of a great concept poorly executed. I have a few gripes with this jacket, some of which are insignificant, but some of which I find to be major deals.
1. The sleeves are unusually baggy compared to the rest of the jacket, and the sleeve adjustment mechanism that’s supposed to snug it up to keep the elbow/forearm armor in place doesn’t hold adjustment. Not only that, but the adjustment mechanism also doesn’t have enough adjustment in it to get the truly snug feel you need for the armor. Essentially you have two different factors contributing to the fact that the rugged-seeming elbow/forearm armor is effectively useless.
2. The back protector, while being a nice, heavy duty piece, is rather small and only covers your lower back. You would be better off with a jacket that didn’t have any back protector at all and just wearing a separate back protector underneath.
3. The design of the sleeves and cuffs prevents you from being able to use gauntlet-style gloves with this jacket, unless you want to wear them under the sleeves. It’s either shorty gloves or wearing your gauntlet gloves inside the sleeves.
4. This jacket offers no way of connecting to your pants. No belt loop connector, no zipper, no nothing. I find that annoying.
5. The waterproof/windproof liner that’s built into the jacket doesn’t breathe as well as they say it would. Nothing waterproof could, logically speaking. Because of how the liner interferes with the venting, the jacket is only suitable up to the high 80’s temperature-wise, and even then only if you have a t-shirt underneath and nothing else. It would have been better off if they made the liner removable.
Because many owners of this jacket had these same complaints, Teknic has revised the jacket for 2009 and renamed it the Rage. It is still built on the same old textile chassis with the same integrated waterproof liner, but has ditched the external armor in favor of a hybrid leather/textile setup with 1.2-1.4mm cowhide leather covering the crucial impact points. They have also gone with a more conventional armor layout with CE protectors in the shoulders and elbows and the same dual-density foam back protector used throughout the entire Teknic line. With all of these revisions they have effectively solved all of the complaints I and many other owners had with this jacket, except for the final one regarding the waterproof liner, which is very minor in my opinion. So if you happen to snatch up an older Freestyle jacket on closeout, be aware of these four issues plaguing the jacket.
Overall I would rate the jacket a 5 out of 10. Regardless of how little you have to spend and how nice of a deal it seems, there are better choices for the money. The revised Rage version, however, seems like a real quality piece worth keeping.
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