Rab Electron Pro Review

The warm, feature-filled Rab Electron Pro provides an excellent option for cold weather belaying, wintertime skiing, and spending time around town during the chilliest of months. It has awesome weather resistance and more ventilation features than any other jacket we tested. It's also extremely comfortable. While we wouldn't recommend it as a jacket to throw on during chilly alpine summer nights, for cold weather and high-elevation adventures, this jacket is near perfect.

Performance Comparison

Warmth

The Electron Pro is one of the warmest jackets that we tested. The 800-fill European goose down with a Nikwax hydrophobic finish seals in your body's warmth better than most other jackets. This jacket certainly kept our testers warm during chilly temps. For winter excursions when you need to battle cold temps, this is the best choice.

This is one of the loftiest jackets we tested. The massive baffles immediately make you feel warmer when you put this jacket on. It has zoned midi and micro baffle stitch-through construction to eliminate cold spots and increase the overall warmth of this jacket. In the high-movement areas under your arms, it has narrower baffles to help preserve the down. Across the front of the jacket, Rab uses larger baffles to trap the heat better. This, in turn, keeps you warmer.

This is one of the longer jackets we tested, and it has a large drop hem in the back. We found this helped seal in more heat while moving around. This is perfect for cold bike rides where you're leaning over the handlebars. The extra length helps keep you warm during cold belays as well.

The Electron Pro has an awesome, fully adjustable hood. The hood is helmet-compatible, so you can throw it on or take it off without messing with your helmet, which is super useful for skiers and climbers.

The hood is more adjustable than most, too. It adjusts around the sides of your face with a toggle and on the back with a piece of velcro. This allows you to dial in the fit for when you're not wearing a helmet or you really need to snug it around your head to stay warm.

This model is excellent as part of a layering system. You can easily fit a baselayer and fleece underneath. If you wear those layers and this jacket under a winter shell, it will be too warm for almost any activity but just right when you need it.

Comfort

The Electron Pro is one of the most comfortable and cozy of any we tested. It has soft lining fabric that feels good against your skin, a knit zipper garage under your chin, and a great overall fit. This was consistently one of our favorite jackets to wear during testing because of how comfortable it was.

When testing down jackets, there are some that simply don't spark joy when it's time to test them. But every time we pulled out the Electron Pro from our box of down jackets, we felt a tinge of excitement. It fits really well and the material feels softest directly on your skin. It doesn't feel sticky or slippery, even when it gets wet from sweat.

Even though this is a bulky jacket, the slightly tapered waist and torso-hugging fit make it feel less bulky than you'd expect. It still doesn't feel like a minimalist alpine layer, but that's not what it's trying to be. The heavier weight does make it feel a bit more cumbersome than some jackets, but the excellent fit helps a lot.

The inner lining material is some of the softest we've felt. This jacket is so comfortable we often wear it around the house instead of our favorite cotton hoody. It still has that slightly slippery feel you'd expect from a ripstop nylon material, but it's not nearly as sticky and slippery as most nylons.

Where the hood and zipper meet at the top of the jacket, there is a soft zipper covering made of wicking material. This prevents your chin from getting chaffed when wearing the hood zipped up over your face all day. This is a surprisingly rare feature in down jackets, and one we wish was more common. The hood is, on the whole, very comfortable and moves with your head when you turn it. This comes in handy when you're looking up a wall while belaying. Really, everyone wants to see what's around them when they're wearing a hood, and this hood allows for that better than most.

The long-waisted hem and high pockets initially felt difficult to manage, but the slightly tapered cut and athletic fit make up for that awkwardness. This jacket allows you to move well during any activities and doesn't restrict your ability to move. You can climb, bike, ski, or do anything else you need to without feeling like you're going to rip your shoulders through the back.

The long torso length fits well under a harness, and the dual zippers mean it's easy to unzip the bottom of the jacket to make room for a belay device. The ample-sized YKK zippers are easy to use with large gloves.

The stretch panels built into the wrist cuffs are some of the most comfortable we've used. They help the jacket stay on the wrists and allow for a more comfortable feel on the forearms when the sleeves are pushed up. The wrist cuffs also slide under gloves more easily than a traditional elastic band wrist cuff.

Portability

A men's size small Electron Pro weighs 16.1 ounces. This is one of the heaviest jackets we tested. If ultralight portability is your top concern, this isn't the one, sorry.

There are always trade-offs when considering the weight of a jacket. The Electron Pro could be made lighter by using less down and thinner materials. But then the jacket wouldn't have as much insulation, and you wouldn't stay as warm while wearing it. And if it were made with thinner materials, it wouldn't be as durable, and you'd be more likely to tear it on a rock. Then it would really have less down insulation.

This makes an excellent belay coat because you can wear it as a standalone layer. Our testers didn't mind stuffing it in their packs for shorter approaches as the jacket provides a lot of warmth for the weight.

For hiking and backpacking in the summer, the Electron Pro isn't the best option. It easily packs into its included stuff sack, but it's too heavy and bulky to make sense in scenarios that require minimalism. This jacket shines on cold adventures where you'll be actually wearing the jacket, not simply carrying it.

While the 800-fill down works well when compressing the jacket, allowing it to become fairly small, because of its overall bulk, the Electron didn't shrink down as well as many of the other jackets that we tested.

It comes with a dedicated stuff sack, which was nice as sometimes bulkier jackets can be hard to stuff into their own pockets. You'll have to keep track of the stuff sack while you're wearing the jacket if you plan on using it for storage, but we found it fits nicely into the zippered chest pocket. The resulting stuffed package does work as a solid-sized pillow while backpacking.

Weather Resistance

The Electron Pro performs better than most down jackets in foul weather. The 800-fill European goose down has a Nikwax hydrophobic finish, and the DWR coating on the Pertex® Quantum Pro ripstop nylon shell material works well to shield you from wind and light precipitation.

This coat can handle light bits of precipitation and even some stints of heavier weather. As with all down jackets, it will get pretty soaked in heavy rain. It will take some time for the shell material to wet out and then a little longer for the down to get soaked, but it will happen eventually. This is no unicorn; if there's a forecast for more than sprinkles, you should bring a waterproof layer, too.

However, compared to other down jackets, this model does awesome in bad weather. The DWR coating sheds snow well, and the hydrophobic coating on the down works. Even during high-output activities in snowy conditions, we didn't notice the down lost much loft at all due to moisture.

Breathability

The Electron Pro is a heavily insulated warm jacket, so it gets hot quickly during high-output activities. However, this jacket has some of the best ventilation features of any down jacket.

It has two multi-directional zippers. This lets you vent the jacket from the top, near your neck, and also at the bottom. In cold and windy conditions, keeping the hood on a jacket while letting the wind cool your core is an effective way to regulate your body temperature. We found that keeping your head warm while cooling off your core works better than simply taking the hood off, which is the only option with a lot of down jackets.

The oversized pockets also work as massive heat vents to further vent your core. For high-output activities like winter running, uphill skiing, or intense cycling, this jacket is probably overkill in all but the coldest conditions. But if it's this cold and you're stopping and restarting often, this jacket has the ventilation options to keep you comfortable.

Should You Buy the Rab Electron Pro?

The high-quality Electron Pro is built for cold weather mountain adventures. It has tons of useful features that are great for skiers, winter hikers, cold-weather campers, and climbers who want tons of warmth and don't mind a heavier jacket. If you're looking for a reliable and warm coat for extreme weather, this is a great option.

What Other Down Jackets Should You Consider?

For a jacket better suited to light and fast purposes such as backpacking or alpine climbing, check out the ultralight Mountain Hardwear Ghost Whisperer/2. If you're looking for a less expensive jacket with a similar amount of weather protection, you should consider the Rab Microlight Alpine. If you're looking for the best pick for a tight budget, check out the REI Co-op 650 Down.