Windows Phone Thoughts: Chasing Perfection: The SCOTTEVEST Evolution Jacket Reviewed

First Impressions
I received my SCOTTEVEST Evolution Jacket on a day that wasn't very cool, so I decided to open it up and give it a good once-over analysis. I wanted to see what points really struck me as innovative and neat on this jacket compared to my other SCOTTEVEST wear. All last winter I wore a Tactical 4.0 Jacket and so most of my comparisons will come with the caveat that I'm making them versus the Tactical 4.


Figure 1: The X-Ray promotional image of the Evolution jacket. Amazingly, if you were to store all of that in the jacket, you really wouldn't have any bulges!

The first thing that struck me as new was the feel of this jacket compared to other SCOTTEVEST wear. The website lists it as "lightweight, waterproof breathable fabric", a description that doesn't really underscore how cool the material feels when running your hand over it. It almost feels a bit like suede, and is very soft. I don't know how functional the feel is, other than it may make people more inclined to hug you.

Second, the Evolution jacket doesn't try to hide the pockets on the interior like my tactical 4.0 does. In fact, it accents them! The interior pockets are lined with a red piping that allows the wearer to easily find where to put things like an iPod (in fact in the promotional pictures of the jacket, there is a iPod sitting next to an iPod Nano - not sure why you'd take both with you, but this jacket makes it an option!). The Evolution Jacket has 25 pockets in all, down around 10 from the Tactical that I'm used to. I would never say that I am at a loss for storage space in the Evolution jacket, and I would say that the decision to accent the pockets on the Evolution is a good one. After all, less pockets mean the accenting is not obtrusive. And whereas the lining of my Tactical 4.0 is chock-full-can't-run-a-hand-over-it-without-finding-a-pocket goodness, the Evolution jacket has a simplicity that the piping also accents.


Figure 2: An example of the piping & accents on the interior. To the left of the zipper pull is a small tag indicating that sunglasses would fit well in this pocket.

Finally, upon putting on the jacket, I got my first negative impression - it's a bit small! I'm a pretty large guy (I wear the XXXLT size), however the XXXLT Evolution jacket is slightly smaller than XXXLT Tactical 4.0. I can still fit into it and zip it up, but it feels like I'm missing around 3 - 5 inches of "wiggle" room that my tactical 4.0 provides. I guess this is a good incentive to lose a bit of weight (I actually thought I may have gained some until I took the Evolution jacket off and put the Tactical on immediately after to confirm the difference. I doubt most people will have a problem with this, but perhaps consider using SCOTTEVEST's option when ordering to purchase 2, find which size fits best, and return the other. It's nice they state that they have no problem with this time and dignity saving measure!