I basically live in my mesh jacket all summer. In a case of bad timing for me, the gear manufacturers started making mesh jackets about the time I moved to Ohio from Puerto Rico, where I would have really loved to have had that kind of air flow. I didn’t have it then, but I’m making up for lost time now.
The REAX Alta mesh jacket and pants provide a reasonable amount of airflow so you can ride both protected and comfortable on hot days. Photo by Brian J. Nelson.
This summer, I’ve been using the new REAX Alta mesh jacket and matching pants. In the interests of full disclosure, REAX is a new brand created by Comoto, the parent company of Cycle Gear and RevZilla, the company I work for editing Common Tread. With RevZilla’s years of experience in the motorcycle gear market, it only made sense to tap the suppliers around the world they already knew to produce products the company knew would be popular with its customers.
One feature of the entire REAX line is its branding. Or lack thereof. If you’re tired of walking around like a Dainese billboard or an Alpinestars advertisement, you’ll like the fact that REAX gear makes do with one or two unobtrusive logos. But of course the real issue is how the gear works on the road. So let’s see how the Alta jacket and pants held up to my summer of use.
REAX Alta mesh jacket
The REAX Alta mesh jacket.
The Alta jacket features mesh panels on the chest, back and inside the arms for air flow. The shoulders and backs of the arms are solid and elbows are reinforced with heavier material. I won’t say the air flow on the Alta is the best I’ve experienced. Jackets that are all mesh, without the solid, reinforced areas, are cooler, but they also don’t inspire much confidence about how they’ll hold up in a crash. I think the Alta strikes a good balance between using as much mesh as possible while still providing the kind of protection I expect real motorcycle gear to provide.
The Alta comes with CE Level 2 armor in the elbows and shoulders and I strongly recommend getting a serious back protector to go with it. REAX makes it easy, as a couple of options from other manufacturers will fit the pocket in the Alta. I already had an Alpinestars Nucleon KR-2i I got for an Alpinestars jacket, and it fits perfectly and the perforations in it help maintain airflow. The KR-2i retails for $59.95 at RevZilla and the ICON D3O Viper 2 will also fit and costs $45.
The Alta jacket comes with a waterproof liner that can be zipped to the interior. I used it in a few rain showers and it did keep me dry. There are two drawbacks. One, the limited coverage of the liner (and the jacket itself) means if you ride in a daylong rain, water will find a way in. Also, with the liner inside, you’ll stay dry but the jacket will get waterlogged and heavy. You can also wear the liner over top of the jacket, but it may look a little like you’re wearing a garbage bag with sleeves.
Here’s the way I look at it. The liner is a nice added touch you don’t get with some mesh jackets and it’s worth taking along as insurance in case you hit a shower. When I’m traveling longer distance, I leave the liner behind and take my rain jacket to wear over the mesh jacket. That way I know I’m going to stay dry, the mesh jacket stays dry and I have more temperature control if it turns cooler.
The two handwarmer pockets close with zippers and the left one has a clip for your keys inside. There’s a waterproof interior chest pocket for tucking away your electronic device and a pocket in the mesh interior above the waist. The cuffs of the sleeves close with a zipper and a hook-and-loop tab that covers the zipper pull.
There’s one feature that puzzles me, and not just in this jacket. On the upper arm is a snap for tightening the sleeve. I’m no bodybuilder, by any definition. More on the scrawny side. But I still don’t need to make the sleeves more snug on my upper arms. Someday, I want to meet the guy whose arms are so much skinnier than mine that he needs to put that snap in the tighter position. The same is true of other jackets I’ve owned. Of course there’s no disadvantage to having it, even though I never use it.
The yellow version adds some visibility to help you stand out, especially in urban settings. Photo by Spurgeon Dunbar.
The jacket comes in four colors — all black, black and silver, black and loden and black and yellow — and, as mentioned earlier, branding is minimal, which is the case across the REAX line. That’s not an issue to some but many riders don’t want to stand out like a rolling advertisement, since they’re not getting paid endorsement money. Even in the black-and-yellow version I have, I still think there’s too much black. For a jacket I’m only wearing on hot days, I don’t need black material soaking up solar energy.
After thousands of miles of use this summer, the jacket still looks like new, with no fading colors, no loose seams and no issues with zippers.
The Alta jacket retails for $219 at RevZilla and, as mentioned above, I’d budget another $50 or so for a proper back protector.
REAX Alta mesh pants
REAX Alta mesh pants.
The pants have mesh panels on the front of the thighs and all down the back of the legs below the seat. There’s also some mesh on the shin area, below the reinforced knees, but if you’re wearing tall boots you’re not going to feel airflow there. Really, the thighs are the only place you feel noticeable airflow. Stand up while you’re riding so the wind hits your thighs and you’ll really feel it.
That’s not to say the pants don’t accomplish their purpose of being cool in hot weather. The mesh areas on the backs of the legs, for example, do provide maximum breathability. Sweat easily evaporates, while my riding pants that are waterproof tend to get swampy inside because there’s a limit on how breathable they can be.
In terms of protection, the Alta pants provide CE Level 2 armor in the knees, two small foam hip pads and the necessary reinforced areas in the seat and knees. There is no protection in the tailbone area or any way to add it easily.
The Alta pants have two hand pockets cut at an angle, just like the pockets on your jeans, and they close with zippers. At the cuffs, both zippers and hook and loop fasteners allow you to open wide to fit over boots or cinch down. At the fly, there’s the usual zipper, a small patch of hook-and-loop material, a snap and a hook. At the back, a short zipper attaches to the Alta jacket.
That’s actually a feature I use every time I wear these pants because the one minor gripe I have is that the waist adjustments tend not to stay snug, and having the pants attached to the jacket means that’s no longer an issue. Plus, it will improve the odds of everything staying put in a crash. The zipper is easy to use.
Unlike the jacket, the Alta pants provide no way to deal with rain. Carrying a pair of rain pants you can pull on over top of them is the cheap and easy solution.
The fit on these pants feels pretty middle of the road to me, neither snug nor baggy. I wear a 33-inch waist and 32-inch inseam in my jeans, and the medium fits me just right. Officially, the inseam on the medium is 33 inches and these work well with my boots. The pants come in black only.
The pants retail for $199 at RevZilla and after a summer of use, mine basically show no wear at all. Unless I crash test them, I expect I’ll get several years of regular use from them, based on what I’ve seen so far.
Grading the Alta jacket and pants
I’ve already used the Alta jacket and pants for thousands of miles this summer and I have no complaints. In terms of price, they’re neither the least nor the most expensive option, considering the features, so to me they’re worth considering. Really, the only thing I’d change is the color scheme. Get rid of the black panels.
More importantly, resist the urge to ride in your T-shirt in hot weather. Not only will you lose a lot of skin (or worse) if you go down, but you’ll also expose yourself to some nasty sunburn. A good mesh jacket feels as good as wearing nothing when you’re rolling at highway speeds, and putting up with a little sweat when you’re stopped at a light is nothing compared to having gravel scrubbed out of your skin at the Emergency Department. If you ever need the protection, it will be worth far more than you paid for it.
