Van Rysel RCR-R PRO Wind/Rain 4-season road cycling jacket - pro price and pro performance?

Van Rysel, Decathlon’s in-house cycling brand, is known for offering products with great performance and excellent value.

However, they also sponsor the Decathlon CMA CGM WorldTour team and Van Rysel Roubaix UCI Continental team, so they need to offer the pros top-tier clothing as well.

This is where the RCR-R PRO Wind/Rain 4-season road cycling jacket (and the RCR-R PRO Ultralight Rain waterproof road cycling jacket) come in, providing Decathlon’s teams with high-performance training jackets.

The RCR-R PRO Wind/Rain jacket (I am not typing the whole name every time!) is one of a growing class of the best winter jackets that purports to circumvent more traditional layering systems and provide an all-in-one solution to riding in windy or damp conditions. Started by Castelli’s Gabba, many brands now offer a similar style of jacket, such as Gobik’s Envy or Santini’s Windbloc Thermo, with varying degrees of emphasis on warmth, waterproofness and breathability.

Black is currently the only colour option in the RCR-R Pro, with sizes from S to 2XL, and no women’s version as yet.

Construction

Van Rysel has used two main membrane fabrics for the RCR-R PRO Wind/Rain jacket, both of which have been supplied by Polartec: a thin, very stretchy material over the arms and back with a slightly thicker, less stretchy fabric on the shoulders and front of the jacket. Both are windproof and water-resistant.

There is a third material used for the cuffs and droptail that feels like a cross between Lycra and Neoprene.

Critical seams are taped, which is to say those that are most important as they will bear the brunt of the rain - across the front and shoulders, but the rest of the seams are simply stitched. This means that the jacket won’t stand up to heavy or prolonged rain. Van Rysel says that is where the RCR-R PRO Ultralight Rain Jacket comes in.

The sculpted collar is nice and high, whilst the arm panels are articulated for a better fit. The front of the RCR-R PRO Wind/Rain jacket features a burly-feeling, placket-backed YKK zip which can be undone from the bottom for venting, and there is some large, reflective Van Rysel branding on the chest, back and hem of the jacket. The droptail also has a wide band of silicone to help grip and keep it in place.

There are only two rear pockets, but this is no bad thing as each of them is wider and deeper than normal, and therefore easier to access with gloves on and more accommodating to bulky winter necessities. Unfortunately, there is no security pocket, so your keys and credit card will have to take their chances amongst the gels, tools and spare layers.

The ride

Despite Decathlon's references to ‘insulation’ and Polartec PrimaLoft, the RCR-R PRO Wind/Rain jacket is quite a light garment. Don’t expect plush fleece inside it or even a brushed feel to it.

It weighs just 262g, which, for a tough-feeling, membraned garment with some taped seams and plenty of stretch, is pretty good. It is much more along the lines of a Gabba or Perfetto product; as the design brief said ‘designed for professional riders’ - sub-text: ‘not intended for zone 1 pootles between coffee shops.

This character is carried over into the fit, as it is pretty unforgiving. The size medium was definitely close-fitting with room underneath it for a base layer and not much more. Coupled with the lack of insulation in the jacket itself, you can see that it is intended for riders who generate their own heat through effort rather than as cosy cold-weather protection.

I wore the jacket through December and January, but felt like I had to pick my days and my rides to use it. Van Rysel suggests that it can be worn between 5°C and 18°C, and although I did venture out in it at the lower end of that range, it was for harder rides when keeping warm would be less of an issue. I can’t imagine anyone wearing it at the upper end of that scale, though.

Van Rysel claims that the fabrics have a ‘5.4 RET’ (Resistance to Evaporating Heat Transfer), which should mean very good breathability, but I didn’t always find this to be the case.

Breathability is hard to assess with any degree of accuracy in real-world riding, and is always going to be subjective, but, in back-to-back rides with the excellent Castelli Espresso Air Jacket, I felt that the inside of the RCR (and my base layer) was damper than that of the Espresso. On the other hand, the Castelli does not have any taped seams, and neither does it claim to offer much in the way of wet-weather protection. Make of that what you will.

Breathability aside, the RCR was a fantastic jacket to wear. Fit was certainly snug (especially post-Christmas…), but it never felt claustrophobic or restraining. I really liked the long bum flap, which did an excellent job of staying in place and the burly zip, tough fabrics and tailored fit gave a nice, secure, locked-in feeling when wearing it - it certainly felt ‘pro’.

I am also a fan of shifting to two large pockets on winter jackets when there is more to carry and access can be more awkward. However, the close fit of the jacket, slightly high placement, and my less-than-flexible shoulders did make access on the move a bit harder for me than I would have liked.

Black is cool-looking, slimming and sometimes the sole option in some fabrics, but on the kind of days when this jacket is most likely to be used, a bit more visibility would be very welcome. I took to wearing an old, bright yellow Assos gilet over it sometimes, especially if riding on my own in gloomy conditions.

Value and conclusion

Given that Van Rysel is known for its great value products, and that the Castelli Espresso Air jacket is £250, the Santini Windbloc Thermo is £200, and the Perfetto Air is £250, how much do you think the RCR-R PRO Wind/Rain jacket is? £100? £150?

Nope, it is £280, making it £200 more expensive than the next highest-priced product in the Van Rysel jacket range (although its sister product, the RCR-R PRO Ultralight Rain Waterproof Road Cycling Jacket, is £300).

This poses somewhat of a problem, as it needs to be judged more critically than if it were £100, for example, and I don’t think the fabrics quite stack up against the best available at its price point. Castelli’s Ristretto fabric and Polartec’s own Powershield Pro fabrics are, in my experience, considerably more breathable, which, for a jacket designed for hard, year-round training rather than coffee rides, is a key element.

Granted, the RCR might be a bit more weather-resistant, maybe, and the cut is certainly excellent (if unforgiving), but for £280 I think that it should offer pro-level breathability too.

I really liked wearing and riding in the RCR, but I think that with a different fabric, it could have been so much better, and with such an un-Van Rysel-like price tag, I feel that the performance is a little bit below that of other benchmark products.