KEMIMOTO Packable Rain Jacket Review
KEMIMOTO appears elsewhere on this site for bags, and this is their packable shell at a price between the throwaway and the technical.
The verdictA reasonable budget shell with a genuinely useful hood detail. Fourteen reviews is not yet enough to know how it lasts.
Hoods are where cheap jackets fail on a bike. A fixed hood either blocks your shoulder check or fills with air and pulls at your throat, and a rotatable one that can be turned out of the way or worn under a helmet is a more useful feature than another five hundred millimetres of hydrostatic head.
KEMIMOTO is already a known quantity on this site, which counts for something real in a category otherwise full of anonymous listings that appear and vanish. Their bags have been consistent enough over several products that the brand carries a little earned credit into a category it is new to.
The evidence is the weak point here. Fourteen owner reports tell you that the jacket arrives and that it fits, and nothing whatever about whether the coating survives twenty washes or a season packed tight in the bottom of a seatpack. Coatings are precisely what degrades under sustained compression.
There is also no published waterproofing figure anywhere in the listing, so it sits alongside most of this category as shower-resistant until somebody demonstrates otherwise over a long wet day. That is not a criticism of this jacket specifically so much as of the whole price bracket.
What works
- Rotatable hood works with a helmet
- Brand already stocked elsewhere on this site
- Packs small
What doesn't
- Only fourteen owner reports
- No published waterproofing rating
- Not a cycling cut
Buy it if
Riders who want a cheap shell from a brand with some track record
Skip it if
You need proven waterproofing or a large evidence base
Others we scored in this category
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