Berghaus Ben Oss Women’s Windproof Hooded Jacket – Review

When venturing on a hike of some kind I tend to have the same key pieces of clothing regardless of the time of year.

• A decent base-layer, long sleeved or short sleeved, but most often than not a long-sleeved base is what I tend to opt for.
• A mid-layer t-shirt, this is so I have the added warmth if needed but also if it turns out to be a warmer day than expected I can easily remove the long-sleeved base-layer and keep the t-shirt on…You can get quite good at doing a base-layer removals half way up a mountain!
• Next up I tend to have a thicker layer (midweight), a hoody or a fleece, this is generally worn at the beginning of the hike when I’m yet to build up a sweat and generally near the summit of a mountain when the wind has picked up.
• My last layer is a waterproof, I don’t have a bulky jacket, but a decent one that is going to keep me relatively dry but easy to pack into my rucksack.  So all in all I have 4 layers of clothing that you can expect me to be wearing or carrying everytime I head out to the mountains.

When you go into an outdoor shop, you are going to be faced with a wide range of options for each and every one of those layer options I have already mentioned and it can be quite daunting especially if you don’t quite know what you want….Over time you will know exactly what you want to get, a fleece with a hood or without, long-sleeved base-layer or short!

Go Outdoors recently sent me the Berghaus Ben Oss Women’s Windproof Hooded Jacket from their midweight collection.

I was pretty excited about this as I haven’t technically had a windproof layer before so keen to see how it fares alongside all my other layers.

Main Body: Windproof bonded fleece (350g/m2)
100% polyester
Stretch micro fleece bonded grid fabric with polyurethane membrane
100% Windproof (0 cfm)
Blocked with: AT Micro (180g/m2)
100% polyester
Thermal insulation 0.5 CLO
Weight: 469g

The jacket was lighter than I thought it would be and isn’t as fleecey (not sure that’s an actual word!) as a normal fleece jacket I would expect, although it will be interesting to see how it feels after a few washes.  The key things I liked about the jacket were the thumb holes, as a person who constantly pulls down my sleeves to try to keep my hands warm this made that much more pleasureable and also they work well when you’re layering up and keeping the sleeves in place and not riding half way up your arm!

I also really liked the deep zipped pockets, they’re at a slightly higher height than normal pockets so you can access them even when wearing a backpack (with belt strap).  They’d also hold a decent amount of stuff too if you want things close to hand…i.e sweets!

I am yet to test the Berghaus Ben Oss Women’s Windproof Hooded Jacket on a mountain hike yet, but have worn a considerable amount of times on local walks and combined with my waterproof it becomes the perfect accompaniment.

The jacket currently retails at £90 or £81 if you have a Go Outdoors discount card.

I’m heading to the mountains over Easter so will be giving it another good testing there so will report back!