All Purpose Jacket - TAD or 5.11?

[OrangecrushmkII]

Hi all, as above I'm looking for a good all purpose jacket preferably in green to get for airsofting, and to use for a couple of trips I'm planning for next year.

I've been looking around and have found that the 5.11 5 in 1 jackets are within my price range along with their various other jackets, I have a couple of products from 5.11 and they've seemed pretty good, but no clothing so Im not sure how good their jackets are,

Secondly I've been looking at the TAD soft shell jackets which look nice and are similarly priced but havent got any experience with their products.

So basically, if anyone has a 5.11 jacket or TAD soft shell I'd love to hear your opinions on them :-), where you use them, practicality, what nice features they have, etc.

Cheers.

[LtPurcy]

Re: All Purpose Jacket - TAD or 5.11?

Hi mate i have the 5.11 tactical aggressor parka got it extremely cheap and lucky to, silly m and m direct,

extremely well made loads of pockets, UBER WARM! when the fleece is in and can be worn without it, very very waterproof and windproof.

very nice jacket mate id advise one. expensive though

i got mine for £45 they cost £180, dont pm me for links m and m direct rid of all their 5.11 stock since no one was buying them.

[OrangecrushmkII]

Re: All Purpose Jacket - TAD or 5.11?

Awesome, sounds good, from what I've read their 5 in 1 jackets are quite similar to the agressor parkas, and I can get one on sale in green which would be perfect.

When the inner fleece is removed is the outer jacket much less bulky? Pictures show it to be quite thick but I'm guessing that when the inner fleece is being used with it, and if it can be used without it and be much like a soft shell it would be perfect :-).

Cheers.

[LtPurcy]

Re: All Purpose Jacket - TAD or 5.11?

Yeah the jacket is a lot less thicker without the fleece inside and is warm enough to wear in a bit of cold and cool enough to wear in general typical british weather

[rik]

Re: All Purpose Jacket - TAD or 5.11?

i had the good fortune to be in San Francisco a few weeks ago, and my hotel turned out to be near TA Gear's place, so I went in. I am SO glad I did. I didn't buy the jacket I thought I was going to - I ended up not liking it anywhere near enough for how specialist an item it would be and the cost of it. Instead I bought a bunch of other things and a different jacket.

I now wear a TA Gear Stealth Hoodie Reloaded in Syth Black. I can say that the OD Green is also very very good, but possibly a little light in colour for the UK. Great quality, as always, and a nice lightweight material. It's currently snowing where I am, around 1.5 Celsius outside, and only my hands and face got a little cold when going to get lunch - I'm wearing 5.11 CAMS trousers (which are also awesome), and a Thinkgeek t-shirt. The jacket is warm enough, for my body, except my hands and face - the hands were cured with application of cunning things called gloves.

The jacket I was thinking of buying was the Spectre Hoodie LRP (in multicam, so scene tax on top of regular TAD Gear price). While it did fit, it did look awfully military due to the pockets being sat on the outside of the material, rather than the Stealth, where it's all nice and streamlined. The material that the Spectre is made from is called Sharkskin, and it's squishy - like an actual shark's skin, as it happens. It feels odd, and to me it's a little unpleasant. I have no doubt that it'd do it's job, but I can't help but wonder how it'll hold up to beign dragged against a slightly rough bit of wood. Would that be enough to make holes in it? It feels like it might, but I can't imagine they'd let out a product that would suffer in that way. Regardless, I didn't buy it, because I wouldn't walk around the streets wearing it either in multicam, or the other colours offered - I was close on the other colours though.

In the end, I'd recommend getting the Stealth jacket for every day, but I'll probably not airsoft in it - I wouldn't wear a green jacket around town, but I wouldn't wear a black jacket to airsoft.

[OrangecrushmkII]

Re: All Purpose Jacket - TAD or 5.11?

Cool, thanks rik, that was the same jacket I was looking at getting so thats really helpful, cheers :-)

Both are sounding good at the moment, I guess its down to personal preference, TAD is generally a bit more expensive but the stuff they offer in my opinion looks much cooler and much more specialist, so I'll have a look about, cheers for both of your help :-)

if anyone has any experience with their stuff would be great to hear from you :-)

[ste887]

Re: All Purpose Jacket - TAD or 5.11?

i have the 5.11 3 in 1 jacket.
same as the 5 in 1 but without the crappy zip off arms,
nice and warm,
60 from ebay

[OrangecrushmkII]

Re: All Purpose Jacket - TAD or 5.11?

Ahh awesome, I was trying to find what the difference was, I'm not quite sure I'd ever unzip the arms hah, and I havent had a look on ebay actually, always escapes my mind to search on there!

Cheers for the feedback.

[Dino68]

Re: All Purpose Jacket - TAD or 5.11?

I run a warehouse shipping 5.11 goods out for Edgar Brothers and i can honestly say that ALL of the clothing/webbing and tactical gear is the best quality.Id take a look at the Sabre jacket,they're a nice bit of kit,they come in black or Coyote Tan.

[Bezza806]

Re: All Purpose Jacket - TAD or 5.11?

I got the TAD stealth hoodie OD and it is a very good jacket, very durable and comfortable but the OD colour is a little lighter than ther OD colours.

[rik]

Re: All Purpose Jacket - TAD or 5.11?

Cool, thanks rik, that was the same jacket I was looking at getting so thats really helpful, cheers :-)

Must confess, I forgot about this thread until the weekly emails showed up. If you want me to take photos of it, drop me a private message.