The bench's older register, leather worn to the shape of the work: the register this page ranks is equipment whose warmth can be checked before it is paid for. No garment by any ranked house is pictured: the ranking is built from the makers' published records cited on the page, and the photography gaps are printed in the honesty section below.
Checked and updated October 2026
The short answer: brands like Rab are graded here on whether the warmth can be checked before it is paid for: both down numbers published, a certifier named with its licence, construction printed per garment, prices that are honest lists, and a bench standing behind the garment when it tears. The anchor, Rab, was derived at 77 on the Arc'teryx page of this series from a single garment's record; this page audits that number in the open against the maker's current pages and confirms it, the derivation retired in favour of the audit. Rab finishes third at home, behind Houdini at 84 and Patagonia at 83. Mountain Equipment derives at 75, new on this page, and Arc'teryx and Montbell tie at 73, the tie ruled on fabric. The skip is Moncler at its standing 55: the ratio and the badge, at about six times the anchor's price.
What people actually want from Rab
Nobody searches for brands like Rab because they need another logo for the lift queue. The want underneath the search is the working climber's version of the technical promise: a down jacket whose warmth is printed on the page before the money moves, built by a bench that began with the garment a climber sleeps in, and priced for people who buy their own kit. Sheffield, 1981, a climber sewing sleeping bags because the bought ones were not good enough: the house's centre of gravity is still that transaction, the specification sold straight, with a service centre behind it for the day the hill wins.
That want has two failure modes, and they are the rest of this ranking. The first is the number withheld: fill power printed without the fill weight, or a ratio printed instead of either, so the warmth is a claim the buyer cannot check until the box is open and the season is started. The second is the garment kept and the record replaced by a system or a badge: longevity sold as membership of an ecosystem, or as a monogram. Three tests separate the field. Are both warmth numbers published, the power and the weight, with a certifier a buyer can look up? Is the construction claim printed per garment, baffles, zoning, shell denier, or is it a heritage paragraph? And does the afterlife exist in the maker's own text, a warranty with its limits stated and a repair route for the damage it excludes, or is longevity a word in the brand story? The anchor passes all three more completely than any house at its price, and is honestly beaten on the third by the two houses above it. The page is graded on all three.
How the scores work
Every brand is graded out of 100: fabric and cloth out of 30, construction and craft out of 20, fit range and sizing honesty out of 20, value out of 15, longevity out of 15. The anchor's 77 is audited in the open here, because the number began as a derivation on another page of this series and a derivation is a promissory note: this page is the payment. Standing scores set elsewhere are reproduced exactly and are never re-tried on a page that is not theirs; the one new score on this page is derived in the open on its card and labelled as such wherever it appears.
The audit, row by row, from the maker's own store, product pages, promise and support pages and materials pages, read for this page. Fabric 24: the flagship's record is still the fullest at its price, and it has grown since the derivation read it. The Microlight Alpine's own product page prints 700 fill power placed in body-mapped baffles, and the maker's specification carries the second number beside it, 153 grams of down in a size medium; the shell is now Pertex Quantum with NetPlus, its yarn made from fully traceable post-consumer recycled fishing nets, and the product page prints its sustainability block in the open: fluorocarbon-free fabric and product, greater than 75 percent recycled materials, made with renewable energy. Both certifiers are in print: the recycled down carries GRS certification, as the derivation recorded, and the maker's down page prints that all down in its supply chain is Responsible Down Standard certified by Control Union, licence CU839597, the number itself published for any buyer to check. Behind the flagship the ladder keeps the habit, 800 fill power with its fill weight at the Electron Pro and Neutrino Pro, 900 at the Mythic Ultra, 1000 at the Mythic G. The row stands where the derivation set it, docked for the same reason: the cloth programme is one register deep, down and the shells that carry it, against the membrane libraries the benches above and below publish. Construction 17: the Microlight's own garment row, the 84 our puffer ranking gave it, confirmed by today's product page printing the zoning per garment, nano baffles under the arms for mobility and micro baffles across the back, shoulders and front where the warmth is spent. Fit 12: the flagship's page prints its fit, regular, and the library behind it remains the small set of named alpine blocks the derivation counted, honestly dimensioned, with no extended or lifestyle range to grade; nothing in today's read widens it, and the row stands. Value 12: the one number that moved underneath the score, printed rather than smoothed. The Microlight's list at the maker's US store is $325 today, up from the $295 the deriving page read, the rise buying a redesigned garment with a fuller file, a traceable shell yarn and a printed recycled share; at $325 it still sits $75 under the Cerium whose maker withholds the fill weight, and the ladder behind it holds honest lists, $380 and $450 at the maker's retail. The row holds, with the commitment printed below. Longevity 12: the Rab Promise, read today, promises that a manufacturing defect in the product's usable lifetime is made right with a factory-approved repair, and a replacement where a repair is not possible; behind it the in-house Service Centre takes the damage the warranty excludes, chargeable repairs, washes and spare parts for current and historical product alike, with the maker's support pages confirming full access to the bench outside the warranty's terms. One thread is new since the derivation and is credited as a thread: a down recycling programme running in the United Kingdom since 2021, collecting at the Service Centre among other points, its recovered down feeding recycled down products. It is not a resale rail and it is not rental, and the row stays docked three below the covenant for the derivation's reasons: wear and tear is charged rather than priced into a guarantee. The rows sum to 77, the standing score, and the audit commits to this: if the flagship's list climbs again while its file stands still, value is revisited first; if a resale or rental rail is published, longevity moves up; if the service centre closes or the promise narrows, longevity moves down first; and if the fill weight ever leaves the maker's specification, fabric moves down, because the second number is the house's whole claim on this page.
The bookkeeping on this page, in full. There is no divergence to rule on for the anchor, and the page says so rather than performing one: BL33's derivation printed Rab at 77 with all five rows argued on its card, fabric 24, construction 17, fit 12, value 12, longevity 12, and the two family pages that have carded the house since, the Houdini page and the Klättermusen page, print the same total and the same rows. Every source was read directly for this page and they agree row for row, so the audit follows the only split the tree prints, and replaces the derivation as the number's home. Our cool brands page has never scored this house, so there is no design-language number to refuse. One tie does need its ruling printed: Arc'teryx and Montbell both stand at 73, set on different pages of this series, and the tie is ruled on the fabric row, 25 to 24, Arc'teryx above, the same instrument this series used on the ties the Houdini and Klättermusen pages recorded. The new derivation, Mountain Equipment at 75, is labelled derived wherever it appears, and the skip's 55 is a standing score whose rows were derived to its total on the Arc'teryx page, reproduced here and labelled the same way.
The rest of the outdoor shelf is cited in prose, by total, numbers untouched. The other bench rests: Klättermusen at 79, audited on its own page in this series. The attainable tier rests: REI Co-op at 73, set beside the anchor's neighbours on the Arc'teryx page, Cotopaxi at 66, the young covenant, and Marmot at 65, one strong budget shell away from a better paperwork grade. The elder rests: Fjällräven at 72, its rows on the Patagonia page, and Norrøna at 69, the fullest page and the fullest price, on the Arc'teryx page. The recent skips rest where their pages left them: Peak Performance at 66, the skip on the Houdini page, and The North Face at 64, the skip on the Klättermusen page; neither is re-tried here. One British name is rested without a number, because it holds none in this magazine: Montane, whose record, fill powers and fill weights in print over RDS-certified supply, would contend on this page; the page's one derivation slot went to the house that prints a traceability code inside the garment, and Montane is named here so the omission reads as a choice rather than an oversight. The tailored shelf in the Scandinavian ranking rests beside the cluster: Asket at 92, Our Legacy and Studio Nicholson at 86, Norse Projects at 85, mfpen at 84, graded on their own pages.
One name is answered in prose because the search expects it, and left unranked for a stated reason. H&M is the attainable end of the insulated look, shells and puffers at a tenth of the anchor's prices, and its compositions are printed per garment, which is more paperwork than the skip below manages on its volume lines; what its record does not publish at this check is a system behind the garment, no repair bench, no rental, no own-label resale rail and no take-back at anything like the anchor's register. Its brand record in this magazine is maintained on its own page in this series; it is not restated, re-derived, or scored against here, and no garment of its ranges is ranked on this page.
The disclosure ledger
| House | The fabric record, as published | The afterlife, as published |
|---|---|---|
| Houdini | Hard facts per garment: composition, weight and origin printed, bluesign certification on the flagship fabric; mono-material doctrine, two cycles never blended; the flagship fabric's recycled share not stated | The full system: repairs since 2008, Reuse second-hand and Rental since 2012, take-back in all own stores accepting every worn-out garment |
| Patagonia | Per-garment recycled percentages under GRS certification; the line figure published, 96 percent of the Fall 2025 line by weight using recycled inputs | Worn Wear trade-in and resale; repairs under the guarantee; the covenant graded on its own pages |
| Rab | Both warmth numbers published on the key piece, 700 fill power and 153 grams of down; the recycled down GRS-certified and the house's down supply RDS-certified by Control Union, licence CU839597 printed; the shell yarn traceable, its recycled share printed above 75 percent | The Rab Promise: defects in the product's usable lifetime made right by repair or replacement; an in-house Service Centre for the excluded damage, washes and spare parts; a UK down recycling programme since 2021; no rental or resale programme published |
| Mountain Equipment | Both numbers published, 700 fill power and 296 grams in the flagship duvet, minimum 90/10 stated; RDS-certified and Down Codex approved, the Codex auditing the chain farm to factory with a traceability code inside every down garment | A guarantee against defects for the reasonable life of the product, the term defined on the maker's page; a published Wash & Repair Service and genuine spare parts; no resale or rental programme published |
| Arc'teryx | Laminated construction specified per garment; the specification is the record | ReBIRD trade-in and resale since 2021; repairs capped at one repair or replacement per purchase in the warranty text |
| Montbell | Both numbers, always: the Plasma 1000 parka prints 1000 fill power, 96 grams of fill, a 7-denier shell and 237 grams total at $479 | Fee-based repairs at a reasonable rate under a lifetime-of-the-product warranty, three to five week turnaround, printed by the maker |
| Moncler | A 90/10 down split and a trademarked claim on the flagship; neither the fill power nor the fill weight published at about $1,900 (the Arc'teryx page's finding, reproduced) | No repair service and no product guarantee was found in the house's published record at this check; what stands behind the garment is the retailer's returns window (the Arc'teryx page's finding, reproduced) |
Seven brands like Rab, ranked
Houdini
US price at last check: the Power Houdi $240 at the maker's US store (2,400 kronor in its home store).
The call: keeps its standing 84, audited in the open on its own page in this series: the complete circular system, sold as clothing rather than as a campaign, and the fullest afterlife in the cluster.
Its rows (24, 17, 16, 12 and 15) are reproduced from the audit that set them. Against the anchor the comparison is exact, because fabric, construction and value are level, row for row: the seven points are fit and longevity, the library the system is proven on and the afterlife behind it. Houdini publishes the garment's record, repairs it, rents its kin, resells its used clothing and takes back the corpse; the flagship, the Power Houdi, is unchanged since 2003 at $240 with the maker's survey counting 1,287 average uses. The bench below it publishes the harder warmth file and keeps the afterlife in-house. Buy the Power Houdi and the shells when the garment is a kept thing and the system is the point. Its full record is on its own page in this series.
Patagonia
US price at last check: the Synchilla Snap-T pullover about $139 at the maker's store.
The call: keeps its standing 83: the anchor's conviction at continental scale, the guarantee, the trade-in rail and the published line figures, beaten here on nothing in the garment and winning on everything around it.
Its standing 83 and rows (24, 17, 15, 12 and 15) are reproduced from our American ranking, where its own page in this series audited them in the open and landed where they stand. Read against the anchor, fabric and construction and value are level again, and the six points are fit and longevity, 15 and 15 against 12 and 12: the wider library a continent of stores stocks, and the covenant's full weight, a guarantee with a trade-in rail behind it. The anchor's file is the more checkable warmth record, both numbers and two certifiers against per-garment percentages; the covenant's answer is everything that happens after the purchase, at a scale no bench matches. Buy the Synchilla and the workwear where the anchor's register runs out. Its full record is on its own page in this series.
Rab
US list price at this check: $325 at the maker's US store, up from the $295 the deriving page printed; the maker's product page moved with the garment's redesign, and this card prints the current address.
The call: the anchor, at the 77 derived in the open on the Arc'teryx page of this series, audited in the open above against the maker's current pages and confirmed: the complete record at the attainable end of the technical tier, certified down, both warmth numbers published, a service centre behind the garment.
Its rows (24, 17, 12, 12 and 12) are the derivation's rows, now the audit's. What the audit found changed since the number was set is printed in the open rather than folded into it: the flagship was redesigned, its shell yarn became traceable by name and its recycled share printable, its list rose thirty dollars, and a down recycling programme joined the service centre's work. What it found standing is the substance: 700 fill power and 153 grams, both published; GRS on the recycled down and an RDS licence number any buyer can check; the Promise's usable-lifetime defects instrument; and a bench that washes, repairs and holds spare parts for the damage the warranty excludes. The garment evidence remains the strongest per dollar in the cluster: the Microlight Alpine scored 84 in our puffer ranking, higher than either Arc'teryx garment graded there. Buy the Microlight line as the honest floor of certified warmth. Buy the two houses above it when the afterlife matters as much as the specification.
Mountain Equipment
Price at last check: the Lightline jacket £240 list at the maker's GB store; no stable maker product address surfaced in our fetching, so this card ships without a buy link.
The call: derives at 75, new on this page, and the derivation is printed in full here, announced as what it is: the other British bench, building in Manchester since 1961, whose down programme audits its own supply chain and prints the evidence inside the garment.
The derivation, row by row. The house's down system is the Down Codex, running since 2009: every supplier accepts its terms and a full audit of the chain from farm to factory, and every down product carries a unique code inside it that returns that batch's source and its precise down content and fill power figures. Fabric 24: the flagship duvet, the Lightline, publishes both numbers, 296 grams of 700 fill-power duck down with a minimum content of 90/10 stated, RDS-certified and Codex approved, in a named shell, DRILITE Loft at 40 denier with a fluorocarbon-free finish; the habit runs across the range, the Kryos printing 800 fill power with its fill weight beside it. The traceability code is the deepest per-garment provenance on this page; the row is held level with the anchor rather than lifted above it because the down is duck at 700 where the anchor's ladder climbs to 1000 fill-power goose, and the membrane end of the range publishes less per garment than the insulation end. Construction 16: stitched-through duvet construction printed as the deliberate design, the insulation optimised baffle by baffle in the maker's own copy, from a house that has built expedition kit since 1961; one below the anchor, whose zoning is the newer per-garment argument. Fit 11: named alpine fits, honestly dimensioned for layering under load, and the narrow library, level with Montbell below. Value 13: the Lightline's £240 list buys 296 grams of certified 700 fill-power down, nearly double the anchor flagship's fill weight at a lower price, the best warmth-per-pound arithmetic in the cluster, level with Montbell's row. Longevity 11: the maker's guarantee page, read for this page, guarantees every product to the original purchaser against defects in materials and workmanship for the reasonable life of the product, defines the term on the page with a printed guide of three to five years for most products, and offers repair or replacement at the maker's discretion; behind it a published wash and repair service and genuine spare parts under the maker's Revere Your Gear pages. Docked one below the anchor because claims route through the retailer first and no repair price list is published, and because the guarantee's horizon, honestly printed, is shorter than a usable-lifetime promise. Add them: 24, 16, 11, 13, 11. The brand score is 75, derived on this page.
What the 75 means in the hand: this is the answer the search rarely names on the anchor's own island, the same paperwork religion with the traceability code as its sacrament, sold at duvet prices. Its range will not outfit a wardrobe either, and its American footprint is thin, which is why its card carries no door this page can stand behind. A reader who wants the warmth file complete and the provenance checkable to the batch buys here, and pays less than the anchor charges for the same discipline in a lighter garment.
Arc'teryx
Price at last check: $400 at the maker's store.
The call: keeps its standing 73: laminated construction and a resale platform from the other alpine bench, charged for the register it charges and for a warranty that caps its own generosity in print.
Its rows (25, 18, 12, 7 and 11) are reproduced from the derivation on the Patagonia page of this series, audited since on its own page there. The tie at 73 with the house below is ruled on the fabric row, 25 to 24, printed here and on that card: the bench's cloth and lamination record is the deeper one. Against the anchor, this is the nearest construction argument on the page, and the bird wins it, fabric 25 and construction 18 against 24 and 17; the four points come back around the garment, value 7 against 12 on a $400 flagship whose file withholds the fill weight, and longevity 11 against 12 on a warranty text that caps repairs at one repair or replacement per purchase, where the anchor's bench takes the excluded damage without a printed per-purchase cap. Buy the Beta for the mountain it was laminated for. Its full record is on its own page in this series.
Montbell
US list price at last check: the Plasma 1000 Alpine Down Parka $479 at the maker's US store; no stable maker product address surfaced in our fetching, so this card ships without a buy link.
The call: keeps the 73 derived in the open on the Arc'teryx page of this series: the disclosure purist of the insulation tier, both warmth numbers on every piece, the tier's best value row beside the new British derivation, and paperwork a warranty lawyer could frame.
Its rows (24, 15, 11, 13 and 10) are reproduced exactly from the page that derived them. The tie at 73 is ruled against it on the fabric row, 24 to 25, and the page prints the ruling rather than hiding it: the bench above publishes the deeper cloth record, and Montbell publishes the deeper numbers. The Plasma 1000 prints a 1000 fill power, 96 grams of fill, a 7-denier shell and a 237 gram total weight at $479, the standard of arithmetic the anchor's own insulation pieces are graded against elsewhere in this magazine. Against the anchor, the four-point gap is construction and the afterlife, with a point handed back on value: sewn-through ultralight making as a deliberate trade, and fee-based repairs on a three to five week turnaround across the Pacific, against expedition making and a bench on the same continent as most of its buyers. Buy the Plasma line when warmth per gram per dollar is the whole question.
Moncler
US price at last check: the Maya Short Down Jacket about $1,900 at the maker's US store; its cards on this site ship without a buy link, and this one follows them.
The call: keeps its standing 55 from our Italian brands ranking, the rows below derived on the Arc'teryx page of this series to the standing total and labelled as such: the logo tax, applied to the mountain.
The provenance first, because this card grades a standing score and says so. Moncler stands at 55 in our Italian brands ranking, where it finished last of twenty, was that page's named skip beside Stone Island, and took this site's Logo Tax Award: the ranking titled its entry, in print, the logo tax, itemised, and costed its flagship Maya at about $14.40 per wear on printed assumptions. This page does not re-try that number. What it prints, in the open, is the rows the Arc'teryx page derived to the total, each argued there from the house's record on this site. Fabric 16: the cloth itself is bought well, and the paperwork is the offence: the Maya publishes a 90/10 down split and a trademarked claim, and at about $1,900 publishes neither the fill power nor the fill weight, so its warmth cannot be checked before paying. Construction 15: the Maya's own garment row, the well made jacket underneath the silence. Fit 12: the same garment row, fashion blocks cut for the photograph. Value 3: the Logo Tax row, the badge priced as the product across the range. Longevity 9: the Maya's garment row; no repair programme and no product guarantee was found in the house's published record at this check, and the technical line is restyled by the season. Add them: 16, 15, 12, 3, 9. The brand score is 55, the standing score, with its rows printed and labelled derived.
Fairness requires two things printed with the sentence. The first is the shape of the conviction: it is not a sewing judgment, and two of this card's rows are the Maya's own garment rows. The conviction is the proposition the technical line sells, membranes bought from the same licensors the real benches use, wrapped in seasonal styling, priced past every bench on this page, and published with less specification than a $240 fleece system or a £240 duvet. The second is this page's own field test, printed rather than implied: the same paperwork failure was looked for at the anchor's prices, where a fresh conviction would have been more useful, and it is not there in the current record. The Canadian houses publish their fill powers; the loudest of them publishes a fill-power range and its RDS certification on its own fabrics page; and the fashion houses that once sold the ratio have quietly switched their fills to recycled polyester and labelled them as such. What remains at $1,900 is the standing conviction, and it stands. Buy the mountain's tools from the six houses above it.
The pattern under the ranking
Read the ladder as one argument about the second number and it explains itself. A down jacket has two warmth numbers, the fill's power and its weight, and the houses on this page divide almost perfectly by whether they print both. The anchor prints both, with two certifiers behind them, and finishes third only because two systems outpublish its afterlife. The new British derivation prints both, and adds a third thing, the code that traces the batch. Montbell prints both, on everything, at the insulation end of the world. The bird prints the power and withholds the weight, and is held at 73 by the withholding as much as by its prices. The skip prints a ratio at about $1,900, and finishes last at a score set on another continent's ranking before either of its garments was graded. A reader does not need to memorise the arithmetic. The reader needs one habit: before paying bench money for any house here, find the second number. If the maker will not print it, the maker has graded itself, and this page's job is only to agree in public.
The second pattern is the life of a score on this site. Three of the seven numbers ranked here began as derivations, the anchor's, Montbell's and the bird's, each created in the open on another page from a garment record and a warranty text. A derivation is a promissory note, and this series pays its notes: the bird's was audited on its own page, and the anchor's is audited here, row by row, against pages the maker published this season. Both audits landed where the derivations stood, which is the record working as designed, and the one new derivation on this page, Mountain Equipment's 75, is printed with its evidence so that its own audit, when its page comes, has something to check. Underneath it sits the honest warranty, the pattern this cluster keeps teaching: the new derivation defines its promise's horizon in years, in print; the anchor prints its exclusions; the bird caps its repairs per purchase; and the skip publishes neither the numbers nor a bench. A ranking that grades longevity on published terms credits the houses that publish the terms, including the unflattering ones.
Rab and its alternatives, at a glance
| Brand | Score | The piece to buy | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Houdini | 84 | The Power Houdi | $240 |
| Patagonia | 83 | The Synchilla Snap-T | About $139 |
| Rab | 77 | The Microlight Alpine jacket | $325 |
| Mountain Equipment | 75 | The Lightline jacket | £240 |
| Arc'teryx | 73 | The Beta jacket | $400 |
| Montbell | 73 | The Plasma 1000 parka | $479 |
| Moncler | 55 | None | About $1,900 not spent |
The one to skip: Moncler. Not a new sentence, and the page does not pretend otherwise: the house finished last of twenty in our Italian brands ranking, took this site's Logo Tax Award, and had both of its graded garments sent home on withheld numbers, the Grimpeurs at 36 and the Maya at 52. Its rows were derived in the open on the Arc'teryx page and are reproduced here untouched, labelled as such. Skip it on the test this page applies, the record at the price: a flagship down jacket at about $1,900 whose maker publishes neither warmth number, from a house in whose published record no repair programme was found. This page looked for the same failure at the anchor's prices first, and printed what it found on the skip's card: the failure has moved upmarket and stayed there. The specification is for sale on this page, from six houses, at every price from $139 to $479 and £240. Buy it from one of them.
Which one to buy
Buy Houdini if the garment is a kept thing: the mono-material rail, the repair bench, the rental and resale system, and the flagship that has not needed replacing since 2003.
Buy Patagonia for the same covenant at scale: the guarantee, the trade-in rail, and a store in your town.
Buy Rab for certified warmth with both numbers printed and a service centre behind it, at the attainable end of the tier.
Buy Mountain Equipment when the provenance itself is the point: both numbers, two certifier layers, and the batch of down in your jacket traceable by the code inside it, at a duvet's price.
Buy Arc'teryx for the laminated shell itself, with your eyes open about the warranty cap.
Buy Montbell when warmth per gram per dollar is the whole question, and buy it knowing the door is the maker's own store.
Skip Moncler on this page's test: the ratio and the badge, with neither number published, at about six times the anchor's price.
Questions, answered
What brand is most like Rab?
For the system around the garment, Houdini at 84: the conviction that a garment is a commitment, answered with repair, rental, resale and take-back services the bench does not publish. For the covenant at scale, Patagonia at 83, with per-garment recycled percentages under GRS certification and the guarantee behind them. For the same British paperwork discipline at a lower price, Mountain Equipment at 75, derived in the open on this page: 296 grams of certified 700 fill-power down at a £240 list, with a traceability code inside the garment. The anchor's own verdict piece is the Microlight Alpine: $325 at the maker's US store at this check, 700 fill power and 153 grams of it, both numbers published.
Is Rab worth the money?
At its audited 77, yes, and the audit is printed on this page so the arithmetic can be checked. The Microlight Alpine at $325 publishes both warmth numbers, carries two certifiers in print (GRS for its recycled down, RDS by Control Union for the house's down supply), prints a recycled share above 75 percent and a shell yarn traceable to recycled fishing nets, and sits $75 under the Cerium whose maker withholds the fill weight. Behind the garment stands the Rab Promise and an in-house service centre that washes, repairs and holds spare parts. The honest objections are printed with the score: the range is one register of cloth deep, and the list price rose $30 with the redesign, from the $295 the deriving page read.
Rab or Arc'teryx?
Four points apart, and the points are the fork in the alpine want. Rab scores 77 (24/17/12/12/12) and Arc'teryx 73 (25/18/12/7/11): the bird wins fabric and construction, the deeper cloth library and the lamination bench, and loses value and longevity, an honest $400 list against $325 and a warranty whose text caps its own repairs at one repair or replacement per purchase. Buy Arc'teryx for the laminated shell itself. Buy Rab for the insulation file, both numbers published and certified, with a service centre behind it, and keep the $75.
Why was Rab's score audited, and did it move?
Because the 77 began as a derivation, created in the open on the Arc'teryx page of this series from one garment's record, the Microlight Alpine's 84 in our puffer ranking and the maker's warranty text, before any page of this series had rebuilt the house row by row. This page is that audit: the rows were rebuilt from the maker's current product, promise, support and materials pages, and the audit lands on 77 exactly, so the number stands and the derivation is retired in its favour. Two facts moved underneath it and are printed rather than smoothed: the flagship's list rose from $295 to $325 with its redesign, and its shell yarn became traceable in print. If the list climbs again while the file stands still, the value row is revisited first; that commitment is printed on the page.
Why is Moncler the skip?
Because its standing score says so, and this page does not move standing scores. Moncler stands at 55 from our Italian brands ranking, where it finished last of twenty and took this site's Logo Tax Award. Both garments of its that we have graded were sent home on their paperwork: the Grimpeurs at 36 in our rain ranking, $995 for water-repellent nylon, and the Maya at 52 in our puffer ranking, its warmth unverifiable because the maker publishes neither the fill power nor the fill weight at about $1,900. This page first tested the same failure at the anchor's prices against the live field, and the houses selling the down look at about $300 now publish a fill power, publish a certifier, or have switched the fill to recycled polyester and labelled it as such; no honest new conviction exists at that price, so the skip is the standing one rather than a manufactured one. The rows on its card were derived on the Arc'teryx page to reproduce the standing total and are labelled as such.
How this ranking stays honest
Every score on this page has a home. The anchor's 77 was derived in the open on the Arc'teryx page of this series and is audited in the open above, rows rebuilt from the maker's current published record, with the re-audit commitments printed; the audit confirms the number, the derivation is retired in its favour, and step zero found no divergence to rule on, the deriving page and the two family pages that carded the house since agreeing row for row. Houdini's 84 was audited on its own page in this series and Patagonia's 83 on its own. Mountain Equipment's 75 is derived in the open on its card on this page and is labelled derived wherever it appears. Arc'teryx's 73 is the derivation the Patagonia page argued, audited since on its own page, and Montbell's 73 is the derivation the Arc'teryx page argued; both are reproduced exactly, rows included. The tie at 73 is ruled on the fabric row in the open, on both cards. The skip's 55 is a standing score from our Italian brands ranking; its rows are the derivation the Arc'teryx page printed to the standing total, labelled as such, and this page's own addition to that card is a field test, printed on it: the brief's preferred skip shape was checked against seven houses' own pages for this page and none fit the charge honestly, the log kept with this page's working notes. Garment scores on this site, the Microlight Alpine's 84 and the Power Houdi's 86 among them, are cited as evidence only and are never promoted into brand numbers. H&M is engaged in prose as a comparison only: its brand record is maintained on its own page, is not restated or reopened here, and no garment of its ranges is scored on this page. Houses cited in prose, Klättermusen, Fjällräven, Norrøna, REI Co-op, Cotopaxi, Marmot, Peak Performance, The North Face, Asket, Our Legacy, Studio Nicholson, Norse Projects and mfpen, keep the numbers their own pages set; Montane is cited without a number because it holds none.
Doors follow the deep-link rule, with one correction printed in the open: the anchor's card goes to the maker's current product page for the Microlight Alpine, because the address the earlier pages of this series print for it no longer resolves since the maker's redesign, and the US list those cards print, $295, has risen to the $325 this page records; the stale doors and prices on the Arc'teryx, Houdini and Klättermusen pages are flagged for correction rather than silently differed from. The other doors are the ones the scoring pages print: the maker's standing search door (Houdini), the maker's storefront where that is the door its own scoring pages print (Patagonia), and the exact garment where a card names one (Arc'teryx's Beta jacket). Mountain Equipment ships with no buy link, no stable maker product address having surfaced in our fetching, its guarantee and care pages read directly and its product record read in the maker's own specification as carried at retail, and the reason is printed on its card. Montbell ships with no buy link under the precedent its deriving page set, and the SKIP ships with no buy link, by the standing rule. Photography: every frame is from this magazine's credited bank, each extends the family's established assignment for its house where one exists, none shows a ranked house's garment, and the captions say so; the bank holds no repair bench scene, no service centre frame and no Sheffield or Manchester frame, and those frames are on the standing harvest list rather than faked. Prices and records were checked against the pages cited in October 2026; the full method is written out on the methodology page.