Despite the love I have for my REV’IT! Arc Air mesh jacket, I soon learned through the month of July that even a “warm weather” jacket could get suffocatingly hot when a heatwave decides to arrive. It was just through sheer timing, then, that REV’IT! asked webBikeWorld if there was anything out of their recent releases that we would like to review, and I submitted my request for a pair of hot weather mesh pants and a hot weather mesh jacket.
A couple of weeks later, the package containing the jacket and pants arrived on my doorstep. Kind of like Christmas, I was anticipating the arrival of the hot weather gear so I could get out and do some serious riding during the Western Canada and NorthWestern USA heatwave of 2021.
Throughout August, however, forest fires in British Columbia had smoke carried over the mountains by the jetstream and ocean winds, leading to not as many riding days as I would prefer. On the heavily hazy days, it was not worth risking my health and breathing, hence why this review took a little longer than usual to perform.
About REV’IT!
REV’IT! was started in 1995 by founder Ivan Vos in the Netherlands. The idea came to him when he was working as a manager at a motorcycle gear importing company, and was seeing only two types of gear come through, the first being badly engineered and designed gear that met only the minimum safety specifications, and gear designed and engineered to be world-class, but also carried a high price tag.
Thus, REV’IT! was born to be one of the now many companies that fill in the well-designed, well-engineered, yet affordable motorcycle gear market. Through innovations such as the “Engineered Skin” concept of moving stitching from impact and abrasion zones to lower risk areas, and the development of the SeeSoft and SeeFlex non-Newtonian foam armor, REV’IT! quickly emerged through the 2000s as a market leader.
In 2008, REV’IT! stepped up to participate in MotoGP and World SBK level racing, providing gear for multiple riders, and reaping the rewards of the significant research and development needed to gain FIM approval for racing riders to wear those pieces of gear. This is passed down to the common rider through new materials, new designs, and newly engineered protective equipment.
Whether you’re looking for a pair of motorcycle gloves, jacket, or pants, REV’IT! is one of the main brands providing top-level powersport protective equipment, and is pushing to continually develop gear to be comfortable, protective, and affordable.
About webBikeWorld’s Review Policy
REV’IT! kindly provided us this mesh jacket for review. Note that we do not allow brands to influence review scores or content. Please see our review policies for more information.
We here at webBikeWorld believe that you can’t just try something out once and give an honest opinion of it. Any product we test is actually used by our testers, and for the last week of July and most of August 2021, during probably the hottest summer we’ve had in a decade or two, this was my primary riding jacket, except on very cold days.
REV’IT! Tornado 3 Mesh Jacket Features
Despite being billed as a three season jacket, as it comes with a thermal liner and a hydratex waterproof liner, the biggest and most important feature of the Tornado 3 is that it is the third iteration of the super-high-airflow Tornado gear series. In a style that I would call “massively mesh,” the jacket has so many areas of mesh that if you hold it up to a light without a back protector in and with the liners removed, it is damned near transparent.
Fully half of the surface area of the jacket is REV’IT!’s own PWRShell mesh, which is high abrasion polyester woven around a solid core, most commonly nylon, to both strength and massive airflow. The rest of the jacket is breathable PWRShell 750D, mostly on the impact areas, arms, and the main jacket chassis that holds the mesh.
The forearms are made of double layered PWRShell 750D, holding the SeeSoft CE level 2 elbow armor in place, with the forearm inner, all the way up to the armpits, is PWRShell Mesh. The shoulders use SeeFlex CE level 2 armor that is held in place by the inner liner sewn to the outer chassis.
The fit of the jacket is adjustable via a series of adjustable straps across the forearms, snap points across the biceps, and straps around the hip areas of the torso. The wrists are supported by a forearm zip to make donning and doffing the jacket easier, and use a standard velcro closure to both cover the zipper head and secure the jacket around the wrists.
Surprisingly, there are no belt loops or clips in the jacket, with the expectation being that the 9 inch zipper across the lower back will be used with REV’IT!’s Safeway 2 zipper belt, or combined with a compatible pair of over-pants.
REV’IT! Tornado 3 Mesh Jacket Fit & Comfort
I am, in no way, a “small person.” 280-odd lbs, 6’1”, and a 32 inch inseam. My belt sits at just under 40 inches from the floor. This, in turn, means that the rest of me is made up of another 33 inches. I bring all this up because there is one glaring issue with the sizing of the Tornado 3 Mesh Jacket that needs to be addressed.
The fact of the matter is that while the Tornado 3 fits perfectly around my chest and my waist, it is, in a word, short. Whereas my current REV’IT! Arc Air is long enough to use its belt loops and covers my front all the way down to my beltline, the Tornado 3 comes up at least an inch short of my beltline.
Objectively, I can understand why the jacket is a bit smaller than the average North American, as it is possible to see through multiple data sources, is about as tall as the Dutch, but taller than most other European countries. The EU is the primary market for REV’IT! gear, so making the gear more suitable for European use is simply market sense.
In all other senses, such as arm length, front to back thickness, shoulders, and the like, the jacket fits perfectly. The neck also has an adjustable snap, so if you are thinner or thicker in the neck than the average person, you have about 1.5 inches of leeway across the entire adjustment slider.
REV’IT! Tornado 3 Mesh Jacket Ventilation
This is what the Tornado series of gear is meant to do. As mentioned before, fully half of the total surface area of the jacket is mesh, which is far more than my current Arc Air jacket.
What impressed me the most with the Tornado 3 is that it addresses the biggest gripe I have about my arc air, which is the enclosed area between the shoulders and neck. On the Arc Air, that entire zone is covered with textile material and has no chance to vent out hot air that gets trapped in there. On the Tornado 3, however, the entire neck closure, front, back, and sides, is made up of triple layered PWRShell Mesh.
This simple “necklace” over ventilation is an absolute design win. It lets hot air out and prevents it from pooling up in the shoulders and between the shoulder blades.
This “necklace” of ventilation allows for hot air that might get pushed up by incoming air from the front panels or arms to escape out of the top of the jacket, and get carried away by the wind. This is especially nice behind the neck, as most back protectors are not porous and can cause a bit of a hot air pocket between the shoulderblades. With, in effect, the “chimney” out the top back of the jacket, no such hot pockets have a chance to form.
The 3D mesh on the inner forearm and bicep flows a simply ridiculous amount of air, as it is about one and a half times the surface area of the same mesh area on the Arc Air. There is also the option of unzipping the forearms and leaving the wrist closure sealed if you need even more airflow, although I only did that on the one day when the temperature spiked above 91 F.
Simply put, outside of not wearing a jacket at all, this is the most ventilated jacket I have worn yet in my entire reviewing career.
REV’IT! Tornado 3 Mesh Jacket Zippers & Pockets
With all good things must come with a little bad. Due to the fact that most of the front and back of the jacket is simply mesh, there are only two pockets built into the chassis, in the standard midriff area. These pockets are also made up of tightly woven mesh, so whatever you put in those pockets will also be getting some cooling air flowing over it.
The right hand side internal pocket, which has the right outer pocket just under it. As you can see, it’s all open mesh, so air flows freely through
In terms of zippers, REV’IT! has that on lock. They come together solidly, in what I still consider to be a “meaty” way, and will stay where you leave them. They are solidly mounted to the PWRShell 750D chassis, and I would be willing to bet even in the most violent of crashes, even if the neck snap pops open, the zips will not move. They feel that solid and that mechanical.
REV’IT! Tornado 3 Mesh Jacket Visibility
This is an area that I have criticised REV’IT! for before, and it’s nice to see that there is a serious upping in the visibility game with the Tornado 3. There are horizontal white reflective strips across the top of the back, the top of the chest, and the biceps, and orange vertical reflective strips around the forearm zips, over the shoulders, and horizontally under the white reflective strips on the biceps.
When REV’IT! means these are reflective, they are not joking. I tested this after sundown once, with the lights off in my home, and shone a flashlight over the jacket. I must have been at the absolutely perfect angle, as the light bouncing back from the horizontal white strip across the top of the back was nearly blinding.
The strips are also placed in areas that make them “non-organic,” which is an excellent piece of engineering. Nature never draws in straight lines, so the presence of a glowing horizontal or vertical line naturally draws the eye to it, and makes the rider or driver coming up behind you on your bike aware that you are, in fact, a rider on a motorcycle.
REV’IT! Tornado 3 Mesh Jacket In The Real World
PLEASE NOTE: When REV’IT! sent me the Tornado 3 Mesh Jacket and Over-Pants, they also passed along a request to test them both together as a combined suit, and individually as separate items. Because of that request, both this review and the Tornado 3 Mesh Over-Pants review will have the same “In The Real World” writeup.
When I opened the package from REV’IT! with the Tornado 3 gear, I was about ready to hop on my bike right then and ride, I was so happy to have hot weather gear for an extremely hot day. The first test fit went okay, with the jacket coming up a little short on my torso at the bottom, and the over-pants a little tight across the hips.
What I discovered, however, is that when connected together using the 9 inch zip that is in the middle of the back pad of the pants and under the tail of the jacket, I was about a full inch and a half too tall for riding with it as a connected suit. To say that I had the world’s most wicked wedgie is not understating the fact, and I was honestly fearing that if I tried to mount my bike with the zipper connected, I would tear a seam.
However, dutiful as I am to test out all aspects of the gear I am reviewing, I quite literally hiked the pants up, swung a leg over the bike, and got out there on the road. Once in a standard riding position, it wasn’t all that bad, and was actually quite enjoyable to ride with. The issue, however, came with whenever I even had a potential thought about leaning forwards.
Whenever those thoughts entered my head, the zipper connection would naturally pull upwards as my torso went forwards, and after about a second, I would be singing two octaves higher and risking never having kids, ever. So if you ever wanted to see an absolutely perfect standard riding position, me with the Tornado 3 suit connected on that first day could have been put into a textbook.
In polite language, the perineal pressure that the Tornado 3 Over-Pants put on me was of concern, and since I had a set of cold-weather Tourmaster Over-Pants, I decided to compare them side by side. I can only assume that European pants and North American pants are sewn together slightly differently, as there was a noticeable width about the perineal area of the pelvic floor on the Tourmasters, and the REV’IT!s had no give in that area whatsoever.
When used together without being zipped together, the Tornado 3 gear worked very well and was comfortable to ride in. I had no issues with using the pants with my Alpinestars Andes V3 touring jacket, nor the jacket accompanying my Tourmaster over-pants or even my jeans with knee pads and the KLIM Tactical Armored base layer underneath.
When used together without being zipped into a suit, the Tornado 3 gear survived the hottest days at the end of July and the start of August. Temperatures would be easily into the high 80s and mid-90s on these days, which is the exact type of weather I was hoping to test in.
Combined with my KLIM Aggressor cooling shirt, the jacket provided excellent airflow and cooling, although once at a stop sign or red light, because there was no air moving through the jacket, it would start to get hot pretty fast. This only made taking off from a stop all the sweeter, as the cooling shirt would gather all the sweat and heat, and toss it overboard the instant there was any airflow, so first and second gear almost always felt like riding into a refrigerator for a few seconds.
In terms of the pants, with the large mesh shin panels, my Forma Trace Touring boots were finally getting enough airflow to actually start wicking heat out the top, which is one of the things they were advertised as being able to do. While it wasn’t a huge amount of heat, it was enough to increase comfort by just enough.
However, my history of playing rugby and participating in martial arts prevented my thighs from getting the maximum promised airflow. With a 25 inch circumference, and the pants fitting with just about half an inch of wiggle room around my hips and thighs, there simply was not enough of a void space to let air get in and circulate. This isn’t in any way a fault of the pants, which do flow air quite happily through the thigh mesh, it’s just that I have thick, strong legs.
The only really major concern that arose from both pieces of gear is sizing. The jacket doesn’t list its length, but it was a good inch short of my beltline, and the pants, despite promising to be able to fit 50 to 52 inch hips, almost had to be shoehorned on, even with the adjustment straps as loose as possible. It is safe to say that if you are looking at the Tornado 3 jacket or pants, take your measurements and then order one size up.
Unfortunately, REV’IT! does not make a 4XL version of the Tornado 3 set, so if you’re like me and are, in the language of the youngsters these days on the internet, “a chonk,” your best bet is to still look at American based companies. The only thing that confuses me about why the jacket would be an inch short is that the Dutch have the tallest average height in Europe, for both men and women…
Final Thoughts: A Great Hot Weather Jacket, Held Back Slightly By Some Sizing Issues
The REV’IT! Tornado 3 jacket, if you are 5’11” or shorter, is a perfect riding jacket for extremely hot weather. Virtually unlimited airflow across most of the major radiators of the human torso helps wick away heat, and the jacket is a match made in heaven with any purpose-made motorcycle cooling shirt.
The jacket also addresses the issue of heat being trapped across the shoulders and around the neck on many of these high airflow mesh jackets, which does score it some serious “Good Design!” points from me.
One quirk that might be attributed to my own body is that the jacket did not reach my beltline in the front, even if I sucked my appreciable belly all the way in. The tail section did cover down the top of the hips, but without having belt loops built in, and expecting you to either use the Safeway 2 belt or a compatible set of pants.
I should point out that being as objective as I can be, my scores are based on my experiences with the Tornado 3 Jacket. It does boast excellent design, uses high quality materials in its construction, and is extremely effective at ventilating heat. While the fit isn’t ideal, it wouldn’t be fair to penalize REV’IT for its eurocentric fit. A lower score on Sizing/Fit would typically indicate more egregious issues such as jacket arms not being asymmetrical in length or being so tight that one can’t cross their arms. This isn’t the case with the Tornado 3 jacket.
Lastly, having an above average build and clocking in at close to 280lb is definitely an atypical body type so it makes sense to account for that aspect, especially if the jacket doesn’t come in a 4XL.
Pros
- Very good visibility reflectors across the jacket
- REV’IT! SeeSoft and SeeFlex armor on shoulders and elbows
- Zippers are solid and do not budge from where you place them
- Mates with the Tornado 3 Mesh Pants via a 9 inch zip across the back to form a riding suit
- Deep pockets
- Waist adjustments are easily set
Cons
- Sizing is not true to the sizing chart, need to go one size up
- The jacket is about an inch short or reaching my beltline
- No belt loops or hooks
- Can sometimes be too well ventilated, even on hot days
- Sport fit, so quite tight on larger bodied riders
- No back protector included
REV’IT Tornado 3 Mesh Jacket Photo Gallery