Marmot Precip Eco Rain Jacket Review
The Marmot Precip Eco is a packable waterproof jacket that offers great all-around weather protection, weighs very little, and performs excellently on hikes and trail runs in 3-season British weather. And all at an even more impressive price.
Marmot Precip Eco Rain Jacket
Ideal for: lightweight backpacking, trail running, fastpacking, gravel riding, bikepacking
Marmot’s Precip Eco is an affordable waterproof jacket that comes with impressive packability: It’s very lightweight for its price, packs down small and delivers great wind and waterproof performance to hikers, trail runners, bikepackers and more.
The Good
Lightweight
Affordable
Huge pit zips
Small pack size
The Bad
Breathability could be better
Pockets are flimsy
Marmot Precip Eco rain jacket
The Marmot Precip Eco is one of the most popular rain jackets in the UK. And while this might be the first time you’ve actually heard about it, you’ve almost certainly seen them out on the trail. Hell, head up Pen y Fan on an overcast day and you’re practically guaranteed to see at least half a dozen of them in varying sizes and colours. And all for good reason.
Weighing in a touch below 300 g (291 g to be exact), the Marmot Precip Eco is a decidedly lightweight and packable waterproof layer. The jacket can be picked up in a huge array of colours, and with a 2.5 layer construction, you can rely on its waterproofness. The Precip is constructed from Marmot’s own proprietary NanoPro technology before being finished off with a DWR coating on the outside. The seams are all sealed to a very high-quality finish, the hood is fully adjustable (though not large enough to fit over a climbing helmet), and the jacket can be folded up and stashed into its own pocket for easy storage.
When it comes to waterproofness and breathability, the Marmot Precip Ecos are listed as having a hydrostatic head rating of 10,000 mm and a breathability rating of 17,000 gm / 24h. Which is technical language for saying that the Marmot Precip Eco will keep you dry in all but the most horrendous deluges (but good luck finding a waterproof jacket that will), whilst allowing for some pretty good breathability. In fact, we found that, when the pit zips are completely open and you wear it combined with a long-armed baselayer, the Marmot Precip Eco is plenty breathable enough to wear on some longer trail runs. Without the baselayer, the material can feel a little sticky on the skin, which isn’t particularly pleasant. But, again, good luck finding a waterproof jacket that doesn’t feel uncomfortable against your skin when you start to work up a sweat at this price point.
When bought directly from Marmot, the Precip Eco will set you back around €140 (prices aren’t currently displayed in £). To save some money, however, you can often pick this up for sub-£100 at many of the big e-commerce stores, such as Blacks, GoOutdoors, AddNature or AlpineTrek. And you know what? We think that, for that price, the Marmot Precip Eco is a phenomenally good buy.
The Marmot Precip Eco (image courtesy of Marmot)*
Our experience using the Marmot Precip Eco
Over the years, we’ve actually gone through two models of Marmot’s Precip Eco. We wore the first until it was unable to keep us waterproof, and the latest model has become one of our go-to fastpacking/trail running jackets for wet and windy use. So it’s safe to say we’ve properly tested this thing. So far, we’ve had it on an untold number of day trips in numerous national parks and in all four seasons, we used it on a 4-day backpacking trip through Germany’s Black Forest National Park (where the rain barely let up for a second), ran hundreds of miles on drizzly trails all over the UK, and — most recently — we wore it on a 2-night spring fastpacking trip through the Brecon Beacons where it had to contend with driving wind, the odd rainstorm, and a chubby Welshman working up a mighty sweat inside it.
In all this time, we’ve constantly been impressed by the value of it. It’s never let us down when we’ve whipped it on, and because of its small pack size and lightweight, it’s become a staple in the bottom of our bag, only being swapped out for something a little more rugged when the activity/weather forecast demands it.
In fact, the only thing that could be improved is the durability. In our experience, if you wear a heavy pack over the Precip Eco for any extended length of time (several multi-day trips), the outer layer can get damaged by the weight. This can impact the waterproofness of the jacket, although we wouldn’t consider this a downside worth flagging as it’s really not designed to be used constantly underneath a 15 kg pack.
The Marmot Precip Eco (Image courtesy of Marmot)*
Marmot Precip Eco waterproof jacket FAQs
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The Marmot Precip Eco is very waterproof. It has a hydrostatic head rating of 10,000 mm, meaning it will keep you dry in all but the most miserable of deluges (but good luck finding anything that’ll keep you dry in these conditions). It also has high-quality taped seams, protective storm flaps on the zips, and and adjustable cuffs on each wrist to synch the jacket down tight, either against your skin or over a pair of gloves.
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The Marmot Precip Eco is, in our experience, reasonably breathable. We’ve used in on tons of trail runs, in fact, and found that the baggier fit combined with the large pit zips do a great job at regulating and dumping heat. We have found, however, that the sleeves can collect quite a bit of sweat if you’re doing high-intensity activity, making it unsuitable for layering over a down/puffy jacket.
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In our experience, the Marmot Precip Eco performs reasonably well in UK winter conditions as a layer you’ll sporadically chuck on in the rain. As the 2.5 layer material is so thin, however, it doesn’t perform like a rugged hardshell — so don’t expect much protection and heat retention, especially in the snow. Additionally, the jacket doesn’t perform all that well as part of a layering system, as the Precip’s breathability (or lack thereof) means you’ll quickly get clammy and sweaty if combined with a down/puffy jacket (as has been our experience). Therefore, if you’re looking for a winter-ready waterproof jacket, you may want to consider investing in a true hardshell, something like the Patagonia Triolet, the Alpkit Definition, or the Rab Kangri.
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Yes, we think so. It’s lightweight, ridiculously easy to carry and comes with some great extra features like an adjustable hood and huge pit zips to dump heat. For less than £100, you get a versatile waterproof jacket that lends itself well to a variety of sports, from hiking and backpacking to trail running and fastpacking — even to gravel riding and bikepacking!
Conclusion
The Marmot Precip Eco is an ideal little workhorse for people who are looking for a wind and waterproof jacket for a range of sports without completely breaking the bank. It’s lightweight, easy to carry and offers good performance on UK 3-season adventures. If you shop around a little, you can normally pick one of these up for well below £100 (Go Outdoors currently has the Marmot Precip Eco on sale for £77). And for that price, we think you’ll struggle to find better value for money.
* A quick note on the photography: We lost our Marmot Precip Eco out on a windy hike and — foolishly — hadn’t gotten any representative photos of it by the time it blew out of reach. So you can get a better sense of what the jacket’s like, Marmot kindly sent us the images you see here.
