Reviews

Santini Vega Acquazero long sleeve jersey – review

Santini deliver the ideal accompaniment to their excellent water-resistant bib tights

As part of its Vega Acquazero water-repellent range of winter clothing, Santini have a long sleeve jersey to match its bib tight counterpart. We were big fans of the tights and the Vega Acquazero long sleeve jersey is the perfect accompaniment.

If you’ve read our review of the Vega Acquazero bib tights, you’ll know we were impressed with their comfort and ability to keep you warm despite a lack of thickness to the overall material. While water resistance is clearly one of the main features, it proved itself capable in most damp situations, if not totally unflummoxed by heavy downpours.

Santini have used the same treatment on the long sleeve jersey, with very similar results. The fleece lining helps to boost comfort and warmth, while the Acquazero treatment makes a decent fist of the job of protecting you from the elements, and can withstand repeated washes effectively.

Santini’s Vega Acquazero is an ideal accompaniment to the bib tights from the same range

On the road, we still found it slightly beaten by prolonged deluges – testing them side-by-side with the bib tights – but otherwise it’s very capable. The centre front and rear areas feature a slightly tougher fabric – no doubt designed to help deal with direct road spray – and within its limits it’s certainly effective.

Specification
Price: £113.99
Sizes: XS-XXXXL
Size tested: M
Colours: Black/red; black/yellow, black/white
Website: Santini
UK distributor: Zyro-Fisher

The fit is snug and feels much like a second skin, so there’s no excess fabric to hold you back like a parachute. Winter’s hard enough as it is, without a billowing jersey.

Santini rate the jersey as suitable for use in an 8-15 degree temperature range, and with this we completely agree. While the tights were able to withstand slightly lower temperatures, the fact they cover your working muscles (that generate a lot of heat) goes a long way to explaining this. The jersey, of course protects your upper body, which needs more insulation to keep warm.

The sizing is typically Italian (read: snug), so if you tend to fit between two sizes, we suggest opting for the bigger if you want the additional wriggly room – it’ll still fit relatively snugly, and you’ll gain that flexibility.

The jersey features a long back for extra protection for your hind quarters, with a good ‘Jacquard’ style waist band that retains its position effectively without the use of pronounced silicone grippers – instead, Santini use effective textured grips, which we like, complete with reflective branding.

The back also features three medium sized pockets, although no zipped compartment for keys. They’re fairly easy to access on the move with bare hands or fingerless gloves, but the openings aren’t quite as wide as we’d like, which makes reaching into them with full-fingered winter gloves a little tricky. That said, overall capacity is reasonable so we can have no complaints in that respect. The zip is also easy to use, with a comfortable chin guard installed at the top, and cuffs are flush to the skin to avoid draughts.

The jersey is made from a water-repellent fabric which does a good job in anything but prolonged, heavy rain

The colourways are more pronounced on the jersey than the matching bib tights, so if you opt for the black and yellow option we had on test, you get some high-visibility touches as well, especially at the cuffs – useful for visibility when indicating.

Conclusion

This is a very comfortable jersey from Santini to match with the Vega Acquazero bib tights. It can deal with showers and act equally well as a warm intermediary layer or on its own on top of a thermal base layer, albeit with a typically Italian, close fit.