In Gear: Held Carese Jacket & Torno Pants Review

What's up, guys? Welcome to In Gear. We're here with a couple of products from Held, a German manufacturer making biker fashion since 1946. Let's dive into the Carese and Tornopant from Held. So guys, we're talking about the top of the line, all season adventure gear from Held. The Carese Evo jacket is going to run you $1,300 at MSRP and the Tornopant is $1,130 at MSRP. So a lot of money, but there's a lot to unpack here, a lot of features and a lot that makes this kit versatile for all year round riding. So starting out with sizing, there is an incredible amount of sizing available for this jacket and pant combo. You've got kind of your normal sizes, which run through small to 6XL, but then you also have a ton of short sizes, tall sizes. You have women's sizing for this. In addition to what I believe Held USA at least is calling a relaxed size, which is what this is. We have BL sizing for the jacket and pants here, which I'm 32-inch inseam, 42-inch chest, pushing 200 pounds these days. So, you know, for me, this actually fits really good. So it's cool that Held offers all those sizing options. And then you also have four colorways, at least in the standard options. I think that changes a little bit once you start going tall, short, whatever. But we have the red, white, black combo here, obviously. What came across first when I pulled this stuff out of the box was how soft and flexible this outer Dupont Cordura 500 denier. but it's super soft and it's really comfortable you know obviously you have the abrasion resistant areas have a bit thicker fabric you've also got super fabric and the shoulders at the elbows a little bit on the knees so you're going to have that abrasion resistance that you need but in terms of just the weight and flexibility of this fabric it's just it's not crunchy at all like a lot of adventure gear is so i knew it was going to be super comfortable out of the box throwing the thing on i was correct it is very comfortable and it fit me really well the jacket is a little of a longer adventure style jacket but then the pants i would say are a little bit tighter fit like through the thigh than some of the like just bigger boxier stuff that we have in like kind of standard american sizing or from some other manufacturers the pants do fit a bit more snug got that european tight crotch fit uh and tight around the thighs but you do have a big zipper if you want to put these on over like full-on motocross boots that's actually did a big long trip through a ton of rain all sorts of different weather in canada just a few months ago and i wore these with uh full-on cd motocross boots it was a little tight getting them in there but this big zip allows you to get a full-size moto boot underneath here so that's super nice and then in terms of protection inside of these things D3O armor in the elbows shoulders we've got the back protector in the jacket then you've got the knees and hip protectors in the the pants the elbows and knees are also adjustable so you can kind of get that tailored for a perfect you know perfect height perfect fit there for you make sure it's in the right spot and not moving around it's going to be there when you need it to protect you and so in addition to this what i believe they call it the over under system is what Held calls it but basically you have a super nice thick gore-tex rain outfit to go with this and the way the way Held does this is you can either keep it inside of the garment you know and you have all these connection points to make sure that when you take your jacket off when you take your pants off it stays connected and you're not pulling it out while you're pulling your arm out of the jacket and whatnot that's basically what we've seen for most manufacturers but the cool thing about this stuff not only is it super robust and nice and thick Gore-Tex jacket and pants you can also wear on the outside of the jacket so it's a little oversized nope i had no problems getting this on over the jacket and pants you know at the gas station when it started raining and also on the pant side of the equation you've got a huge entry zipper to really get this thing opened up to make it as easy as possible to get your boots through this and whatnot with some rain liners you know they have like something that actually comes completely apart i like that this doesn't because it guarantees the waterproofness of the garment that said it's a little bit more difficult than the the rain liners that come all the way part. That said, I would still prefer this setup. While we were using this thing, I was also super happy to see there's tons of reflectability all over the jacket and the pants for this Gore-Tex liner. They also have a zipper so you can zip them together. I used this again through a lot of rain in Canada and it managed to keep me dry. Super happy with it. So that's a cool option from this Held Carese Tornado kit. So I mentioned this kit being kind of a four season option from Held and what's really going to kind of push that point through obviously you've got your waterproof lining you've got a really nice 37.5 breathable liner baked into these it's not like a quilted liner so if you want something like that you would have to wear like a mid-layer or something but what's going to extend this into the other range you know once it gets hot is the copious amounts of ventilation this thing has a ton of vents so if you look at the arms you got a vent all the way down the arm you can open that up you've got that this piece this held piece there to kind of push the velcro open you've got these huge sections here on the chest where you can fold these things down roll them up then you have tons of ventilation through the chest you've also got we flip this jacket over ventilation down the sides here you've got ventilation in the top and vents on the back of the arms so you can really get this thing opened up so it's flowing a ton of air and the pants basically the same story you've got these big panels on the sides you've got a lot of magnetic closures here too which is really nice but you can zip these things down pull this fold it up and then you've got a huge panel of mesh right here so again tons of ventilation throughout the jacket and the pants you can kind of see just how how soft and whatnot this fabric is super comfortable i really enjoyed it wearing it you got stretch panels here for fit you've got a little bit of adjustment in the waist which we'll come back to here in a second you've also got two adjusters on each arm and then you've got some you know like actual waist adjusters on the jacket but although like this all fit really well and and whatnot the the strange thing came for the waist so i had the waist completely cinched up as tight as i could but in order to i guess make things more comfortable held's used this system where the waist still stretches a little bit. So I never felt like I was getting that tight of a fit around my waist, no matter how tight I got the, uh, the adjusters cinched up. Held does sell a system to use suspenders with this, which might be a good suggestion. What I ended up doing was just zipping the jacket pants together. And that was enough to keep the pants held up. And it didn't bother me throughout the trip. I didn't have an issue walking around doing whatever. Um, but it was just like it's just kind of an interesting system because it doesn't allow you to get really get it any tighter than that elastic you got a little bit of kangaroo leather on the seat of this thing and then you can see here we've got a little bit of extra adjustment if you're wearing like a touring boot something that's not so big you can get some extra adjustment with the velcro there in terms of the magnets you can pull this back open things up get it snapped to the edge there but then you've got Velcro and magnets in this piece through here that you can fold back and then you have another big mesh panel to allow air to come in through on your chest. Waterproof pockets here. We've got normal kind of side pockets on the pants. Small pocket here and this isn't going to be a waterproof one but you do have it for just quick access to whatever you might need if it's not raining. So once we open this thing up there's even more going on. When I first got this jacket, I felt like the more I looked at it, the more I went through it, the more features I kept finding. So there's a lot going on here. You've got another waterproof pocket here for your phone. You have routing in the jacket for a hydration system. You also have the option of adding chest protectors in here. You've got a Coolmax liner, another pocket here, the Coolmax liner, the premium gold finish, which I'm not sure that that necessarily serves a purpose, but it looks cool so there's that but again like this is the 37.5 mil really nice breathable fabric for this liner which is in the pants as well and it actually does a really good job of kind of mitigating like moisture and whatnot and just kind of keeping it you know keeping the the internal environment in this jacket and pants in a in a good state not so swampy you know you can maybe see a little bit on this one it's it got pretty dirty in Canada I haven't done a good job of trying to clean it up yet honestly we did a ton of miles on road off road and really the thing that stood out in this jacket you know it's a little colder wet i stayed dry i stayed comfortable and it's it's really is the comfort i think that boils down to the the tons of sizes that you can get this jacket in you know all the adjustments you have everywhere super cool the ability to wear a jacket like this you know four seasons basically means you know yes it's an expensive product but if it can replace three or four other jackets then all of a sudden you know you can cut that down a bit it's not so expensive so obviously that's for you to decide but in terms of options from Held a brand that you know isn't as popular in the u.s as they deserve to be because this is really good stuff this is really you know nice product compared to other brands you see more Dainese Alpinestars Revit stuff like that Held should definitely be an option you're considering because this is super high quality stuff they have a big product range so it's not only the most expensive you know four season jacket that they offer there's a lot of different stuff there but if you're in the market and you're you're looking for that four seasonality kind of stuff the Held Caraza and Torno are definitely good options to check out