Fjallraven Vidda Pros | Are they worth the money?

Description

In this video we take a close look at the details of the Fjallraven Vidda Pro Trousers and all of he features they pack in. then I tackle the difficult subject of are they worth the money??

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Tags: Bushcraft,Bushcraft Skills,Wilderness Skills,Outdooors,Hiking,Camping,Survival,Survival Skills,woodcraft,wood craft,clothing,gear,gear review,fjallraven

Video Transcription

[Music]

hello hello and welcome to another video in today's video I'm going to be taking a look at these the theory van vid appraisers in the past few years have become one of the most popular most talked-about pieces of equipment there is 12 months ago I bought this pair and they're pretty battered now but I have just bought a brand new pair they're in the bag and they're ready to have a look at I'm probably gonna go into quite a lot of detail in this video because there was a lot of questions I've seen people asking about them and one of the questions I'm gonna attempt to answer is whether or not they are worth the money so as always what I'll do is we'll have a look at the trousers we'll look at all the specifications the features of them the materials they're made from and then I'll have a little bit of a discussion about whether or not I think they are worth the money so if you're only interested in the technical side of it just watch that and don't bother what's in the end but if you are interested in my thoughts on these trousers stick with it till the end and hopefully I can answer some questions for you so let's have a look at the specs of these trousers get us started so considering it's just a pair of trousers these trousers are absolutely packed with innovative features from the bottom right up to the top we're going to do this I'm gonna start the bottom I'm just going to work my way from the bottom of the trials are up showing you all the different features so even right down at the cuff of the trouser right at the bottom we're started with a really useful little fit feature and what that is is a built in Gator system so we've got down the bottom here is on the front of the the cuff there's this little brass hook and that works just like in any normal pair of gaiters and you just hook it over the laces or the clip on your boots for that but what I really like about this system is the fact that you can adjust the tightness of it so also built into the system we've got this this kind of strap here which is elasticated on one end and then it has four buttons sorry three buttons on this piece of webbing here which attaches which can attach to or one two three four studs around so I can either have it very loose and just where it wants to kind of naturally sit with the elastic not lifted and that's generally actually how I keep these with my boots are quite wide up at the top but if I wanted to pull that tighter you can go from being quite loose to actually I can bring that Stewart right round and really cinch it up and that's really useful if you want to sort of go wading through any rivers or whatever you can cinch it right up around to carve really nice and tight and it just stopped that leg of the trouser from sort of falling down as you can see on my particular pair of trousers I have managed to rip this Gator system to shreds some of the threading just come out here and I've got a huge hole on both sides on the inside where I've managed to catch them with my crampons luckily the material hasn't frayed way too much and it kind of I don't think it is ripped off but it doesn't rip easily so that can be easily patch talk moving up the leg what we now have is this knee section here which I think is my most favorite part of these trousers so it's double it's a double layer of material so slightly thicker g1000 here over the top of the single layer which is in the brown here so brown on these trousers brown and black these knees aren't just reinforced you can you can there's a hole at the bottom for you to kind of fold and need put up and slide that in which is really good for doing things like canoeing or be down on your knees a lot or whatever so if you using these work trousers also brilliant what I really like about these you can see that knee isn't sitting flush against my knee when I've stood up so that if I want to bend my knee I can really really easily because then the shape of the knee is actually in the trousers so they're not straight like most stars are I can actually bend and that I found is really useful if I'm kneeling down at the fire or something I don't have to like hype my trousers up to make them comfortable I can just go straight into a kneeling position and the trousers don't pull tight anywhere it's very very comfortable really really an absolute pleasure to wear just because of that so this has been really useful like up in the mountains if I'm going up a steep incline I'm having to really bend my knees to go scrambles and stuff I'm not constantly getting uncomfortable in my trousers so that knee is really useful you see on this side here it has started to wear through because that's the knee that I generally kneel down onto before moving on to two knees so we've worn through a little bit and again that could be really easily patched up and that has been knelt down on repeatedly every single day for 12 month list you're starting to show it's just starting to fray through right on the bend of that new right there further up the leg on the right hand side we've got one of the main cargo pockets and this pocket is really nice it's built-in adjustable for me so it doesn't interfere at all with that movement it's really big it's kind of pleated at the bottom and at the front so you can fit really quite a lot of things in that and inside this there's a mesh organizer pocket where generally I keep my striker bit of birchbark I've been collecting stuff like that things like that and I've seen a lot of people will keep their phone in this I've also used it in the past a keeper a notebook and it's elasticated and very very stretchy so when you look at it it doesn't seem that big you can fit a surprising amount of stuff in there and occasionally I put stuff in though it's just shouldn't fit into that pocket and be like well how does it did and that's crazy

on the other side we've got three pockets so just move this belt stuff out of the way so you can see so another cargo pocket here not quite as big but still equally spaced she's got those pleats in the front and they're all pressed on it and here we've got the label for the g1000 material but behind that which at first I couldn't really figure out what the purpose of this pocket was this pocket is thin and long and goes right down to the knee and what that is amazing for is putting your map in if you're trekking I have put my map in this for days and days at a time and honestly you just forget it there it is so unbelievably comfortable to keep your map in that map pocket further back so it sticks along the same line here at the top we've got another pocket here this is a very slim pocket it's got an opening at the top and opening at the bottom well I'll generally use this pocket for it's for keeping my Laplander saw in and again it sits in there and you can move around and it just doesn't interfere with your movement at all again I just forget that it's in there the stood at the bottom supposedly is for using for putting a hatchet through now I have done that a couple of times I don't like using it for putting a hat in because there even though it's comfortable and the haft of the axe doesn't interfere with your movement the head of the axe is quite heavy and it gets a little bit uncomfortable so I have used it that way a couple of times I just kind of prefer not to further up we've got to slash pockets at the waist here like you'd expect at any small pair of trousers generally keep my phone in one of them I'm going to move it into that mesh organizer pocket just financing it out of the way and these pockets are amazing they go right down right down behind that cargo pocket to here they're really big but they're quite tight as well which is kind of broad in a way because you can't Ram them full of stuff because that does get uncomfortable I hate having stuff in my pocket she's right about me the kind of belt pouch but they are tight at the top and you can put stuff in them and there's no risk or very little risk of things falling out but here this brings me to one of my only criticisms of this these trousers and what it is is to do with this map pocket here and that button in particular it's one of these really lovely brass heavy-duty press studs but when it's fastened if you watch with my fingers go into that tight pocket sometimes I'd caught my finger on that back press stud and that it's a minor injury but it's very very painful I've actually ripped my fingernail off and which have you done that before you know is very painful thing to do so personally I'd prefer if this pocket didn't have a pressed lady was just like a Velcro pocket or like a standard button so that I'm not actually just done that then that's quite painful I'm not catching my nail on that okay waste it's the waistband of the trousers well you know if the waistband of a pair of trousers as you can see I like to wear a big leather belt and these belt loops are kind of ideal for this they're nice and big

and they're a good few inches I don't know how many inches they are but what I like about them isn't just the width of them but the depth of them as well they are pretty deep so I can actually fit two layers of thick leather through that to keep my belt nice and tidy I do need to worry about I'm a very skinny guy and I were a big big heavy belt at the big heavy buckle and they it hold really nicely

the trousers have a little brass button to hold them up and it's a YKK zip in here which they're you know if you know much about zips which one 4ch made you to listen to Brian I do YKK zips are the best okay you can see those slash pockets here they're really really deep the back of the trousers there's no back pocket but this sort of bum part here is double layered again it's that black stuff and it's double layered obviously you're sitting down rough bits of wooden stuff all the time so yeah that hasn't begun to show anywhere whatsoever in it at all so that is really nice and it means you can double your waterproof it as well and that is the waistband and the waist on them does seem to sit pretty high but I quite like that rather than sagging down and so yeah they're really really comfortable to wear you can see that they fit your shape very very very well and an extra bonus and thank you to our Raven is thank you for making clothes for small people these trousers literally fit me like they were made and I've not heard anyone complaining about the size of them at all so that's the waist so I've had a look at the technical features of these trousers and one final point on them is none of these pockets get in the way even when they're actually rammed full of stuff I generally keep my hat and my gloves in this pocket and what's great is because it's not on the side your trousers it's on the front sorry I'm on the front of your leg it just doesn't interfere with your movement at all and that is just amazing having that trouser pocket on the front really is great this one's a little bit more to the side but the same thing applies it's far enough away from the articulated knee that doesn't get in the way and that is something that is very noteworthy about these trousers in my opinion because I hate trouser pockets because the stuff just gets in the way so what are they made from they're made from the famous g1000 fabric this isn't the thickest gauge of that so g1000 fabric isn't just g1000 there's a couple of scales of it they've got a very very light one going up to quite a thick one this particular gauge if I remember correctly is the second to thickest so it's not quite the thickest one they do but it is doubled up in the places where you need a little bit more durability as I've said in the knees and the bump of these trousers the g1000 fabric is constructed from a 65% polyester and 35% cotton now that is something that I would usually avoid like the plague I really don't like synthetic materials particularly when I'm out in the woods because it burns too easily however it's very very tightly woven I have had sparks on these trousers usually ones that literally like sit on the leg and then it's not burnt through so that's really important synthetic fabrics tend to be a little bit flimsy as well and rip quite easily so I usually avoid them but these don't do that and I think it's that sort of you know fairly high level of cotton that can be found in it which is a little bit more durable but where these trials that where this fabric comes into its own is when these trousers get wet now I have got wet in these trousers a couple of times what I've noticed about them is because of that high polyester content the speed at which they dry is is absolutely phenomenal seriously they dry so fast that you can physically see them drying out so if you've been out in the rain and then it stopped raining you've got a little bit of a breeze they genuinely dry like to bone dry really quickly you can do reduce the amount of water that you put into them that can get into them by putting extra wax on them I will do a video on how to wax these trials in the very near future but that ability of these trousers to dry whilst also being durable and very comfortable just opens these trousers out to pretty much every kind of outdoor activity you can you can imagine that this is the only piece of equipment that I use in all of the environments I go to I've used them canoeing I've used them in the woods I've used them in the mountains they even smart enough to go out around town in which is unheard of for me like I just like a tramp all the time and that is not something to be sniffed at a piece of equipment that we can you can that could be comfortably used in every environment absolutely brilliant also you can wear them when they're cold and put a layer underneath them or you can wear them in it's hot and turn them into shorts it just is amazing I have never had a piece of equipment that is this versatile I really believe in these trousers now if you're able as a brand and quite interesting because digging around and looking at some people's criticisms one of the main ones being that these trousers are not made in Sweden the fabric is as far as I'm aware but that manufacturer of the actual clothing is outsourced to different countries in the in the case of these trousers are made in Vietnam I think just check this shirt the shirt is made in Portugal

I think the backpacks are possibly made in China could be wrong on that reasonably so a lot of people see this as a point where they might be lesser quality well I've had a bit of a dig around and you know looked at what the rav was saying about it the reason they did that was basically they wanted to find places in the world where people were better at making the stuff than the the factories that had its wings to the outsource there but what they don't do is what most big companies do is where they charge a really high price for a product but then pay the people a real low wage for manufacturing fjällräven don't do that they've got a really strong policy on ensuring that their workers are paid a fair wage in a very very open transparent about it and all the information is on their website I do recommend go and have a look at lo look at it and this includes both scheduled and

random audits of these factories so yeah you know I believe in the brand and that's a really good thing the other thing they have is a really strong Etan environmental policy which I won't go into details of but it is well worth a read outdoors people we should be interested in eco environmental policies most outdoor companies don't have that fjällräven do which brings us down to the question of whether or not they're worth the money and well I bought a second pair here so clearly I think they are worth the money they are expensive these trousers in the UK come in at around one hundred and forty five pounds which is a lot of money for a pair of trousers but I've worn these every single day for twelve months and I've only just had to get another another pair to kind of step into place but it's not a replacement if you're even actively encourage you to repair your equipment and they have information on their website on how to do it I can't think of another company that has information on how to repair the stuff that they're selling to you most companies simply want you to wreck it and then buy another one to make money PRA even don't do that these trousers are pretty battered they're very very warm they're very they're still completely functional they're just starting to look a bit tatty at some place and it can be easily repaired so that in itself it's a hundred point five pounds per parrot razors which were essentially gonna last me another two years previously I was buying cheaper clothing where I was having to replace them every four to six months that is it that's a huge difference so do I think they're worth the money in the long term absolutely they are it is an investment just like you might buy an expensive axe or an expensive knife these are the same they're the only piece of equipment I've ever bought that is suitable in every single environment I've been to and I really genuinely honestly do believe in the brand I've bought this stuff for my own money

they haven't contacted me I haven't contacted them they haven't sent me this stuff I pay for it with my own money there you go erm Philip wrote rousers probably my favourite piece of equipment I have ever bought totally worth the money and thank you all for watching so that is the end of the video I've rambled on a little bit there if you've got any questions or comments please leave them in the comment section below I'll be my very best to answer them I've really researched the brand and the product quite well but a lot of it's too boring for video yeah you start with to the end thank you all for watching please check in ready for my next video which is gonna be a little tutorial sake saying thank you for watching yes thank you for watching take her and I'll see you in the next one bye for now you