Reflective Waterproof Backpack Rain Cover – Outdoor Hiking & Night Cycling Safety Protection with High-Visibility Light Strips
Reflective Waterproof Backpack Rain Cover – Outdoor Hiking & Night Cycling Safety Protection with High-Visibility Light Strips
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A shaped skin that pulls over the outside of your pack
This is one piece of thin coated polyester, cut to a rounded pack shape, with an elastic hem running the whole way round. You pull it over a loaded backpack from the top, work the hem down past the base, and the elastic holds it there. Nothing to thread, nothing to clip.
The outside is matte and crinkly and beads water. The inside is a smooth silver-gray coated face, which is the layer actually doing the work. A single reflective strip runs down the outer back panel.
Off the pack it bundles into something that sits in one hand, which is the reason people keep one in a bag they have already packed.
The word "waterproof", and what is actually behind it
"Waterproof" is a testable word, so here is exactly what we hold and what we do not.
What we can show you. The fabric is coated - you can see the coating as a distinct silver-gray inner face in the photographs above. In the supplier's own footage, water poured straight onto the cover beads and runs off it, and a tissue held inside stays dry. That is a real, repeatable demonstration of a coated fabric shedding water.
What we do not have. There is no hydrostatic head figure for this fabric - no millimeter rating, and no statement of whether the coating is polyurethane, silicone or anything else. A rating is what separates a cover that sheds a shower from one that holds out sustained pressure, and nobody has given us one. So this page states no rating, and no rating should be read into the title.
And the shape decides the rest. A rain cover is open on the harness side, because that is the side your back is on. Water can still find the shoulder straps, the hipbelt, and the panel of the pack against your back, and in wind it can be driven up under the hem. Use it as a shield over the outside of a pack. If something inside genuinely cannot get wet, it belongs in a dry bag, under this, not in a pocket.
The reflective strip: a real one, and a small one
It is genuine retroreflective material rather than pale printing. The supplier publishes a side-by-side of the same strip in daylight and under a light at night: flat gray by day, bright white when a beam hits it. That is how retroreflective tape behaves and it is not how a light-colored print behaves.
Now the limits, because this is a road-safety feature and vagueness there is not harmless:
- There is one strip, vertical, on the back panel. There is nothing on the sides, so it works for a driver behind you and does very little for one coming out of a junction.
- It reflects a light that is pointed at it. It does not glow, it is not lit, and it does nothing in the dark on its own. It is not a substitute for a rear light.
- No visibility standard is claimed or tested. This is not certified to EN 17353, ANSI/ISEA 107 or any other high-visibility specification, and we have no measured coefficient of retroreflection for the tape.
Treat it as a useful extra on a cover you were buying for the rain, not as the reason you are visible.
Sizing, which is the thing to get right
The four sizes are cut for different pack capacities. Your pack's capacity in liters is usually printed on its label or in its model name.
Small
packs of 15-25 L
Medium
packs of 30-40 L
Large
packs of 40-50 L
Extra Large
packs of 55-65 L
Two gaps, and we would rather point at them than paper over them. A 26-29 L pack and a 51-54 L pack fall between two sizes. The hem is elastic, not a fixed circumference, so a range boundary is not a hard edge - if you are in one of those gaps, take the larger size. A cover slightly too big can be pulled tight; one that is too small will not go over a full pack at all.
A pack loaded to bulging, or one with things strapped to the outside, effectively takes a size up too.
Looking after it
No care instruction was supplied with this product, so what follows is our advice rather than a manufacturer instruction: rinse it under a cold tap, shake it out and hang it to drip dry. Do not machine wash it, do not tumble dry it and do not iron it.
The reason is the coating. Everything this cover does comes from a thin layer bonded to the inside of the fabric, and heat and detergent are the two things most likely to take it off. Let it dry fully before you fold it away, or it will smell.
Who this is right for
It fits you if
- you commute, hike or ride with a pack that is not itself waterproof
- you want something that lives in the pack permanently and weighs almost nothing to carry
- you are out in showers and drizzle rather than sitting in sustained rain for hours
- a bit of extra reflectivity behind you is welcome, without being the point
It does not fit you if
- you need a rated waterproof, because no rating exists for this fabric
- you need certified high-visibility kit for work or road use - buy something tested to a standard
- you want your shoulder straps and back panel covered too, which no rain cover of this type does
- you need a documented weight or coating spec before you buy, because we do not have either
Specifications
What you get
One rain cover, in the color and size you choose above. The backpack is not included - it appears in the photographs only to show the cover in use. There is no stuff sack, no pouch and no repair patch in the package.
