Velocio Alpha Merino Air Jacket

The Velocio Alpha Merino Air Jacket is just lovely. Will that do as a review? It's all you need to know really. Oh. Right then. The Velocio Alpha Merino Air Jacket is a top that fits somewhere between a long sleeved jersey and a softshell jacket and is a lot better than both combined – it's light, fits well and is beautifully, beautifully warm for those cold days.

In the market for a jacket? Our best winter cycling jackets buyer's guide rounds up our favourite men's and women's tops at a wide range of prices.

> Buy now: Velocio Alpha Merino Air Jacket for £133 from Velocio

I'm a big fan of the jersey/jacket hybrid top for riding throughout the less-than-pleasant seasons and adjusting my layers underneath to suit the temperature. When you combine the comfort and close fit of a jersey with the weatherproofing of a jacket, it feels like the perfect partnership and removes the need for wearing multiple levels of garments – and the Velocio Alpha Merino Air Jacket has just trumped all those before it.

Velocio says its Alpha Merino Air Jacket is one jacket to conquer fall, winter and spring riding, as it combines multiple technical layers into one garment and takes the guesswork out of what to wear. Externally the jacket looks remarkably plain, coming in flat colours of this Fire Red, a green Velocio calls Deep Sea and a stone grey called Moonrock, with just a tiny Velocio logo on the front and rear shoulder and three pockets in the rear with Velocio running down the central one. The fancy stuff in this top comes from its cut, fabric choice and what's going on internally.

The Velocio jacket is available in eight sizes from XS to 4XL so you should be able to find the perfect fit. I have a suspicious and often justified distrust of clothing websites' size guides so usually plump for the Medium I've been since forever, and it's the size of this test top.

Velocio's sizing guide works on a combination of your height and weight, which is a different system to most, and it places me in the Small size but veering ever so slightly towards Medium, while its more general size guide has my chest dimensions right on the Small/Medium border.

Velocio suggests that if your size falls into an overlapping portion you should choose the smaller size for a more tailored performance fit, or the larger size for a standard fit. This Medium was more of a casual fit on me, not in a baggy and ill-fitting way because in terms of up and down and side to side the fit was perfect, it just wasn't skin-tight and so perfect for winter when layering underneath might be required. I could probably shimmy into a Small but I liked the more jackety feel of this size and thanks to the general excellent cut and soft fabric there weren't any annoying flappy bits or wind noise issues.

A clue into how the jacket is constructed is in the slight colour difference between the panels. The front, shoulders and arms are Pertex Quantum Air, a shell fabric that is windproof, water resistant, DWR treated, air permeable and stretchy. The lighter coloured back panel is recycled Italian-milled fleece-backed polyester, which looks and feels just like your regular thick jersey material and it's there for mobility and breathability.

There's the standard three rear pockets with the openings of the outer pair angled down to help with reach-around fumbles. The bottoms of the pockets differ from most others in that they're pleated rather than sewn straight into the back of the jersey. This means expand out when contents are added, affording you a little more cargo space while also looking less bulgy. While they're good and capacious there's no extra zipped security pocket.

The rear half of the hem is steadfastly elasticated with a silicone gripper to keep the back from riding up.

There's a full-length double-ended YKK Vislon zipper with the upper tab sporting a silicone puller to help with tugging on when you're wearing gloves, a lightweight Lycra zip-dock stops chaffing on your chin and a decent baffle behind it to halt any cheeky wind whistling its way through.

The collar is an incredibly generous 80mm deep at the front, and it cambers down to 45mm in the rear to save neck rub and it's lined with the internal fluffy material for extra cosies. There's a hanging loop out back.

The arms are the perfect length, as Velocio has deliberately cut them long for on-the-bike fit, so any annoying wrist gap is completely banished. The inner half of the cuffs are a lighter weight Lycra that snugs them tight close to the wrist, even on my delicate pipe-cleaner wrists, to stop chilly draughts creeping up there and to make it easy to layer a longer glove over the top. Hurrah for this.

The Alpha Merino Air Jacket is a little bit heavier than a winter-weight jersey but lighter than a winter jacket – and warmer than both. The magic conjured up by Velocio to create this hides inside in the form of a grey and fluffy, oh so fluffy, so very very fluffy, Alpha Merino Wool insulation that lines the front, shoulders, neck and the full length of the insides of the arms.

Velocio says it provides thermoregulation for a broad range of temps without bulk – and I say it's an absolute game changer. Like cuddling a Wookiee this Alpha Merino Wool is a deep-pile fabric comprised of thousands of fluffy tufts that keep you incredibly warm without adding much weight.

It's a warm jacket that's best worn when the temperature drops towards single figures. I tend to run colder than most thanks to my spindly physique and with a thinner base layer would be happy to pull it on when things are hovering about the 10°C mark, particularly that UK damp grey 10°C that feels colder than that and sinks into your bones. Anything lower than that I'd just pull a heavier weight thermal layer on.

The first proper ride out was into a zero-degree day with added wind chill and straight into a headwind, and I felt absolutely none of it. The Pertex Quantum Air that fronts the jacket does an amazing job of blocking the wind – you really can't feel it cutting through. Even after several hours riding when you might be getting tired and a little susceptible to the chill, it was still doing a great job. This combines with the insulation provided by the Alpha Merino Wool, which protects every wind-facing part of your body, to make this an excellent jersey/jacket long sleeved top.

Its combination of low weight and excellent warmth means you can effectively remove one item of clothing from your winter layering and replace a base layer plus jersey plus jacket combo with just a base layer and Velocio Alpha Merino Air Jacket. This reduces the weight of your clothing and increases your manoeuvrability, as you're not wrapped up like the Michelin man. I was happy wearing this with a thick winter base layer underneath in those zero-degree days with added wind chill, a scenario that would usually have me gussied up with three layers of clothing, a neck warmer and a gilet on top for the home leg.

Its performance doesn't fall off a cliff later on in a ride when you might be getting tired and feeling the chill and it remains warm and cosy (thank you, wool!) throughout, negating the need to pop on another piece of clothing for the final bit home.

Value

The dhb Aeron Men's Deep Winter Softshell 2.0 comes in a fair bit cheaper at £140, and is a tight-fitting top that is comfy inside with a very soft thin-pile fleece layer. It was great at shrugging off winter wind and cold in the middle single-digit figures, and the DWR coating was able to shrug off brief showers. The only issue Shaun had was with the redesigned pockets.

At £230 the Santini Adapt Multi-Jacket is even pricier than the Velocio, but Mike thought it had similar attributes. It feels like a jersey, with a breathable insulation layer, but it has the performance of a winter jacket with the Santini having the very handy bonus of being incredibly waterproof, which might make the extra cost easier to swallow.

The 7mesh S2S Jersey LS Men's Butterscotch is another hybrid jersey/jacket that's perfect for the changeable conditions of the shoulder seasons but it does come with a chunky £280 price tag. It doesn't have the warming inner of the Velocio and Hollis thought it more suited to spring and autumn but you could extend that with a suitable base layer.

Conclusion

This is, no getting away from it, an expensive bit of kit, but you can justify it by arguing that it's effectively, very effectively, taking the place of two items of clothing and it makes winter and shoulder season riding almost an absolute pleasure, which you can't put a price on. It really is just lovely.

Verdict

The Velocio Alpha Merino Air Jacket is a very, very lovely jersey-weight jacket warm thing for cold and dry winter days