Hikebound™ II Long Insulated Rain Jacket

[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] I bought two coats from Columbia and used them both in very windy, very rainy Ireland across two weeks of travel. My review is a direct comparison between this and the other coat I bought (the Venture Days Insulated Jacket). This coat is very warm and kept me dry for my entire trip. Other than doing it's basic job as a rain coat I found myself choosing the other coat over this because the velcro, waist cinch, and hood cinches are wildly annoying and poorly designed. The jacket closure is velcro instead of buttons. I would actually prefer this easier closure option over buttons but the jacket incorporates other features, like the strings for the waist cinch, that are of a material that the velcro also sticks to. Every time I take this jacket off or wear the coat unzipped the ties get stuck to the velcro. This brings me to the issue of the waist ties. They're all ratty from being grabbed by the velcro over and over again. There's nowhere to tuck them out of the way after cinching the waist so they just hang there and if you cinch it a lot then they just get longer, more in the way and inconvenient. Finally the hood. I can't figure out how to effectively cinch it. The weather in Ireland is very off and on so I didn't want to have the hood clinched all the time but when I did want to keep the wind from ripping the hood off it was too difficult to cinch and uncinch. TLDR; I'd skip this one, the Venture Days Insulated Jacket has a more thought-out design and is just as warm.