Shopping for waterproof raincoats.

I've seen people swear by GORE-TEX like it's some kind of rainwear miracle. Yes, I know, in its day it was a fabric revolution. Waterproof and breathable, ooooooh. Never been done before, blah blah blah.

Please. That was 1976, people. You're still going all googly-eyed over expanded Teflon laminate membranes? Well, that's sad! Plenty of new waterproof/breathable options are out on the shelves these days.

To see if any of these newer fabrics could shatter the GORE-TEX monolith, I rounded up seven different raincoats with prices ranging from $5.00 to $199.99 and put them to the test. So, the next time you need a slicker, should you shell out for the often-pricier GORE-TEX, or can you count on something cheaper to keep the rain out?

The Sink Test
One of Gore's big selling points (the company that makes GORE-TEX is called W.L. Gore and Associates, but we'll just call them Gore if that's OK with you) is its "Guaranteed To Keep You Dry" pledge, which promises that no liquid will ever, under any circumstances, penetrate the GORE-TEX membrane. This includes rain, to the point of soppage, and also prolonged contact with water—like if you lean against a soaking-wet park bench, or lie back in a mud puddle. To test this claim, I filled up my sink and then fully submerged one sleeve of the raincoat, making a "U" at its elbow to form a sleeve-tunnel. I held the sleeve under for several minutes, crinkling it up and stretching it at the seams, to see if any wetness would eventually penetrate. My GORE-TEX entrant (the L.L. Bean Double-L Rain Jacket) indeed held fast, admitting not a droplet.

OK, good job. But when I tried this same test with my six other brand new non-GORE-TEX raincoats (one each from The North Face, Marmot, Columbia, Lowe Alpine, and Pearl Izumi, with a $5 poncho thrown in for good measure), every single one performed equally well. Not one let in any dampness whatsoever. When a fabric doesn't let in water even when submerged for several minutes, that's waterproof enough for me, friend.

Of course, Gore would say that GORE-TEX is highly durable, and that these other fabrics lose waterproofosity over time, from dirt and wear. So, I also tried the sink test on my girlfriend's old North Face raincoat, which is a few years aged and has made it to Kashmir and back, with plenty of dirt and wear along the way. Guess what! This jacket passed the sink test with flying colors, just like all the others. Sorry, Gore.

In fact, I had to haul out my 15-year-old, beaten-up REI raincoat to find a leak of any kind. It let in water at the seams, where its ancient seam tape had broken down ("delammed," as they say in the biz, meaning delaminated) and no longer protected the stitch holes. Here's where Gore may have an argument: Gore requires very high standards of craftsmanship—wide and strong seam tape, shoulder stitching that holds up to the wear of backpack straps, and so on—before they'll license their name for a garment. This means when you see their logo you can count on high-quality construction. But remember, we're talking about stuff like seam tape here—not about a superior fabric, which is what most people seem to think they're getting when they buy GORE-TEX. The fact is that all these fabrics were 100 percent waterproof, from North Face's Hyvent to Columbia's Omni-Tech to the cheap plastic of the $5 poncho.

The Jogging-in-My-Shower Test
For this test, I donned a bathing suit and a gray T-shirt (water shows up really well on it) and tried out each raincoat (hood up, zipper zipped, flaps flapped) while jogging in my shower, and frequently spinning around. The idea was to replicate hiking in a rainstorm, testing both waterproofosity and breathability. The result was that I slipped and nearly killed myself, and also that I caught a cold after showering for two hours straight. Additionally, I learned a few things about the raincoats.

For one, I do not like mesh pockets—I want my pockets to be solid, waterproof material like the rest of the coat. If you unzip mesh pockets to get something out of them, as I did in the shower, rain will pour right through to your clothes. That is moronic. I'd rather have rain collect in the pockets than next to my skin. Yet only the GORE-TEX L.L. Bean coat and the Lowe Alpine Atom Jacket had solid pockets.

Second, I do not like pit zips. Several of these coats have zippers at the armpits, which can be unzipped when it's dry outside for better ventilation. That's great, when it's dry … and I don't need a raincoat at all! When it's raining, pit zips are an avenue for leaks. Both the Lowe Alpine coat and the Marmot PreCip Jacket let in water through their pit zips, even when the pit zips were zipped.