Alpinestars Ramjet Air | Unboxing

I just unpacked a pair of Alpinestars Ramjet Air along with Nucleon KR-H hip protectors, and these are my first impressions.

Why I switched

Up until now I have been riding in Course Drift aramid-reinforced jeans. They have worked well, they look like regular trousers and they have been easy to just pull on.

But a pair of jeans with reinforcement is still a pair of jeans. Ventilation is what it is when it gets hot, and the protection sits in a liner rather than in a garment that has been built as riding gear from the ground up.

The Ramjet Air is a completely different setup: a multi-layer construction with 450/600 denier panels and large sections of mesh material where air is supposed to flow through.

The first things I noticed

How much air passes straight through them. You can literally see through the mesh sections. After a season in jeans it feels almost a little strange to put on something this open.

That they are shaped to be worn on a motorcycle. The legs are pre-curved and there are stretch panels at the knees and at the back. Standing up they feel almost a little odd, but in a seated position they fall right into place.

The details. D-ring adjustment at the waist, zip and velcro at the ankles, a zip at the waist to connect to a jacket. Knee and shin protectors are included and sit in their own pockets.

The hip protectors

The Ramjet Air has pockets for hip protectors, but they are not included, which is why I bought the Nucleon KR-H separately. They are CE-certified at level 1 and considerably softer and thinner than I had expected.

They slide straight into the pockets and I can barely feel them once the pants are on. The hip is one of the first points to take impact in a crash, so for me it felt like an obvious addition.

My first impressions

So far this looks like a clear upgrade on both points I cared about: more airflow and more protection than my jeans.

But that is exactly what it is, an impression. What I actually want to know I can only find out by riding:

• How cool they are in real heat, both moving and in stationary traffic
• Whether the protectors stay where they should when I move around
• How they feel on longer trips
• Whether I miss the jeans' "can walk in anywhere" factor

I will be back with a proper review once I have a few thousand kilometres in them. Until then this is just a rundown of what you get in the box, and a fairly positive one at that.