Richa ladies Inferno heated jacket in black

This is the ladies version of the Richa Inferno jacket. As it's name suggests it is shaped for ladies and should fit a wide range of people running from a S up to 4XL.

 

We are great advocates of heated clothing.

 

Traditionally, the way to keep warm on the bike was to wear as many jumpers as you could get on. These days it's more likely to be a fleece. Something with Merino wool perhaps.  Or an inner jacket filled with a hollow form fibre such as Primaloft or Thinsulate. Or, of course, a down-filled vest or jacket.

 

And all of these will do a job; that job being to trap, and hold onto, heat generated by the body. And that will work up to to a point, and may stave off the chills for a period of time. But the reality is that in most circumstances when you're riding the bike in cold weather you are not generating a huge amount of body heat. You are merely subsisting. And so eventually there will come a point in time when your body is not generating enough heat to make trapping it effective. In such circumstances it won't matter how good your insulating layers are. You just get colder and colder. And your only hope is that you will reach your destination before your body ceases functioning!

 

But when you wear heated clothing, this is not what happens. The heating elements in the jacket or vest are powered by the bike's 12 volt battery. And so the heating is constant, like a radiator in the house. Or the heater in the car . You find a temperature setting that you're happy with. And, in theory, two, three or four hours down the road, you will feel just as warm as you were when you first set out.

 

If you do start to feel a little cool, you can turn the temperature up a notch. If you start to overheat, you turn it down a tad.

 

The greatest obstacle to heated clothing, in our experience, is usually some form of prejudice. There's an attitude passed down from old-school bikers that suggests that heated clothing is not the done thing. The notion that you're not a real biker if you have to resort to such aides. It's macho nonsense, of course.

 

What we also hear a lot when we're talking about heated gear in the shop is that people think it's all very complicated and a bit of a hassle. Well once again that's nonsense. It's nothing more than an outdated mindset. A fear of the unknown. A kind of motorcycling technophobia that besets bikers of a certain vintage.

 

The truth is that all you need is a harness that attaches to the terminals of the bike's battery, but that's about it in terms of complexity.  Your average four-year old could do it. And if you've got an Optimate charge lead on the bike you often don't even need the harness.

 

The settings on a modern heated jackets will usually be controlled by a Bluetooth controller or sometimes by an App. on your phone, so there are no extra wires. Actually the Richa Inferno doesn't even need that. The heat can be adjusted from a button on the chest. And honestly if that's too much to cope with you really shouldn't be let loose on a bike. Modern heated clothing is the essence of simplicity.

 

Warm&Safe is the Rolls Royce of heated clothing. It's by far the warmest heated gear on the market. It's the most reliable. It's the lightest, the thinnest, the most comfortable. It's the most technically advanced, and with its separate, Bluetooth controller it's the easiest to use. If you do big miles, and ride in the very worst of weather, it's Warm&Safe you need. It's simply the best.

 

Until recently, we offered Macna's heated jackets. And they were fine. They did a job, and with the ability to control them through an App. on your phone, Macna's jackets were clever. But their weak point was that they just weren't particularly warm. 

 

The Richa Inferno jacket sits somewhere between the Warm&Safe and the Macna offerings.

 

The Inferno jacket generates some 78 Watts of heat. That's somewhat less than the Warm&Safe's 90 Watts, but considerably more than the 50 Watts of Macna's jackets.

 

The Richa jacket employs a rubber button on the chest. No wires. Nothing technical. If you can press a button, you won't have a problem. 

 

The Inferno comes with heating elements in the chest, in the back and in the collar. There's nothing in the sleeves. Indeed, the sleeves of the jacket can be unzipped, leaving you with just a vest, if that's how you want to ride.

 

And there's a logic here. In a tighter fitting jacket, there's sometimes not a lot of space for the sleeves of a heated jacket with all its wires and panels. And that will frequently be the case if you're wearing a leather jacket. But it's also a fact that keeping your arms warm is usually not the main priority. Keeping your core warm is the most important function of a heated jacket, and the Inferno will do that very adequately. All day long.

 

The arms on the Inferno are made from a thinnish, Neoprene-style material, so are less likely to be uncomfortable worn beneath an outer jacket. But keeping the sleeves attached makes the Inferno much more wearable off the bike as a kind of 'destination' jacket. On a cold day, a sleeveless vest is not normally what the doctor ordered for traipsing around town.

 

In other respects, the Inferno wears just like any mid-layer, and if not switched on will serve as one, providing a degree of insulation, and protecting against the oncoming wind.

 

You get lots of stretch in the jacket for comfort; particularly across the shoulders and up the flanks. There are two zip pockets on the outside for carrying essentials when you're away from the bike. You also get an internal pocket

 

We mentioned before that heated jackets do not require a lot of setting up. Well none is simpler than the Inferno. You merely connect a harness to the battery, and you’re done. If you have an Optimate on the bike, we can supply a connector to enable you to use that lead to power the jacket.

 

Now at the highest heat setting, the jacket generates 78 Watts of heat, equivalent to a draw of 6.4 Amps.  Now that will be more than fine on any bike of over, say, 400 cc, even at night with the lights on, although this does vary from bike to bike, so you might need to check the handbook. 

 

The Richa Inferno is not a top-end, premium-quality, max-power offering. It falls short of the Warm&Safe in a number of respects. It’s warmer than the Macna, but perhaps not as technically sophisticated, as there's no option for a Bluetooth controller.

 

The Inferno costs £200 all in. The Macna centre is about £20 more. The Warm&Safe is £350, but this includes a Bluetooth controller. So, in terms of value for money the Richa wins out. You get more Watts of heat per pound invested than you get with the other heated jackets we've talked about. 

 

If you are an all-year-round, long-distance commuter, out on the bike at six every morning, you've got to go with Warm&Safe. There's no point in cheaping out and hoping that the Richa is up to the job because if it's not you'll just end up throwing good money after bad. For the extra £150, just bite the bullet, and go for it.

 

But if you're more of a leisure rider wanting to take the chill out of your weekend excursions, if you're on a tighter budget, if your commute is a short one, or if you want to see how you feel about heated gear before you plunge deeper, then the Inferno might well be the one for you.

 

What you get for the money is impressive. It generates a lot of heat. It's super comfortable to wear. It's versatile and flexible. And it's easy-peasy to use; even for bikers of the 'old-school' variety.