GORE-TEX vs Other Waterproof Membranes

The comparison people want — which membrane is best — cannot be answered from published data, and part of the reason is that the things being compared are not the same kind of thing.

A membrane is a thin sheet of engineered polymer made separately and bonded to fabric. A coating is a liquid applied to the fabric that then forms the barrier; Rab's own technical explanation draws exactly that line. A laminate is the bonded stack of fabric layers. A fabric technology is a brand's name for a package of those components. And a performance standard is a testing regime a fabric must pass, which may be applied to fabrics from several suppliers.

Those distinctions are not pedantry. Comparing GORE-TEX with H2No, for instance, is comparing a licensed platform built around a membrane Gore manufactures with a testing standard Patagonia applies to laminates it buys. There is no shared axis on which to place them.

The most useful comparison available is a comparison of disclosure — what each maker is willing to state about its own barrier. That at least is verifiable.

Sympatex publishes the most complete description: a non-porous membrane of billions of hydrophilic molecules, moving moisture by a physio-chemical process rather than through pores. Pertex publishes both of the main mechanisms under one brand name — a solid non-porous membrane, and a hydrophobic microporous one with holes far smaller than a water droplet — and describes Shield Air separately as an electrospun nanofibre web with interconnected pores that is air permeable. eVent's membranes are named as expanded PTFE with millions of pores.

Gore names its newer membrane as expanded polyethylene, describing it as PFC-free, without characterising its pore structure on that page. The North Face names a nanospun polyurethane fibre structure for FUTURELIGHT and the nanospinning process behind it, without classifying the result. Helly Hansen describes HELLY TECH as its own system using a microporous membrane, without naming the polymer.

Then the gaps. Columbia's Omni-Tech material describes a multilayer construction without stating whether the barrier is a membrane or a coating — notable because Columbia does call OutDry Extreme a membrane. Patagonia's H2No is a standard rather than a structure. We record both as not publicly specified rather than sorting them into a category they have not claimed.

One documented difference stands out, and it is not about the polymer. Gore states that laminates and tapes alone do not make apparel waterproof: quality standards for constructing the garment are also required. Its membrane is laminated to textiles in 3L, 2L and other combinations, and Gore manufactures its own seam tapes and regulates the taping process.

That is why garment construction is comparatively consistent across the many brands licensing the platform, and it is a real thing a buyer is paying for — closer to a certification scheme than to a fabric purchase. Alternatives may impose equally strict garment requirements, but most do not publish them in comparable detail, so we cannot claim parity or a deficit either way.

The second thing to know is a limit on the promise. Gore's own FAQ states that not all GORE-TEX products are waterproof: only those carrying the black diamond label with the GUARANTEED TO KEEP YOU DRY promise are described as durably waterproof, windproof and breathable, while WINDSTOPPER products carry a white diamond and are presented as windproof garments suited to a chance of showers. Recognising the family name is not enough; the label variant is the information.

Every cross-brand comparison table circulating online has the same defect: it places figures side by side that were produced by different, sometimes unnamed, methods.

The standards are explicit about this. ISO 15496 states its cup result cannot be used to classify vapour resistance against physiological values, which rules out the conversions that such tables depend on. Pertex adds a further caveat for air-permeable fabrics, noting that standard vapour-transmission tests understate them — so even an honest number can mislead across categories.

The asymmetry is stark in our own records. Gore publishes no hydrostatic-head figure and argues the test is not relevant to real life, reporting that EMPA found garments made from fabrics rated below 120 mm stayed fully waterproof under simulated rainfall. Rab publishes 20,000 mm and 20,000 g/m²/24 h for one shell without naming a method; Montane publishes an RET below 3.5 for another, also without naming one. Ranking those disclosures against each other would produce a table that measured candour, not performance.

Our reading of the evidence: the platform name is a moderately useful signal and a poor decision criterion.

It is useful because some platforms carry garment-level requirements, and because a named, documented barrier is a better starting point than an unnamed one. A jacket whose maker will not say what the barrier is has told you something.

It is a poor criterion because the same platform appears in garments of very different quality — the fittings, the hood, the seam sealing and the fabric weight are chosen by the garment brand, not the membrane maker — and because no comparable performance data exists between platforms. Two jackets sharing a membrane can differ far more from each other than two comparable jackets using different membranes.

The practical order, then: decide the construction and fittings you need, shortlist garments that have them, and treat the platform name as a tiebreaker rather than a starting filter.

The Arc'teryx Beta is a GORE-TEX garment for which no hydrostatic-head figure is published, because Gore's garment pages do not publish one. The Patagonia Torrentshell 3L carries H2No, and Patagonia publishes no figure for that garment either — the 20,000 mm initial and 10,000 mm post-wash thresholds on its H2No page describe the standard, not the jacket.

The Rab Downpour and Downpour Eco use Rab's own fabric packages, and where Rab publishes figures we record them together with the fact that no test method is named. Together these records make the point better than any comparison table: three respected shells, three different disclosure regimes, and no shared basis for ranking their barriers.