Capo Padrone Roubaix Bib tights first look review

Good quality winter bib tights are for me an absolutely essential piece of cycling kit. Particularly those that can keep you comfortably warm once it gets down to around 0 degrees Celsius.

I’m thin and don’t have much body fat, so the keeping warm part is critical to me. As much as I moan about winter, when the days are clear, it can be fantastic to be out riding in the cold, when you’re wearing the right kit.

A little while ago I was given a pair of Capo’s Padrone bib tights to review. The Padrone Tights are for cold weather riding and use a range of fabrics to give both wind protection but are also intended to enable you to breathe and not overheat. The Padrone range is Capo’s top of the line winter cycling apparel featuring high end materials, design and construction including compression, thermal regulation and comfort. A high end tight also comes with a high end price and these particular tights retail for £179 in the UK.

The Padrone tights feature a pad from EIT, whose pads I’ve previously found to be very good indeed and in my riding to date in these tights, the pad is another winner. It’s described as a 6 hour endurance pad and while I haven’t spent that much time in them in one go yet, I’ve been very pleased with the comfort.

The knee area features a Windtex triple layer fabric to provide wind protection, water resistance, thermal insulation and stretch recovery. Capo also use a thermal Roubaix Dream fabric that features a red sheen and is designed for keeping you warm in cold conditions. Riding down to 0 degrees, I’ve found them to perform very well indeed with respect to comfort, warmth and wind protection.

The Capo Padrone Roubaix bib tights are one of the best tights I’ve ever ridden for warmth and comfort – absolutely no question.

This particular pair of tights that I’ve been given to review were a pair that had been returned to a retailer by a customer as the stitching around the straps had split. It’s not a big defect but I can understand why the customer returned them. This hasn’t caused an issue for me to test and the problem hasn’t got worse.

However, one additional issue I’ve had is with the one of the zips on the bottom of the legs, which has now failed and won’t hold together when I’m wearing them. I’m wearing a size medium and only weigh 68kgs so I’m a slender medium. Now it could be that the original purchaser was unduly tough on the zips (or too large for a medium and over stressed the zip) and there’s no question that the compressions style fit on your calves makes the zips difficult to close. It’s still a bit disappointing for a zip to fail. I’ve ridden quite a lot in Capo clothing in the last year or two and this is the first time I’ve had a product quality issue, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt in this instance. As I know from this particular pair, they were replaced for the customer and I would hope that this is normal practice for any clothing brand where the customer has an issue but especially one making top end products.

It’s also annoying because I think these are terrific tights and I really like wearing them. I’m going to see if I can fix the zip issue as I want to keep riding in them. I’ve only ridden a few hundred kilometres in them, which is why this is a first look rather than a full review, but I would spend my own money on these tights (even given the zip malfunction), which is the ultimate test.