These pants were launched on Kickstarter as “the best hot weather travel pants” you can wear and they have all sorts of “travel features” to boot. I wanted them for the look, I have a pair of light gray jeans that I love to wear in the summer, so I thought I would pick these up to replace those pants.
The pants are a blend with a cotton and a bunch of other things with a goal of making them durable, comfortable, breathable and all the other things you hear about travel focused pants. I’ve had these pants long enough now that I can speak a little more to how they feel to wear.
Unlike the other travel pants I have bought, they do a good job looking like normal pants. Only the side zippers for the vents, and the d-ring on the back will give them away. They dry fast enough when lightly rained on, but not when washed, and I can tell you that they are certainly cool to wear.
For the most part I am not overly wowed by the pants in any sense of what I normally expect from travel focused pants. They look fine, but not amazing. As a technical fabric they are ok, but not great. Except there is one exceptional thing about them: comfort.
The softness of the fabric coupled with the stretch makes for pants that I want to wear all day. These are more comfortable than my warm up pants I normally wear in the evenings. The Futureworks are also very stretchy and comfortable, but the fabric is more smooth than soft, which is what makes these pants feel more relaxing as they are more soft, than smooth.
I do have two large complaints about these pants:
- The d-ring on the back is stupid and will need to be cut off.
- The front pockets (yet again) are just too shallow and my iPhone doesn’t fit well. In addition to that, the stretchy nature of the pockets can cause some things to fall out, leaving the pockets feeling less secure then I would hope for.
Neither of these have proven a deal breaker, but they are rather annoying. I’m also not sure how helpful the side vents are in practice — I would love if these were omitted to keep the design cleaner on the sides of the pants.
Still, these are the pants I tend to wear at home now, because they are that comfortable. Now I wouldn’t just write about pants that are comfortable, but have all sorts of flaws. There’s one more odd thing going on here. These pants don’t seem to get very dirty, and the marketing doesn’t say anything about dirt resistance.
So while my all cotton pants in nearly the same color can’t make it half a day without getting some kind of dirt marks on them — I’ve been wearing these pants all day long for two weeks and they are only just now starting to look a little dirty at the hem of the pants.
Maybe I’ll wash them tonight, but I am going to enjoy the comfort until then. I wouldn’t peg these pants as being my top choice for travel, but you if you are looking for a pair of pants comparable to jeans, but far more comfortable, these should be near the top of your list. That is, whenever they become available for sale. (I hear March 2017.)