KUHL Renegade Cargo Convertible Review

If you are looking to carry as little as possible without compromising safety or comfort, convertible pants - pants that have zippers that allow you to remove the bottom half of the legs to wear them as shorts - are a great option. They only weigh slightly more than regular hiking pants and save you from carrying an extra piece of clothing in your pack. The Renegade Cargo Convertible also features double cargo pockets that can hold snacks, a phone, a map, lip balm, and whatever other items you want close at hand while hiking. If versatility is one of your priorities, you should consider these pants.

Performance Comparison

Comfort and Mobility

With their gusseted crotch and articulated knees, the Renegade Cargo Convertible offers a more spacious fit than the handful of slim or straight-legged pants in this review. The waist and pelvis region also fit comfortably, without any hint of constriction. We were also pleasantly surprised by how soft the nylon fabric felt against skin.

The one strike against these pants in the comfort metric is that the convertible zipper seam, which encompasses the lower thigh, creates an obvious rub point against the skin as the wearer moves their legs. This situation is not uncommon for convertible pants, but we still think it detracts from the overall comfort.

Venting and Breathability

To facilitate ventilation, this model comes with mesh liners in both its two front handwarmer pockets, as well as the two rear pockets. Though it does not have mesh vents in the two cargo pockets on the side of each leg, the slightly looser fit made us feel cooler when the temperatures rose.

Of course, as a convertible model, these pants also feature the ultimate in breathability: the ability to remove the lower legs. Without undergoing the full conversion, though, we found that we could unzip the convertible zippers partway for added ventilation and that we could also wholly unzip the vertical lower leg zippers, designed to make it easy to take off the pants while still wearing boots or shoes. However, the predominantly nylon fabric was not super light or breathable in our testing.

Versatility and Style

These pants excel at versatility. No pant in this review is as ideally suited for as many kinds of situations as the Renegade Cargo Convertible, and thus they receive a perfect score. While hiking or backpacking, these pants set you up for success with plenty of pockets for storing all of your necessities as well as the option to convert them into shorts. With their UPF 50 rating, they will protect you from high altitude sun, and their tight nylon weave and DWR coating will also keep you dry in a gentle rain. We also found them to be durable enough for heavy outdoor work, and we wore them with success many nights of camping in the dirt. They look good enough to wear around town as well.

Weather Resistance

In our shower testing, these pants were effective enough at repelling a light spray for a short period, but it seemed as if much of the DWR coating had worn off during our three-month test period. Low-wear areas like the lower legs were doing a pretty good job of helping the water runoff without soaking in, but in the thighs and butt, water absorption started taking place almost immediately.

The good news is that the 95% Duralux nylon didn't absorb very much water. This low absorption meant they dried out fairly quickly after being hung up to dry. By no means did this pant match the performance of models in the top tier of this review, but we wouldn't call their performance a distinct liability.

Features

This pant is the highest performer when it came to features, and ended up with a nearly perfect score. Not only did it have more features than any other model, but we were pleased to discover that they performed as advertised.

We have already mentioned most of the features included on this pant, including the vertical zippers at the bottom of the pant that allow it to fit over a pair of boots or shoes, and the snap buttons on the cuffs that will enable you to keep them closed with the zippers open for ventilation.

The dual cargo pockets, found on each side of the leg, each have different compartments within them to aid in organization and to keep small items from getting jostled. The only thing keeping this pant from receiving a perfect 10 is the fact that the front snap button sometimes came undone on us during activity. Where other KUHL pants have the "French flap" interior button that helps the waist fit well, this pant lacks that feature which made it easier for the snap to come undone.

Value

These pants are more expensive than many of the hiking pants that we have reviewed, but they are certainly not at the top. A solid pair of hiking pants and shorts typically cost at least that much, so we believe that this is a pretty good value.

Conclusion

The KUHL Renegade Cargo Convertible pants are the best-suited pants for nearly any sort of outdoor adventure. We think they are especially intriguing for thru-hikers or backpackers who want to carry the minimum in clothing. They also had the best combination of useful features but weren't one of the most comfortable pairs that we tried on. Overall these were among the highest scorers in our review and are a pant we would recommend to most people.