Spend any time at all researching outdoor gear, whether it's a new tent or a new rain jacket, and you'll quickly find yourself awash in a confusing array of jargon. Silnylon, polyurethane, X-Pac, cuben fiber, ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE)—what are these things?
What none of them are is perfect. Each has its own weight, cost, benefits, and drawbacks. But there is a fabric that's perfect for you and your particular use case. We put this guide together to help you strip away the marketing and better understand what each fabric does, what it's best used for, and where it struggles.
Outdoor Fabric Types
Let's start by breaking this down into the various fibers and materials used in outdoor gear. We'll skip some of the older things, like waxed canvas, since most people are familiar with it. Here are the most commonly used fabrics in the outdoor industry today.
What's the Difference Between Dyneema and Cuben Fiber? AccordionItemContainerButton LargeChevron This causes an endless amount of confusion in online backpacking forums, but there is no difference. They are the same thing. Dyneema Composite Fabric (DCF) used to be called cuben fiber (and also sometimes “non-woven Dyneema”). It was originally developed to make sails for racing yachts (where it's still used, in addition to dozens of other uses). The company that first brought it to market was called Cubic Tech, which was then acquired by a Dutch company, Koninklijke DSM, which renamed cuben fiber “Dyneema Composite Fabric.” (Koninklijke was then bought by the Swiss company Firmenich AG and the acronym DSM now refers to the company DSM-Firmenich AG.)
Silnylon
The oldest of the bunch, this term refers to silicone-coated ripstop nylon. This versatile fabric is widely used in tents, some (nonbreathable) rain gear, stuff sacks, and many other pieces of gear. Its strengths are durability, high tear strength, and waterproofing. The downside to nylon is that it absorbs water—even, unfortunately, when coated with silicone. Hence the DWR treatments, but even with those, at some point nylon will wet out and start absorbing water. This is why your tent's rainfly sags when it gets soaked. Nylon is also slow to dry.
Polyester
This is another very versatile, widely used fabric with one huge advantage over nylon: It doesn't absorb nearly as much water. This means it doesn't sag as much. This is particularly important in ultralight backpacking tents that pitch with trekking poles. Sag isn't just annoying, it's a loss of structural integrity and can collapse your tent. The downside to polyester is that it's not as strong as silnylon in many cases (it especially tends to tear), and possibly not as durable over the long run. That said, I personally find this downside to be overstated. I have two tents with polyester rain flies that have help up well over the course of nearly 20 years of use.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
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