How much rain (realistically) could a packaway rain jacket take?

Both jackets are nylon shell with a waterproof coating. Which will keep the rain out but is reliant on the coating being intact (not worn out, etc.). By this I mean it has no physical barrier. Goretex (for example) is combination of a physicla waterproof barrier (the Goretex layer) and a chemical coating to prevent the moisture blocking the "pores". Essentially this is what your paying for.

You will likely need to reproof it occasionally.

That said, it should be adequate for emergency use. The first coat states how waterproof it is:

Waterproof coating (2000mm)

the second states:

waterproof to 5000mm material

The mm value is it's rating from a hydrostatic head test:

Hydrostatic Head is the measure of how water resistant your tent(Jacket) material is.

It’s measures how tall a column of water the fabric can hold before water starts to seep through the weave.

A Hydrostatic Head of 5000mm means that a tent fabric could hold column of water 5000mm.

5000mm of water exerts more pressure on the fabric than a 3000mm of water, so a more accurate description of Hydrostatic Head is the measure of water pressure equivalent to 5000mm of water.

The higher the Hydrostatic Head value, the more water resistant a fabric is, and the more water pressure it can withstand before it leaks.

source

to give you an idea of the comparision GoreTex has a minimum hydorstatic head test rating of 20,000mm (when new). So that jacket is 10x less waterproof than GoreTex.

Is this an issue? For occasional use in normal conditions, no. If your planing on hiking up a Scotish Munroe in autumn (literally the wettest place on earth from my experience), I would want something better.

posted over 8 years ago

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