Full zip rain pants

A lot of full-side-zip pants feature bulky and uncomfortable closure mechanisms (e.g., snaps, fat zipper pulls, etc) right at the iliac crest hip bone which are horrible under a pack hip belt. If you like what you have, I’d say stick with it. Ignore this caveat if you don’t use a snug hip belt.

If you can get 10 years’ use out of them and are happy with the performance, it’s hard to think of anything that could be better in terms of price/performance ratio, except PreCip full zip pants on sale. ;)

Yep, bought another pair. I’ll use the old ones for neighborhood walks in crappy weather!

The Montbell “Storm Cruiser Full Zip Pants” might fit your needs. These pants are only available on their Japan website. They do ship internationally. The pants are made of 3-layer Gore-Tex with a 20D outer fabric. They’re very light for a 3-layer waterproof construction.

I’m not really sure how you can effectively vent with these above pants. I did order them and promptly returned them as they were too baggy fitting for my taste. I use the Mountain Equipment Saltoro Pant which has a nice streamlined fit. The zippers don’t go all the way to the waist, so you can pull the top zipper down to vent.