Tag: Gloves

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Clothing/Protection Gear Reviews

HeatPerformance Maximum Heated Motorcycle Gloves Review

No one likes cold hands and fingers when riding a motorbike. Sure, some will pack their bikes away for the winter, but they can miss out on some beautiful sunny winter days. Some make do with heated grips, which do help but can still leave your fingers and back of your hands cold.  Some fit muffs on their handlebars, which although effective rarely fit on a faired bike. One of the best solutions is heated motorcycle gloves – decent protective gloves with an integrated electric heating mesh sewed inside.

Heated Motorcycle Gloves Tested

Loch Tay, Scotland, Winter Ride
Bit nippy in Scotland, definitely heated gloves weather

Dutch firm HeatPerformance produces many such heated gloves for a variety of sporting activities, skiing, hiking, outdoor work and of course heated gloves for motorcycles. HeatPerformance put forward their gloves for review, which now we are in Scotland we can most definitely test out.

HeatPerformance glovesThe HeatPerformance Maximum heated motorcycle gloves are powered from two 7.2V 2600mAh Li-Po batteries, which slot into the cuff of each glove. The gloves have 3 heat settings, which are quoted to give you between 2.5 and 8 hours of heat depending on setting and charge within 4 hours. The gloves retail for £150 which includes one pair of batteries and a charger. A spare/replacement set of batteries costs £40.

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Gear Reviews

Alpinestars SP-2 V2 Gloves Review

Apparently, summer is now upon us, biking season has begun (did it ever stop?!) and I find myself hanging up my textiles and digging out my leather summer gear. Well, on some days when it’s not pissing down with rain, got to love the great British summer. Nonetheless, I found my old Alpinestars GP-Plus gloves were looking a bit worse for wear and in dire need of replacement. Whereas the GP-Plus and GP-Pro ranges are very race orientated, this time I was after a more general summer glove that didn’t break the bank. I’ve always been a fan of the Alpinestars brand, having always found them good quality, robust and have protected me well in previous offs. Their SP-2 V2 gloves appeared to fit the bill well and actually graced my own credit card, no review freebies this time. Read on to hear my verdict.

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Gear Reviews

Visorcat Visor Cleaning Glove Gadget Review

Visorcat - 5One of a biker’s biggest bug bears when bombing around the countryside is the constant splatter of bugs. Midges, flies, wasps, mozzers and other bugs, all just want to commit suicide on your shiny new visor. Visibility soon sucks, and when you make the mistake of trying to wipe that big bug mess  from between your eyes, you inevitably spread a huge smear of insect entrails hindering vision even more… If you’re the sort to prepare, you may have  a rag and some squirty stuff under your seat for when you finally take a break, otherwise you just grin and bear riding most of the day with naff visibility.

This is where Visorcat comes in. A crafty gadget that straps to your left glove, sporting a soft sponge and rubber squeegee to let you clean your visor on the go. Sorted! Well, the lovely people at Visorcat sent in one for review, so read on to find out my verdict on whether it shapes up to be gadget or gimmick.

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Clothing/Protection Gear Reviews

New Improved Gerbing Heated Gloves XR12 for 2013/2014

Gerbing’s have taken their XR12 heated gloves for motorcycles and revamped and improved them for 2013/2014. Now with a number of key differences and tweaks that greatly improve them compared to the prior XR12 iteration. After recently sending my old Gerbing heated gloves back for repair (again), I received this new iteration as my replacement. Thankfully, a very swift turnaround on warranty from Gerbing, so I only suffered cold hands for a couple of days.

Gerbing Heated Gloves XR12 Review

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Clothing/Protection

Winter Riding – Tackling Cold Hands

Cold weather motorcycle gearSummer is well and truly over and now there’s a good chance you fall into one of two camps. You either:

  1. Bike for leisure, avoid riding in the cold and wet and place your bike into hibernation until next year
  2. You’re a year-round biker, by choice or necessity and just gear up to stay warm and fend off the elements

If you fall into this latter group, then you will be all too familiar with cold hands and numb fingers. Never underestimate the impact of wind chill, it maybe 5°C outside, but at 60 mph wind chill brings that down to -11°C! (wind chill chart) Once your fingers are numb, it becomes painful, distracting and drastically affects your riding for the worse. Even the best winter gloves won’t protect you for long against that cold and so here I present a few cold weather motorcycle gear options to tackle cold hands.

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Clothing/Protection Gear Reviews

Alpinestars Gloves – Jet Road Gore-Tex Review

Alpinestars Gloves Motorcycle Jet RoadI picked these Jet Road Gore-Tex Alpinestars gloves up second-hand after being thoroughly disappointed with my Hein Gericke Pathan gloves. I opted for them based on their widespread regard on various motorcycle forums and due to their abundance on eBay cheap. As such, I found this pair in almost new condition for £30, a bargain considering they sell new for over £100.

The Alpinestars gloves are made from Gore-tex, so totally waterproof. On top of this is, there are sections of leather and a decent amount of knuckle protection. There are two Velcro straps per glove one around the wrist under a flap and one on the cuff. I found the cuff a bit on the short side and didn’t go over my jacket very well, thus letting in a draft and water. My arms are quite long though. These gloves aren’t however the latest iteration, later versions appear to resolve this with an extended storm cuff.

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Clothing/Protection

Feck My Fingers Are Numb

Gerbing Heated Gloves XR12 Hyrbid Sod’s law. The weather turns cold again and my lovely Gerbing heated gloves (XR12 Hybrid) have packed up again. 🙁

As great as they are, I’m really beginning to have doubts about their reliability. Bought them new in November (4 months ago). Two months in, one controller had an intermittent connection fault. Last week the spare controller I purchased, has started exhibiting the same problem. One hand keeps cutting in and out at random.

I dig out the replacement controller I was sent, but this one randomly won’t turn on, just flashes blue when you press the button. Apparently this means it’s getting a feed of less than 11V from the battery. OK, but why then does the other controller still turn on? And why does it start doing this after a long run and momentarily stopped for a refuel?

So I persisted with that for a week, but now my left-hand glove won’t heat up at all. From neither controller nor either wire on each. 🙁

Have sent the whole lot back for replacement. But in the meantime, it’s barely above freezing out there, I’ve reverted to my Alpinestar Jet Road gloves with woolly gloves underneath and still getting super cold hands and numb fingers after 5-10 mins on the road. I’m hoping they won’t take too long to send out replacements, they turned the last controller around in a couple of days. However, I’ve lost a lot of confidence in the Gerbing’s. Don’t get me wrong, they’re great when they work, but when you’re paying top dollar, they need to work for more than a couple of months…

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Clothing/Protection

New Heated Gloves Controller Arrived

New Heated Glove ControllerAt last, my new Gerbings Junior Controller has arrived. After freezing my fingers off last week, this couldn’t come sooner. After plugging it all in, everything was working again, definitely confirming it was the old controller/wiring that was at fault.

I’ll be sending the old one back for replacement (as it has a 3-year warranty), but this will keep me warm in the meantime. A spare will be useful if I have problems again in the future.

Categories
Clothing/Protection Gear Reviews

Gerbing Heated Gloves XR12 Hybrid Review

Gerbing Heated Gloves XR12 Hybrid - close upI know I recently picked up some decent Alpinestars Goretex gloves but have still been suffering from cold hands, but I saw these heated gloves for motorcycles on special offer through BuyaPowa. They operate in a Groupon kind of way, where the more buyers who sign up for the deal, the cheaper the deal gets. Either way, I managed to get these Gerbing Heated Gloves for the super price of £100, that’s a good £60 off. They took a while to turn up, after the deal closed, but are definitely worth the wait.

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Clothing/Protection Gear Reviews

Hein Gericke Pathan Evo Gloves Review

Hein Gericke Pathan Gloves palmsThese were the first pair of gloves I bought, having picked them up in the lengthy summer sale at Hein Gericke, whilst I was still learning. As you know, Hein Gericke UK went into administration in July, but have since been rescued by the German arm of the company and so many of their shops still remain. In choosing these gloves, I was looking for a good all round glove, and had thought an all year round glove would be viable. Oh how wrong I was.

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