SEALSKINZ Waterproof All Weather Cycle Glove

Product Information

The most challenging situation for the best cycling gloves is cold rain. No matter what a brand might say, there is no such thing as a waterproof glove. There are gloves with waterproof membranes but those gloves still aren't waterproof. If you ride in cold rain for more than a couple of hours you will have wet and freezing hands. The other useful thing to remember is that you should bring more than one pair of gloves. In some ways, this is the counter to my first piece of advice. Not everyone is as cold as me and having another option solves that challenge. It's not always about options though, changing gloves mid-ride is the only way to manage a long winter ride if it's raining. I promise you will not mind the extra bulk of a second set of gloves when you change into them. Is there such a thing as waterproof gloves? The answer depends on the timeframe we are talking about. A good pair of gloves with a waterproof membrane, or even a DWR coating, will keep your hands dry for a while. Ride long enough though and they all saturate. The only option that is actually waterproof is a shell. Sportful makes a shell I included here but there are some others out there. They are truly waterproof but they also require another glove for warmth and that second glove will eventually get wet also. When you leave the house on a bitterly cold day, you might make it through a ride with only a single pair of gloves. If you leave the house and it's raining you will need a change of gloves if you ride longer than about three hours. How many winter gloves do you need? There is no denying the high price tag that the Rapha Pro Team Winter Gloves command, more than both the other 'elite' brands winter offerings, such as the Castelli Perfetto RoS gloves. However, if you want the perfect winter cycling glove for racing, then these are spot on.

Despite all the competition, the Castelli Diluvio gloves stand out from the crowd of neoprene gloves in a few ways. The biggest differentiator is that there is touchscreen compatibility on the thumb and forefinger. It doesn't work great but given that other options have nothing, this is a big upgrade. Castelli has also really nailed the fit between the thumb and first finger where many of these gloves are unreasonably tight. The abundance of silicone on the palm is also a nice feature that makes grabbing the controls feel great.

Every Sportful glove I've ever tried feels amazing gripping the bars. It was exactly that feeling, almost like a surgical glove, that almost got the Sportful Fiandre Light gloves on this list. In the end, they aren't quite warm enough but Sportful does have another option that's just as grippy. The Eddie Bauer Guide Pro Smart heated gloves aren't a cycling specific pair. Don't let that dissuade you though. The Guide Pro Smart heated glove is a serious deep winter option even without the heating elements so there's a good amount of padding on your hand anyway. I do wonder if these were designed by cyclists if someone might have tried to slim them down a bit but it’s not a terrible trade off given the use. More importantly, these gloves work better than any other set of heated gloves I've tested. For how unique the experience is though, it mostly disappears. The app is set and forget and everything just works seamlessly to add heat all the way to the end of the fingers. It would be great to have the same tech in a less bulky glove but if you need help to stay warm these are the best heated gloves I've tried. The only thing you need to be careful of is keeping them clean as you can’t toss them in the washer. At a certain point it becomes too cold to effectively warm up. You can't generate enough body heat either because you are riding slower, because your body has trouble keeping extremities warm, or just because it's too cold. When that happens, it's time to turn to a heated glove; the question is which one?

Knit gloves are a staple of winter riding in the cold and wet and there is a somewhat endless range of choices for them. Lots of companies make them and I've yet to find a particular advantage to one brand. The Giro Xnetic H20 gets the nod because they have a high visibility colour and some of the best pricing. There are lovers of these style gloves that manage to make them work through an entire winter. I run cold though and I find that in the US Pacific Northwest, these are strictly an option for milder days.Riding on wet or even icy roads can be treacherous, so being completely in control of your bike is more essential than ever. Even holding on to the handlebars in the wet can be difficult, particularly if you're using smooth bar tape. We loved the minimal padding on these, and found them the perfect winter cycling glove for it's excellent grip in all weather. with zero dexterity compromises, including both navigating a touch screen and unwrapping a mid ride energy bar. They're certainly a performance pair and we found them to be the best winter cycling glove to pull on for winter league racing. Put the Sealskinz gloves into the highest heat setting and your hands will be ready to handle whatever riding you want them to. The heat radiates down the fingers almost all the way to the tips. If it's not bitterly cold, you will have sweaty hands in not much time. One of the most popular fabrics for this is Gore's Windstopper fabric, or Infinium as it's also known as. It's used in lots of the best winter cycling gloves across many brands aside from Gore itself. There are other options made by different manufactures too that can work just as well.

The first thing I tend to tell people about finding the right winter cycling gloves is to go warmer than you think you need. If you are someone who tends to run warm and constantly has warm hands, you probably know this and you can choose appropriately. For everyone else, go warmer. Your hands sit without moving much for long periods of time and at least for me, when it's cold my hands are cold. I don't think I've ever been on a long cold ride and felt like my hands were too warm. In milder weather it's not actually necessary to have completely waterproof gloves. Your skin is waterproof after all, so as long as you have gloves that keep your hands warm, they don't necessarily need to keep you dry. Options such as a wet weather neoprene glove can work well in cool not cold conditions. They're often basic in style, with no padding or additional features, such as cuff adjustment. Instead they use a blend of fabrics that keep the weight down and dexterity levels up while still offering protection against the elements. Keeping out the wind is crucial: fabrics such as Gore Windstopper and similar will do this, and feature on the best winter cycling gloves,as well as offering water repellence and breathability. The inner padding and/or membrane varies from glove to glove and on what sort of temperature the glove is aimed at, whether deep winter or chilly and wet. However, I did find that while the triple layers made for a reasonably warm glove, they felt slightly bulky on my hands. That was not a problem when just holding onto the handlebars, but when performing additional, more detailed movements such as changing gear there was not as much flexibility as I would have liked. It was more of an issue when riding off-road, where the terrain can be more changeable, than on-road.

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As I continued to look for an elegant solution to keeping your hands warm in cold rain, new products came to market. Both Sportful and Assos have waterproof shell gloves and they've changed the game a bit. Unfortunately neither solution is actually waterproof but they have a couple of advantages that make it all work anyway. When I took these out to test, I initially thought I'd run them on low for as long as they'd last. The first ride, that's what I did. The battery held out for the promised five hours but the heat was so low it was pretty much imperceptible compared to the warmth of the glove.