In my review for the excellent rain pants by Showers Pass I purchased this winter I alluded to the fact that this has been an incredibly rainy winter for me.
While pants were the last “big ticket” item I needed to stay waterproof on the bike, they weren’t the last item, and after one particularly cold and rainy ride where my fingers almost went completely numb, I decided I needed to do something about that.
The question was: are their gloves as good as their pants?
What’s in the package?
I ordered the gloves on Amazon but they actually shipped directly from Showers Pass. The gloves themselves were attached to a card stock hanger like they would have in a store, and a large sticker was included in the box.
Fit
These gloves are far more flexible and stretchy than any glove I have put on before; they don’t actually feel like what I’ve come to expect a cycling glove to feel like.
Inside there’s a soft white lining which feels very nice on bare skin.
Other than this liner there is no additional padding, which is either a great thing or a terrible thing depending on how you feel about glove padding on your palm.
When on your hands the gloves feel like they’re cut to the wrong lengths between fingers, especially between the pinky and ring finger, but once you’re actually holding your handlebars and riding this turns out to not be an issue at all because the gloves stretch so well.
The cuff on the gloves is high, which is plenty to tuck inside your jacket sleeves both to minimize drafts but also prevent water from getting inside the glove when it rains.
Features
Showers Pass says the gloves have three layers, with the knit exterior, a breathable and waterproof Artex middle layer, and a moisture-wicking and antibacterial knit interior lining.
These three layers try to find a happy medium amongst being durable, waterproof, and still comfortable.
And contrary to my experience with their rain pants, the Artex material inside these gloves is not at all noisy; I expected the gloves to make crinkle sounds when I moved my fingers, but they are silent like any normal glove.
Color offerings are minimal, with the standard black and two high visibility colors of a green/yellow and orange. While I wish they offered a few other colors, the focus on hi-vis colors is clearly because their target market is cyclists who ride in all weather and want to be visible.
In my opinion, the gloves look fine with both my rain jacket with black sleeves as well as my all-red jacket, but your opinion may differ (and that’s exactly why they still offer black!).
Testing
I tested these in all kinds of weather, rain or shine, in temperatures as high as 55 degrees Fahrenheit and as low as about 25 degrees.
I found that in colder temperatures they kept my hands much warmer than other gloves I’ve tried that would be considered lightweight winter gloves, but once you get much below freezing my hands still ended up getting cold and borderline numb as these gloves don’t have insulation the way heavier winter gloves would.
At temperatures in the higher end of my testing range I found my hands would sweat a little, but not nearly as much as the rest of me and my hands certainly weren’t uncomfortable or “pruney” when I took them out.
In the rain my hands stayed completely dry in these gloves. The long cuffs were wonderful as they stayed inside the sleeves of my jacket, not allowing any water to run inside the gloves.
After a rainy morning commute, I could shake the gloves dry, let them air out all day, and then on my ride home, the insides would still be dry and comfortable. I certainly can’t say that about other gloves I’ve used!
To further test how waterproof these gloves were in nasty conditions I put on a glove and ran it under the kitchen sink’s faucet at full blast for a little bit and even submerged my hand in a bowl full of water, yet water did not get inside to my fingers.
I have no doubt that even in the heaviest rainstorms my hands would not get wet (and if they did, I’d probably get wet in other ways before water penetrated the gloves).
One feature that’s often not talked about with winter gloves is the “nose-wiping” layer that’s typically on the thumbs of most gloves, which is much softer than the rest of the material on the glove and is designed for times when you have to wipe your nose or face (cold weather and active sinuses seem to go hand in hand!).
These gloves, unfortunately, do not have such a feature, however, the outer knit material is still soft enough that I did not mind when I had to wipe my nose or elsewhere on my face on extremely cold or wet days.
Overall, I really can’t find a bad thing to say about these gloves other than they’re more prone to get dirty as a lighter color, but I imagine that’d be the case for any glove with a light color palm.
I will note that when using these gloves, the outer knit layer absolutely loves getting stuck to velcro and other hook-and-loop material, so beware if you try to adjust jacket cuffs or put on your Road ID after putting these gloves on as it’s a pain to get the velcro unattached.
Summary
I’m happy to now have these gloves as part of my wet weather gear, and I highly recommend them to any all-weather commuter or cyclist who is looking to upgrade their own gear. You can find them on Amazon here.
