Blazewear X1 electrically heated glove liners

[roubaixtuesday]

https://www.blazewear.com/heated-gloves/x1-liners.html

I’ve just acquired a pair of these. At £100, they are not cheap, to put it mildly. However, I suffer from Raynauds, and once cold my hands rapidly go completely numb and can cause me really extreme pain. When “gone” almost nothing short of being in a heated room brings my hands back to life.

The gloves are powered by a pair of lithium batteries each which sit in a zipped compartment in the cuff. The heating element seems to be a single wire which runs round all the fingers and thumb. A touch switch on the cuff gives three power settings, apparently 1.5 – 6hrs run time, though I’ve not tested that. The charger charges both sets of batteries simultaneously.

The gloves themselves seem to be really high quality with very long cuffs for the battery. Even without the heating on, they provide excellent thermal insulation when used inside a wind/waterproof outer. They are quite thick compared to other liner gloves I’ve used, so you’d need a size larger outers than you normally use (unless like me, you already wear the largest gloves available anyway…), and ideally an outer with a very long cuff so the batter compartment easily fits inside the outer.

So, how well do they work?

I’ve tested them with one switched on and the other off, and also with the gloves on different power settings on each hand for comparison.

In relatively mild weather (5-10C) the low setting and a thin pair of outers resulted in the hand with the heating warm, whilst my other unheated hand was cold, but not extremely.

In really bad conditions: about zero, driving snow, and going very slowly (I find worst of all is when you’re not putting much effort in and heart rate drops) inside crab claw gloves, they were effective at both low and medium settings. I’d expect these conditions would have resulted in total agony without any heating.

The high setting seems pretty much superfluous, though perhaps useful in extremis.

Concerns: I’m a bit sceptical as to durability; I think my daily cycling commute with pressure always on the hands could result in early failure of the heating element. Obviously there’s the issue of battery longevity, though they’ll flog you a replacement set at £30. But my biggest concern would be how they’d cope with a proper soaking if out for a long ride in the rain.

Overall, so far so good, and I’m very pleased to have them.

[roubaixtuesday]

Well, they were great while they lasted, but one of the heating elements failed after just a few weeks.

Good customer service from Blazewear who refunded the purchase price, no quibbles, but have no stock left so couldn't replace.

I might contemplate trying the 2017 model promised out later in the year.