Review: Review: Northwave Power Long Gloves
Northwave – Power Long Gloves
I’ve been wearing the Northwave Power long gloves for about 600km now and have been more and more impressed with them as the time has gone on!
What’s there to like? Well, the bright red colour stands out nicely, and the reflective tabs are in sensible places – so from a looks point of view we are on to a winner straight away.
But there’s no point in purely basing a review on looks alone, that’s not going to get us very far in winter glove land, it’s all about what happens when the mercury, or the rain, drops.
The Festive 500 brought mildish temperatures out for a few days, but night riding is never warm in december and then the rain came at the end, and that’s where the Power gloves really shone!
When I review gloves on the first ride I carry spare gloves with me, just in case things go pear-shaped quickly – at only 4 degrees above freezing hands can deteriorate rapidly if it all goes wrong! But not this time, not at all!
In the dry, my hands stayed nice and cosy throughout, Northwave use a material they call NW4Pro for insulation, it looks and feels like neoprene, but it isn’t – we know this because they also make gloves from neoprene and call it that! Northwave rate the gloves 4/5 for warmth and wind resistance, i’d be really interested to what scores 5/5 because these were excellent!
Most gloves suffer in the rain, it’s not the easiest thing to keep 5 articulated fingers dry and flexible, so I was keen to see how these would do, thankfully I got 8 hours in the rain on 2 separate rides to see how it went.
The NW4Pro keeps the rain at bay for so long, but it’s when it got through I was most interested to see what happened. Warmth. That’s what happened. They stayed warm. After an initial drenching and soaking up where they were cold for about 5 minutes the gloves then heated nicely with the water seemingly staying in the glove and not on my hands.
I was expecting, after 5 hours, to find pruned-fingers when I took the gloves off, but no, they were still looking good!
My hands coped perfect well for 5 hours of constant cold driving rain at the end of December, with the Garmin reading between 3 and 5 degrees. I’m not sure how much more I could have been impressed with them!
What about handlebar comfort? The gloves come with ‘bitmapped’ gel inserts, i.e in all the right places, and these did a stand-up job for me. My longest ride was around 8 hours in them, and they held up really well, no pressure points or areas of trouble at all. A solid result indeed. Despite the rain the silicon grip held firm to the bars and I never felt ill at ease with the grip.
The price? Well the RRP for a penny less than £30, which strikes me as an absolute bargain! They come in a range of colours from black to hi-viz yellow, the choice is up to you.
Thoroughly recommended bit of winter kit, at a price which really belies their performance, and they dry quickly enough to be able to use them day in and day out!
ps. smartphone compatibility? yup, nailed it!