Heated Ski Gloves | Battery Powered

What a great idea to guarantee warm, dry hands! ... in theory.

Reality is a bit different. As a glove designer and a person who has had a cold-hands problem my entire life, I have always wanted this concept to work. The promises from manufacturers and reviews from buyers (after short-term use) are exceptionally strong. 

But let me give you a little inside information from the industry-side of things: most reviews from professional reviewers are positive for a few reasons:

1) You catch more flies with honey. Negative reviews are generally not a good idea if you're trying to re-direct your blog visitors to where you really want them to go (where you make a commission on sales). What you tend to get are positive reviews with poison pills that actually hold more influence than harsh, negative reviews. They make the reviewer seem more fair and reasonable. 

2) Negative reviews are going to get you threatened all kinds of ways. Lawsuits.

Most reviews of ski gloves are written after very short-term use, when the gloves are pretty-much brand new.

As a ski glove maker, this absolutely drives me crazy. This is the reason why most ski gloves are designed for the show room (ski shops) and magazine / blog writers, INSTEAD OF for long-term use on the hands of paying customers. Any properly designed glove is going to take time to break in for it to perform at its optimum long-term functionality.

Free the Powder uses all stretchable materials and thicker insulation because we want our gloves to be perfect after they are broken in, not for magazines and ski shops. 

That's a problem for us.

Back to battery powered heated ski gloves... most have designs that are counter-productive to what makes a ski glove warm.

- They have "water-proof" membrane inserts that are meant to prevent exterior water penetration. (It is not wet when it is really cold in the winter). This ignores the single biggest cause of cold hands, interior water production -sweat- . Membrane inserts are much less breathable than no-membrane inserts.

-They have thick, lofty insulation. Too much of the time this insulation strategy cuts off circulation in your extremities. If you have a heater, why do you need so much insulation? Do you wear thick clothing at home when you have an operating furnace? They put thick insulation in these gloves because they know the primary flaw of battery powered heated gloves... stay tuned.

-The gloves have batteries and what happens to batteries?

This brings me to the main point of this piece: in my experience, and that of almost everyone who has ever owned battery powered ski gloves: the battery power does not last long enough and runs out of juice at bad, unpredictable times. 

 -Finally, they are crazy expensive.

If you really want gloves that are more predictably warm, then you need to find a glove that's designed to balance and regulate the environment inside and outside the glove. The only thing that does that is a glove that's highly breathable.

Did I mention the concept of a mitten?

Learn more about ski gloves and mittens:

• How to keep your hands warm while skiing
• Ski Glove Buyer's Guide
• What is the warmest ski glove?
• Guide to insulation in ski gloves