TESTED BY: Helen Milbank¦£129.99¦www.keisapparel.co.uk¦01256 704909
A perfect complement to my X30 heated vest, these gloves offer three levels of heat through their built-in, independent controllers. Like others, the heating elements are on the backs of the hands, which makes sense when you consider that when riding, your mitts are wrapped around the grips, and the wind is rushing across the tops of them.
As a pillion, they’re still just as useful – my hands are either around the grab rails or resting on my legs – but as I like to feel really toasty, I tend to run them at full power even at air temperatures as high as 8°C. Tested using a 12V regulated supply, they draw a total of 1.1A at full power, 0.8A at medium and 0.6A at low.
Enjoy everything MSL by reading the monthly magazine, Subscribe here.
The gloves default to being off, but just press and hold the large, rubber button (which you can feel click through the gloves), to turn them on to full power, where the button lights up red. From there, a single tap changes them to medium (orange light) and low (green light). The LED inside is bright enough to be visible in daylight, and while it’s easy to change modes as a pillion, riders only need lift their right hand from the throttle very briefly to switch the left glove. As the button is so easy to use, they can also just tap the button on the underside of the left mirror.
If using a heated jacket, the connectors would be on the ends of the arm, but using these with the vest, I simply run the supplied Y-lead from one of the vest’s armpit connectors to the gloves, under my outer jacket sleeves, though a pair of single leads is available for £9.99. There’s also a battery wiring-loom supplied, if you just want the heated gloves on their own.
These are ‘dual-power’ gloves, so have small zipped pockets inside, which can accept a pair of batteries (£69.99) that will run the gloves for a good four hours. I can also power them from my vest’s battery.
Besides being heated, the gloves are waterproof, and the fact that the built-in socket is unobtrusive means it’s easy to wear these as every-day, reasonably warm gloves without power. The palm and fingers are leather, and it’s great to see a wrist restraint, as well as a draw-string cuff that can be put over or under your jacket. The only omission is a rubber visor-wipe, though a microfibre section of fabric that’s on the left forefinger does a reasonable job.
Sure, if you’re not using the batteries the wiring is one more thing to think about as you kit up, but as the system is modular, once sorted, you only need to plug one power lead into the bike. It’s well worth it
