Venture Epic2 Heated Gloves - ReviewI bought a pair of these from Zarkie
http://www.zarkie.com.au/ a couple of weeks ago. The Epic2 are a thick and well padded winter glove with rechargable battery and heating elements on the back of the hands and down the back or outside of the fingers. They appear to be a well made pair of gloves with a decent length cuff, and an elastic closure at the entry to the cuff. The palm and inner side of the fingers is leather and the remainder of the gloves is a woven artificial fibre. While they claim to be waterproof, I have not under taken the Australian Road Rider test for waterproof, which requires the gloves to be worn on the hands and stuck in a bucket of water to the wrists for 30 seconds. I must say that I have never found a pair of waterproof gloves that remain waterproof in a decent wet
My first part of the assessment was to test run and recharge times to get some real world data. Here's the results:
Recharge Time.... 4-5 hrs with the 240volt charge.
High Heat setting.... 2hrs 20 minutes (Seriously hot!)
Medium Heat Setting.... 4hrs 45 minutes
Low Heat Setting.... 7hrs 30 minutes (Claimed 37 degrees)
Yesterday I used them on the SA RTE to Swan Hill, which was about a 300km round trip. I was a fairly cool day with temps as low as 6 degrees when we left home, and it peaked at around 11 degrees. I did the entire run with the heated grips turned off.
I wore the gloves all the time that I was travelling, with them set on the lowest heat setting of 37 degrees. Because this is close to body heat, the gloves did not feel overtly warm, but prevented my hands from getting cold all day, and I was very comfortable in conditions that would usually have given me numb fingers from the cold. A short burst on medium heat and I could feel the extra warmth on the back of my hands, and I did not use the hottest setting.
On the back of each glove is soft button that toggles through the heat settings, with red, orange and green illumination to show the setting that is in use. The bulk of the glove fingertips made it difficult to press the button while riding, and because the indicator illumination is so feint, it was impossible to judge the colour in sunlight, and needed to be shielded to be visible.
The gloves were a very snug and comfortable fit on my hands, but I found the thumbs to be around 1cm too long. This made using the indicator switch for left turns clumsy and difficult, as I couldn't easily get my thumb into the gap between the indicator and screen height adjuster to pull the indicator button to the left. This is more of an issue of my physiology than a problem with the gloves.
At $229 they are not cheap, but I'm pretty pleased with their fit and performance. The loss of dexterity while wearing thick winter gloves was a bit of a nuisance, and as a consequence, I see them being most useful as cold weather touring gloves, rather than something that I'd wear while riding around the city. However, as they mould and wear into the shape of my hands, I expect that fit and flexibility will improve, as all gloves seem to get more and more comfortable with age, right up until they are ready for the bin.