What are they like to use?
When it comes to heated equipment, you want the hottest setting to almost make it feel like your hands are on fire as that means that even in the coldest of temperature, you know there is enough heat on tap to keep you nice and toasty.
On this score, the Hotgrips hit the mark as at 100% on a 15°C autumn day they were bordering on the painful, which was excellent. The control interface is nice and clear and the temperaturelevel buttons easy to find with a gloved hand and effective. There is almost no difference in diameter compared to a non-heated set of grips (34mm compared to 31mm) so you get all the same feel. Overall, they perform as you would expect a heated grip to. But would heated gloves be better?
Once you get over the initial faff of threading the Y-lead into your jacket, heated gloves deliver a different experience to heated grips. As the heat is all over the glove rather than in one zone they don’t feel that hot, instead keeping your hands reassuringly warm. With grips you often end up riding with all your fingers on the bar for heat, but with gloves you can leave two exposed to the cold resting on the brake or clutch lever and still be warm, which is good.
Also, according to Gerbing, the fact the gloves are warm and not the grips means that water won’t reverse-wick into the gloves as the temperature difference is in the correct direction (breathable kit works by moisture transferring from a hot source to a colder one).
There is no real difference in thickness between a set of heated gloves and wellinsulated winter ones but the control system was a bit tricky to operate on the move. It requires a fairly long push to alter the temperature setting and when you are pressing the control button, you can’t see what colour the LED behind is.
And as there are two gloves, you have to do it twice! More of a ‘set and forget’ system than the grips, which are easier to vary their temperature level on the go and have none of the gloves’ fiddle to put on and connect in to the bike.