Winter riding = heated kit

To help my creaking old body ride through to spring, I’ve been trying two massive boxes of heated gear. One box is from Gerbing, the other from Keis. Both have huge ranges and many RIDE endorsements, though personally I’ve been a reluctant user of heated gear.

First up the Gerbing gear, specifically a 12V Heated Jacket Liner (£189) and a pair of XRS12 gloves (£149.99), plus a Wireless Dual Temperature Controller (£99.99). All excellent quality and easy to use. Just attach the loom to the battery, with a cable dangling out for attaching to your jacket. The gloves plug into the jacket.

You can control the temperature from the button on the garment itself or the neat remote control. This can be carried anywhere (on the handlebars, in my case). Then I unwired the Gerbing harness and replaced it with the Keis one. Again, a cable dangles out from under the seat to ram into a cable dangling from your jacket, with the option of attaching gloves or trousers to the jacket, plus options about how you control it. The remote controller has one button, which cycles from off through three levels of heat. I had an X25 jacket (£179.99), a sleeveless vest (the X10 Bodywarmer, £187.98, including a battery pack that lets you use it off the bike too), the X800 gloves (£149.99) and the X2 trousers (£139.99). I found there wasn’t that much difference between Keis and Gerbing: the tops were all excellent (sleeveless preferable on borderline cold days, sleeved on sub-zero ones); the trousers were super-effective but too much bother for anything other than a long journey; and for me the gloves were too much bother, full stop – especially on a bike with heated grips.

The big difference was the remote controllers: the three levels on the Keis one were too close to each other, whereas nine-position Gerbing had a much more useful range. Minor details. The bigger point is that I’m now a heated-kit convert. More info Gerbing: www.gerbing.co.uk, Keis: www.keisapparel.co.uk