How to pick the best heated gloves, according to experts
Heated gloves use electrical currents to actively heat your hands, in addition to insulating them.
If you don’t need your fingers free for work, or if you just want the maximum warmth possible, heated mittens might be a solid choice. These gloves are made from sheep leather and, according to the company, water-resistant polyester on the exterior, and have a fleece interior. The heating element is on the back of the hands and has three temperature settings, with an on/off button on each glove. One charge of the battery lasts about three or four hours, according to the company. They’ve been rated an average of 4.5 stars from over 400 Amazon reviews.
These gloves have 3M Thinsulate on the inside, which the company says is 50 percent more insulating than down and has double the insulation “of other highly soft insulation materials.” The gloves are waterproof, according to the company, there are three heating modes and the gloves are powered by two rechargeable batteries. You can get up to eight hours of use on one charge, according to the company. These gloves carry an average rating of 4.2 stars from over 250 Amazon reviews.
These thin gloves can be used both as standalone gloves or as liners for larger gloves depending on the weather and conditions. Their thinness and stretchy Lycra make it easier to move your fingers when wearing them, according to day wolf. These gloves have a 4.1-star average rating from over 700 Amazon reviews.
These gloves have six layers, including a waterproof outside layer, according to the company. The gloves also contain faux sheepskin leather made of polyurethane and waterproof material on the outside and 3M Thinsulate on the inside. The gloves have five different heat settings, which you can adjust on each glove. According to the company, the gloves can heat between six and 11 hours and are windproof. They carry a 4.5-star average rating from over 300 Amazon reviews.
Cold hands are a fact of life in wintertime for many. My family always told me that hands are where you “lose a lot of heat,” but no one explained the mechanism. And it did seem intuitive that gloves could prevent heat from escaping, keeping the rest of our bodies warmer.
But the truth about heat exchange in our bodies is somewhat different.
“When you have cold hands, that's because your body is cold,” said Thomas Diller, professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech. (He’s Kenneth Diller’s brother.)
Blood is what circulates heat throughout your body. When you’re exposed to cold, you have lower blood flow to your extremities because the blood vessels in them constrict — “to maintain the core body temperature constant it will sacrifice the limbs to maintain the core and your head,” Thomas Diller said.
That’s all to say that warming your core, wearing enough layers on your body and keeping your head warm, will help keep your hands warm. Ultimately, it’s more important for your body to keep your head and torso warm, so wearing proper clothing can lessen the burden on your body to transfer heat, preventing your hands from getting cold.
Kenneth Diller told us that his research showed that the tissue that regulates our body temperature is primarily along the spinal cord. He conducted an experiment on a student in his lab with chronically cold hands where he warmed the subject’s neck and had an infrared thermal camera pointed at their hands. From just the heat applied to the subject’s neck, their hands heated up considerably.
Both Thomas Diller and Kenneth Diller emphasized that heated gloves aren’t going to make you immune from the cold on their own and are not a substitute for proper clothing.
“If your blood vessels are constricted, you can be very warm on the surface and feel cold inside,” Kenneth Diller said.
“They're fixing something that can be easily remedied otherwise” with proper dress, Thomas Diller said.
In other words, if you’re wearing a T-shirt and shorts in 30-degree weather, heated gloves are no saving grace. But, as experts previously noted, there are still useful applications for these devices. Just as cereal is just a part of a balanced breakfast (and not the whole breakfast itself), heated gloves can be useful and comfortable — as long as you also dress appropriately for the weather.
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