The Eddie Bauer Guide Pro Lite Smart Heated Gloves modulate their temperature based on the environment and they are generally a better option than the competition. Heated gloves do have their drawbacks but these are the best I’ve tested.
Pros
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Excellent touch screen useability
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Easy to pull on
+
Hand detection means no accidental turning on in a bag
+
Excellent moisture transfer
+
Good dexterity
+
Heat all the way to the fingers
Cons
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Large cuff with no adjustment
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Doesn't remember the sport selected in the app
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I've written a lot about gloves and cold-weather cycling. I asked to take ownership of our guide to the best winter cycling gloves, and I also shared things I learned when testing winter cycling gloves, plus there have been a lot of reviews. The reason for all the content about gloves is that I ride in cold weather pretty often and I'm constantly freezing. In particular, my hands seem prone to being cold and painful at times when the rest of me seems okay. As I've shared these details, I've heard from many of you that I'm not alone.
Tech Specs: Eddie Bauer Guide Pro Lite Smart Heated Gloves
Price: $249
Available Colours: Black
Available Sizes: XS-XL
Weight: 268g per glove with battery in size small, battery weight: 122g per unit
In fact, one reader clued me into a company that promised a solution. I got an email saying that Clim8 had a new heating system that was unlike anything on the market and I had to give it a try, so I did. The Eddie Bauer Guide Pro Lite Smart heated gloves takes the technology and builds it into a consumer product that I've been able to spend time testing. If you are one of those readers who struggle with cold hands and fingers, keep reading to see if this innovative new product is the answer you've been looking for.
Like a lot of electronics these days, the Eddie Bauer Guide Pro Smart gloves have an accompanying app (Image credit: Josh Ross)
Design and aesthetics
For many cyclists out there, the Eddie Bauer Guide Pro Lite Smart Heated Gloves might not have been on your radar because they aren't cycling-specific. Except that, maybe, they are. They don't really seem to be cycling-specific but they do list road cycling as an activity in the app. That said, it's also listed under "Motorsports" and it shares space with Motorcycles and Snow Mobiles. Given that a reader of Cyclingnews sent me the tip with an eye on using them on a bike, I decided to give that detail a pass. Besides, you are probably a lot more focused on the mention of an app anyway.
That's right, these are gloves and you need an app to use them. There's going to be a portion of readers who stop reading right now and move on. For the rest of you, the app is what Clim8 claims is different about these gloves. Actually, according to the brand, it's a bit more and it involves "Fusing artificial intelligence, a mobile application, innovative processes, and active-response patented technologies." This allows Clim8 to "engineer products that sense and react, in real-time to the human body to keep the user comfortable at all times."
I would love to tell you more about what that actually means and how it influences the design. Unfortunately, I can't. Clim8 weaves the thread of "artificial insurance" through their marketing materials everywhere that you can find them. Despite that, they never actually say what that means. It's reasonable though to not worry too much about it. What you need to know about how it influences the design is that there is no button to turn on the gloves or set a mode. Instead, the app handles everything.
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Like many of the more premium cycling glove options, the palms are leather and they feel amazing(Image credit: Josh Ross)
There's a loop to connect a carabiner that would be useful for bikepacking(Image credit: Josh Ross)
Only the first finger works with a touch screen but it works better than most(Image credit: Josh Ross)
The back of the thumb isn't as soft as some gloves(Image credit: Josh Ross)
That means, in many ways, these gloves look like most. What's obvious right away is that the Eddie Bauer Guide Pro Lite Smart Heated Gloves are, without a doubt, focused on deep winter. The fingers are thick with Primaloft Gold insulation and the outer is a "flexible nylon shell with a durable Pittards leather palm." There is also a DWR coating and an internal membrane with a 10k/10k waterproof breathable rating. For the interior, you will find a wool blend that is reminiscent of flannel instead of the typical fleece in most gloves.
The place where things start to look different is in the cuff. It's big and there's no adjustment. On the top at the outside edge of the wrist is a square that sits above the rest of the surface and displays the clim8 logo. This houses the electronics which mostly means a system-on-chip design including the controller and Bluetooth connectivity. If you feel around a bit, you can find the wiring inside that handles sensing when you insert your hand, regulating the temperature, and the actual heating elements that loop out to the end of each finger.
Flip the glove over and that's where you'll find a zippered pocket, with a typical looking 3000mAh lithium-ion battery inside, that's had a silicone cover added along with clima8 branding. Aside from the silicone outer, this is an off-the-shelf product and there are alternatives available, should it ever need replacing. In fact, it's almost the same battery as the one used in the Sealkinz heated gloves. The only difference is a slightly higher energy density and an extra 800 mAh. There are also alternatives that go even bigger though the Eddie Bauer pricing on the battery is quite competitive.
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This is an off-the-shelf battery with a custom cover on it(Image credit: Josh Ross)
The charger is a standard DC design that will handle both batteries at once(Image credit: Josh Ross)
Performance
I thought the stars aligned for me when it was time to put the Eddie Bauer Guide Pro Lite Smart Heated Gloves to the test. As it turned out, they did but not in the way I thought.
What I mean is that the temperature dropped significantly and I got an invitation from a friend to do a gravel ride. It sounded like a mellow opportunity to test some gloves in cold weather. My friend confirmed that sentiment when she relayed, "today’s not going to be epic, expect pretty fast gravel and a quick 50-miler.” I came along expecting 3-4 hours of riding in cold weather.
Knowing this friend, I should have thought harder. I might have also expected things were going to go differently when someone stopped to warn us on our way out of town. It was then that a man stopped and rolled down his window tell us he was an experienced rider but would consider the road unrideable up higher. "Don't worry," we said, "we'll be off the road."
Instead of taking stock of the situation after these early warning signs. I didn't fully comprehend how wrong I was until I noticed that it had taken almost three hours to cover 15 miles (24km). At that point, I was still carrying my bike and hiking through heavy snow but there wasn't anything to do but keep moving forward. I felt exhausted and a bit sore where my hip had smacked the sheet of ice covering the gravel road earlier. One thing that was not a problem though was my fingers.
Before leaving, I had spent time playing with the app a bit but there's not much info to help make decisions. Most heated garments allow you to set a power level and in return, you can expect a rough battery life estimate as well as a stable amount of heat. That's not how Clim8 works though. Instead, you set the temperature you'd like and there's an indication of what level of battery optimisation that corresponds with. The problem with that is you probably have no idea what temperature you want your gloves and you really want to know how long the battery will last.
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Your only clue about battery use comes if you set the temp high and get the low optimisation tag in the app(Image credit: Josh Ross)
This is the highest setting that keeps the Excellent optimisation tag but it's plenty useable(Image credit: Josh Ross)
Road bike is available as a sport but the app won't remember this and it doesn't seem to do anything(Image credit: Josh Ross)
You get a few customisation options but there's little you really need to do with the app beyond setting the temperature(Image credit: Josh Ross)
There is this history screen which seems interesting but it doesn't save any record beyond the last use and it resets each time you put your hands into the gloves and they turn on(Image credit: Josh Ross)
What I did was dial the gauge down to 24.5C/76.1F. It's an arbitrary number but I chose it because it's the warmest temperature that also gives you an "excellent" battery optimisation rating. This is the same thing I did with the Sealskinz heated gloves when I tested them but in this case, the experience was drastically different. While low on the Sealskinz is so low it adds nothing, these Clim8 powered gloves are extremely noticeable, all the way to the end of the fingers, even at the low setting. At least they are when you first put them on and they are coming up to temperature. After that, things change.
The way these gloves work is that they respond to the temperature inside and outside the gloves and they adjust the power accordingly to try and match your setting. When you first put them on, they heat up and you can feel it. From there, it levels off. The base glove is already a heavy, capable, glove that's among the warmest you might find if you stick to cycling-specific options. The Eddie Bauer contribution provides plenty of heat retention and does a good job of moving moisture away from your skin. The two systems work together to optimise battery life.
When I was climbing early in the day with the sun high, the gloves weren't pulling much heat from the battery. In a traditional heated glove, you'd likely turn off the heat during these moments. With the Clim8 system, it senses when you put your hand in and it turns on. Even if you get your phone out and open the app, there is no off switch. As the weather, and your effort level, changes the gloves just do their thing through the day.
The end result is a system that feels pretty transparent. My Garmin 1040 Solar recorded an average temperature of -0.5C/31F, but the temperature actually fluctuated drastically. Sometimes it got as high as 7C/45F but it was often hovering around -4C/25F. Through it all, my hands felt very similar. That's the promise of the whole system, and it works.
In fact, most of the time I had this feeling that it just wasn't that cold. Then the light started blinking slowly orange. Under normal usage, you will see a blue, purple or red solid light in the Clim8 logo on the wrist. When it switches to orange blinking, it will still connect to the app but it no longer heats anymore and it happened to me after roughly four and half hours. It was at this point that I realized how much the heat had been helping. It didn't take long for my fingers to get very cold, with the outside temperatures around -2C/28F.
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The heating elements do go all the way to the ends of the fingers and are noticeable but it's only on the top of the gloves(Image credit: Eddier Bauer)
When the gloves are on, there is a light that lets you know the status(Image credit: Josh Ross)
There's a waterproof zipper but I've absolutely drenched heated gloves in the past with no ill effects(Image credit: Josh Ross)
Verdict
If you are considering heated gloves for cycling, there aren't many options. I reviewed the Sealkinz option previously because they were alone on the market. There was no competition and if you aren't in North America, there still isn't. When you look at them through that lens, they are an excellent choice for certain situations.
Now that there is a choice, things are different. The Eddie Bauer Guide Pro Lite Smart Heated Gloves do everything that the Sealskinz gloves do, just better. The design is quite similar. Sealskinz doesn't work with your phone while these do and these don't have dots of foam padding which I think is a plus. Otherwise though, there's a leather palm, a similar large cuff that holds a battery, and the insulation is the same. The rain performance of both is the same in that it's more or less non-existent, and if you want to crank up the heat for a short time period, both will do it.
What is really different is the ability to set a low but noticeable heat and have it work for a long period of time. The fact that Clim8 claims to use AI and the app experience isn't that important either. Once you find a temperature that works for you, put them on and leave them alone while you ride. The heat will quietly be there keeping you comfortable as needed. Given that the price is the same, if you can purchase Eddie Bauer products then these gloves are a better choice than the Sealskinz.
A bigger question might be if you should consider heated gloves at all. To answer that, consider if you are trying to manage cold and rain or just cold. Your electric gloves won't die in the rain but they also don't work very well. Instead, I've had luck with the Sportful Lobster gloves and a pair of neoprene gloves inside. Other than that situation, I expect you will know if heated gloves are necessary for you. I've heard from enough people like me who can't seem to keep their fingers warm no matter what. If that's you, the Eddie Bauer Guide Pro Lite Smart Heated Gloves will do it.
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Testing scorecard and notes
Design and aesthetics
The heating system is the best on the market but that’s a small field of two. The only design change I’d love to see is the ability to tighten the area around the wrist.
8/10
Wet weather performance
Status quo for every waterproof glove on the market. It works for a bit then it doesn’t. These score lower because leather takes a bit more care when you get it wet.
5/10
Cold weather performance
There’s nothing else available that will do better in cold dry weather. These kept me warm in the coldest weather I’ve ever ridden in.
10/10
Comfort and fit
The fit matches the guide and the interior is very comfortable. Given how warm they are, some bulk should be expected but dexterity remains good.
10/10
Value
The price matches Sealskinz but most of the parts are custom in the Climb8 system instead of off-the-shelf for SealSkinz. This is still a hefty price for any pair of gloves though.
Josh hails from the Pacific Northwest of the United States but would prefer riding through the desert than the rain. He will happily talk for hours about the minutiae of cycling tech but also has an understanding that most people just want things to work. He is a road cyclist at heart and doesn't care much if those roads are paved, dirt, or digital. Although he rarely races, if you ask him to ride from sunrise to sunset the answer will be yes.
Height: 5'9"
Weight: 140 lb.
Rides: Salsa Warbird, Cannondale CAAD9, Enve Melee, Look 795 Blade RS, Priority Continuum Onyx
