It might seem strange to start discussing waterproof motorcycle gloves by talking about tents, but stick with me. There is a method in my madness.
The Hydrostatic Head test is the most common measurement for how waterproof a garment is.
It is a simple test. Stretch a piece of fabric over a one-inch square frame and stand a column of water on it. Wait 24 hours; if it doesn’t leak, add more water. If the column of water is, for example, 3,000mm tall before it starts leaking, then it has a 3,000mm Hydrostatic Head waterproof rating.
In the UK, a manufacturer can claim a garment is made from waterproof material if the hydrostatic head test is 1,500mm or better. This explains why I’ve had wet hands when riding in the rain wearing what were claimed to be “waterproof motorcycle gloves”.
The column of water in the test isn’t being forced onto the material; it is only the weight of the water in the column pushing down.
The results of the hydrostatic head test will be included on a tent’s label or in the product literature. The higher the number, the more waterproof the tent is, and typically, the more expensive it will be.
But I’ve never been able to find this figure when buying waterproof motorcycle gloves.
Perhaps the hydrostatic head figure isn’t relevant because we are interested in what happens when rain is driven at the gloves at 60mph. Nonetheless, it could be an indication of what to expect.
Then again, the construction of waterproof motorcycle gloves, jackets and trousers typically includes a waterproof membrane between our hands, the insulation, and the outer fabric.
Tents are a much simpler design.
All the science, testing and reasons why are all wonderful, but the bottom line is that we want dry – and hopefully – warm hands if we are riding in the rain,
Old School Testing
We decided to do some old-school, real-world testing by riding in the rain in several different pairs of waterproof motorcycle gloves.
The concept is simple: wait for it to rain and ride for 30-40 minutes in a pair of “control” gloves. All good science experiments need a control element to measure against, and we picked an old pair of Oxford Rain Seal gloves for our test.
We washed these to ensure no ingrained dirt was wicking rain through to the inside, and we gave them a light coating of Oxford Mint RainSeal Waterproofing Spray before venturing out.
In fairness to Oxford, the Rain Seal gloves we used as a baseline were in the end-of-line bargain bucket when I bought them five years ago. These are not the excellent Oxford Rain Seal over gloves; they are over-the-cuff, five-finger gloves that Oxford no longer manufactures and that I knew were past their best when we started.
If my hands got wet wearing the control glove, we knew it was raining hard enough for a valid test.
The Contenders
We spoke to several manufacturers, and those who wanted to participate—Weise, Five, Rukka, and Held—jumped at the opportunity. Not everyone else did, which made us wonder why.
We did have a couple of offers of heated gloves to include, but this test was about waterproof motorcycle gloves, and we didn’t want to get off track.
If heated gloves are a requirement in addition to being waterproof, the Keis G301 gloves are a firm favourite in the office. They have endured some awful rain and two winters.
Held will also retail its new Inuit heated glove through SportsBikeShop. The Inuit gloves are battery-powered, and Held has taken a different approach to heat.
Rather than the usual high, medium, and low settings, Held offers the choice of heating your whole hand, just the fingers, or just the palm. It is a brilliant way of maximising battery life, especially if you have heated grips.
The Held Inuit gloves are waterproof, and the Keis G301 has a hydrophobic outer shell and Hipora™ waterproof membrane. However, we excluded heated gloves specifically from the test, so fair is fair; we can’t include them this time.
Hopefully, we’ll get our hands on a pair of Held Inuit gloves shortly after they go on general release.
Waterproof Motorcycle Gloves
With the gloves selected, all we needed now was some rain, which took two weeks to arrive. Nonetheless, as it is November as I write this, rain it did.
Five WFX City Evo (Long)
- Superb build quality
- Perhaps not a full winter glove
- Visor pad on left index finger
- The finger sizing is tight for length
- Was waterproof throughout the test
- Hard Knuckle and Schapoid Protection
- Over-the-cuff design
- Updated version due Spring 2025
Five is perhaps the least well-known manufacturer of motorcycle gloves from those we tested despite being in business for the past 15 years.
I first came across Five when looking for a pair of summer gloves with hard knuckle protection and a hard scaphoid slider. I thought they were just another glove manufacturer, but digging deeper, I found Five’s attention to detail impressive.
The WFX City Evo features Gore-Tex for waterproofing, Primaloft for insulation, and Gütermann® thread for the stitching (so it won’t cut your hands), along with hard knuckle and scaphoid sliders.
According to Five, the WFX City Evo (Long) waterproof motorcycle gloves we tested are designed to go over the jacket’s cuff, but we’d argue that point.
The glove’s cuff is zippered but doesn’t open wide enough to slip over the cuff of a winter jacket easily. Putting the long version of the WFX City Evo glove on the inside of the jacket’s sleeve can be frustrating as it doesn’t close up tight enough.
More than once, I needed to stop after a few minutes to correct the fit and cancel out the draft, blowing up my arm. How the gloves fit with your jacket will naturally depend on your jacket, but the long version of the WFX City Evo doesn’t seem to know which it is: over or under the cuff.
Perhaps it works as a two-season glove, but when a thick jumper is already in the sleeve, I found the space for the glove limited.
Putting the up-the-sleeve or over-the-cuff argument aside, the Five WFX City Evo gloves are superbly made, comfortable, and, most importantly, waterproof.
My hands stayed dry throughout the rain test but did get a little chilly on long, dry rides.
The palm of the Five WFX City Evo is non-slip, allowing me to open my hand flat on the throttle without the throttle snapping shut. Thanks to that nifty piece of thinking by Five, I can move my fingers on a long ride, ensuring the blood stays flowing.
Note: Currently in short supply as there is an updated version due to be released in Spring 2025
Weise Sirus 2.0
- Excellent overall design
- Work well with heated grips
- Flexible and warm
- Visor blade on left index finger
- Waterproof throughout the test
- Soft Knuckle and Scaphoid protection
- Worn under the sleeve
- £130 at SportsBikeShop
If Weise fitted a hard scaphoid slider to their Sirius 2.0 motorcycle gloves, I would have been moved to say I’d found the “perfect” pair of gloves. Yet Weise prefers soft knuckle (KP1) and scaphoid protection, and whereas I can understand it across the knuckles, should I suffer an unscheduled dismount, I’d rather the palm of my hand slid on the tarmac rather than – perhaps – rotate at the wrist.
In every other respect, the Weise Sirius 2.0 gloves are wonderful. They are warm, comfortable, flexible straight out of the box and a good fit. They are also finished with an excellent close-fitting Velcro cuff that makes manoeuvring the glove inside a jacket sleeve a doddle.
The index finger is touchscreen-sensitive, and hard-wearing areas of the glove have leather reinforcement.
The waterproofing comes from a mcTex™ membrane, and the warmth comes from 3M™ Thinsulate. Across the back of the hand, the 3M™ Thinsulate is G100, while the palm is C40, a nice touch that ensures you feel the benefit of heated grips more easily.
At the time of writing, I’ve ridden for an hour in constant rain at motorway speeds. None of the rain or the spray found its way through the mcTex™ membrane, and with the jacket’s cuff sealed tight, there was no “blowback” of rain.
The long visor blade on the index finger of the left-hand glove is a nice touch.
Rukka Mars
- Waterproof in the worst of conditions
- Fleece lined with minimal insulation
- Visor blade on left index finger
- Leather construction with Gore-Tex liner
- Thin padding on each knuckle
- Leather overlay on the palm (scaphoid)
- Worn over the sleeve (can go inside)
- £170 at SportsBikeShop
I couldn’t test the Rukka gloves because Roger refused to give them back. Having dry hands after a three-hour ride in heavy rain was all Roger needed to declare them totally waterproof and not look any further.
When I suggested that we needed to be slightly more objective with the testing, he offered to go for another ride the next time it rained to confirm the waterproofness of the Rukka Mars 2.0 gloves.
The glove’s cuff is medium in length. It will fit inside or outside your jacket sleeve, although inside may be best in heavy rain. A large Velcro-backed wrap at the cuff ensures a tight seal against the elements.
The knuckle protection is foam padding and limited to small sections on each knuckle, unlike the Weise Sirius, which has a large single section that is wider to the outside edge. The scaphoid protection is a leather overlay. There is a full-length visor blade on the left index finger.
The fleece lining works well, keeping our hands warm, especially when compared to other gloves with fancier branded thermal insulation layers.
Held Tonale
- Impressive detail in the design
- Warmest of the gloves tested
- Visor blade on left index finger
- Waterproof throughout the test
- Hard knuckle protection
- Soft Scaphoid pad
- Worn under the sleeve
- £140 at SportsBikeShop
The label on the inside of the Held Tonale gloves reads, “Engineered in Germany”. It may be a popular characteristic to suggest that anything designed in Germany will work well, but in this case, it is absolutely true.
The Tonale gloves have a long cuff with a Velcro wrap to ensure a tight, inside-the-sleeve fit. The cuff is also where the reusable heat pack goes if you want extra warmth on a cold day.
We excluded heated gloves from the test because they have a different construction from typical waterproof motorcycle gloves. The heat packs in the Held Tonale gloves sit on the underside of your wrist, in theory, warming the blood flowing to your hands.
This feature doesn’t change the glove’s construction (no heating elements), so it meets the standard waterproof motorcycle glove criteria. Just to be certain, we used the Held Tonale gloves without the gel heat packs, which are not included as standard.
Talking to Held, they definitively stated that for full waterproof performance, the gloves go inside the sleeve of your jacket to prevent rain from flowing down the sleeve and wicking along the inside lining of the glove.
The waterproof membrane is Gore-Tex, and the lining is 3M Thinsulate. Thermoplush fleece is also inside for additional warmth and comfort. Arguably the Held Tonale gloves are the warmest of those we tested, and also needed the most breaking in. Out the box they are stiff.
The lefthand index finger has a full-length wiper blade, which was very useful in drizzle, and there is a zip on the outside of the cuff should you want to put the gloves over your jacket sleeves when it is not raining.
Hard knuckle protection and a lightly padded scaphoid pad contribute to the KP1 safety rating.
True to Held’s claim, the Tonale gloves were utterly waterproof. The gloves’ cuffs were easily and comfortably wrapped closed, allowing me to pull my jacket sleeve over the top.
Bottom Line
It is subjective to judge which waterproof motorcycling gloves are best. Roger won’t give up the Rukka Mars gloves, while I’m impressed with the Weise Sirus 2.0 that are the best value for money.
If I had to pick one from the four we tested, it would be the Held Tonale gloves due to their warmth, attention to design details and overall feeling of quality.
However, we started this test to establish whether waterproof motorcycle gloves existed for the real world—a minimum of thirty-forty minutes riding in the rain at motorway speeds.
All of the gloves we tested met that requirement except for the ageing Oxford gloves we used as a control baseline. They leaked as expected, proving it was raining hard enough for a real-world test.
Ensuring that your jacket goes over the glove’s cuff is more important than I ever thought it would be. I’d never considered rainwater wicking its way from the cuff and soaking the inside of the glove.
Perhaps this explains why I’ve had such a poor experience with so-called waterproof gloves over the years.
And what if the ride is longer than an hour? Sadly, as much as we love riding motorcycles, we haven’t had the time to complete a test of how long it would take for the gloves to become saturated (wet out).
As winter progresses, we’ll update this page if there is anything to report.
Several years ago, while waiting in the rain for a ferry home, I noticed a fellow biker changing his socks. He’d ridden 400 miles in the rain, and his advice was that the last thing to go in your luggage, and therefore the first thing to come out, are dry socks and a spare pair of dry gloves.
Smart thinking.
3 responses
Nice to see a practical test. A couple of comments: the Hydrostatic test only tests the waterproof membrane. Gloves are complex with a lot of stitching, and IME it’s the stitching that causes the problem. Waterproof gloves in particular are difficult things to manufacture because you have to seal every seam in the membrane, it’s why quality gloves by the likes of Rukka are expensive. Second point is that heated grips can cause breathable waterproof membranes to fail; basically they stop big cold water molecules (i.e. rain) out, and let warm small molecules (i.e. perspiration) through. Heat up the glove and you’ll start making small, warm molecules which will pass into your hands.
Total agreement from Roger
I have had my Rukka Mars gloves just over 3 years now and they are my go to gloves when it is wet or cold or both!