About a year and a half ago I wrote a review of my Gerbing heated jacket. In a nutshell: I’m a big fan. I wear it during almost every ride (except on summer days of course), which proves that for a frequent rider like myself a heated jacket is more of a must-have than a luxury accessory.

At the start of the previous winter I switched my heated Mobile Warming gloves for the Gerbing G-12 heated gloves. They differ in power supply. The Mobile Warming gloves have rechargeable batteries while the Gerbing pair has to be connected to the bike’s battery via a cable.

The reason for the switch is that the heated jacket warmed my body decently but the gloves didn’t always warm my hands enough. For various reasons:

• The batteries of the Mobile Warming gloves won’t last for hours. So I always played safe and set the temperature just high enough to get home before the batteries ran out. Which means: no comfortable warmth during freezing winter rides but just enough not to let my fingers transform into popsicles.
• At temperatures around 0°C riding became painful, even with heated grips. Still it hurt less than ordinary winter gloves but a pleasure it surely was not.
• If I forgot to recharge the batteries at night, the next day’s ride would be a torment.

With the Gerbing heated gloves all that is a thing of the past. Just connect them to the bike’s battery and set them as warm as you want. After a long summer this is my second winter with the gloves. Time for a review.

When I did my glove shopping the Gerbing range wasn’t as extensive as it is now. I was looking for a pair with a short shaft because I belong to the group of motorcyclists who put the shaft under the sleeve when it rains. The G-12 was the only option at that moment. Currently there’s also the XRS-12 which offers better protection.

Connecting

The Gerbing G-12 gloves have to be connected to the battery of your motorcycle. How you do that I already described.

If you already have a Gerbing jacket, you connect the jacket to the bike’s battery cable and you plug in the gloves to the jacket. The jacket has zippers on the sleeves which hide the connection plugs for the gloves.

Putting on

Putting on and plugging in a heated jacket and gloves is more time-consuming then a regular jacket or gloves. Not that I mind because the level of comfort goes up quite a bit.

It took me some time to find out the easiest way to put on the Gerbing gloves. If you put on the heated jacket and the outer jacket before you put on the gloves, it’s hard to grab the connection plugs in the sleeves.

For me, this is the best way:

1. Put on the Gerbing jacket
2. Hold the right connection plug of the jacket with your right hand.
3. Put on the right sleeve of your outer jacket while holding the plug firmly.
4. Grab the cable of the right glove with your right hand.
5. Connect this cable with the connection plug in your right hand.
6. Hold the left connection plug of the jacket with your left hand.
7. Put on the left sleeve of your outer jacket while holding the plug firmly.
8. Grab the cable of the left glove with your right hand.
9. Connect this cable with the connection plug in your left hand.
10. Zip up, put on gloves, go ride

Adjusting the warmth

With the dual controller you can control the temperature of the jacket and gloves separately. The controller goes from 0 to 10 so it’s easy to set the warmth to your liking.

The controller can be combined with a wireless remote control that you can fix on your handlebars. Look what a nice job I did:

You control the temperature with the two buttons. However, you can’t read the heat level on the remote (maybe a good idea for the next generation?) so you have to rely on your feeling or quickly look at the dual controller (but be cautious when riding).

Hot, hotter, hottest

Both jacket and gloves warm up very quickly and can get very hot. Just like the jacket, the gloves warm up over the entire surface, up to your fingertips. They are comfortable and flexible enough despite their thickness. A Hipora layer makes them waterproof.

I picked this model because of the short shaft, but it turned out very difficult to put the shaft under the sleeves of my outer jacket. The shaft’s simply too thick. So I wear the shaft over the sleeve, even when it rains. Luckily you can tightly close the opening of the gloves with an adjustable elastic strap. This way even in heavy showers no water penetrated.

Conclusion

I already was a big fan of the Gerbing heated jacket and their gloves didn’t prove me wrong either. It takes a bit of effort to install everything and it’s not cheap (€ 159 for the G-12 gloves, € 79 for the dual controller and € 49 for the remote). But it’s just wonderful to ride through the winter weather feeling comfortably warm. The only problem: hands and body can now endure freezing cold, but my feet turn into big icecubes during long rides. Next step: heated socks?

By the way, if you don’t need the heated jacket and only buy the gloves, you don’t necessarily need to buy the dual controller and remote. With gloves you get a junior controller to regulate the warmth, so you’re set for € 159.