GOKOZY heated gloves review

REVIEW – I am a regular snow skier, and staying warm on the slopes is pretty important.  When your hands or feet get cold, it’s game over.  So while I might scrimp on my ski pants or toboggan, I get the highest quality gloves and socks I can. Last season I reviewed the DOACE heated jacket, and it was my first time having a heated jacket while skiing, and because of that experience, I won’t ever go skiing without it. It was a game changer.  So this season I decided to try some heated gloves. Take a quick look on Amazon and you’ll see most of the heated gloves are sold in the general range of $250 to $400, with a handful of cheaper offerings. So the $39.99 GOKOZY heated gloves seemed a little too good to be true, but I wanted to give them a try to see if a bargain priced heated glove could really provide some value.  Let’s find out how it worked for me!

What is it?

A set of gloves that can be used for cold weather activities. They come with batteries for each glove that provide a heating function to warm your hands.

What’s included?

• GOKOZY heated gloves
• 2 batteries (2500 mAh each)
• User manual
• 120V charger
• Zippered canvas bag for storage

Tech specs

• Model: ‎Gokozy-2500
• Weight ‎:  4 lbs (the zippered case with everything in it)
• Item Dimensions LxWxH: 91 x 1.97 x 0.79 inches
• 2 Batteries: Li-polymer, 2500 mAh each
• Charger: 120V
• Materials: Outer shell is combination of polyester and polyurethane leather, 3M Thinsulate insulation, with an inside lining of soft fleece.
• Warranty Description: 1 year on gloves (Except for batteries）
• Color: ‎Black

Design and features

The GOKOZY heated gloves look pretty good upon first inspection. The gloves feel light, not heavy, the material feels soft in your hands, and the inside is very cozy (dare I say, GOKOZY?!) and soft. The Velcro strap around the wrist is well placed and easy to use. The cinch strap around the entrance of the glove is incredibly easy to use… pull the little handle and it tightens the opening of the glove around your arm preventing snow/cold from getting in the glove. Press the button and it releases. Very nice!  On the cuff of the glove you’ll find the sealed zippered pocket where the batteries go.

The palm of the gloves, as well as the fingers are covered in a polyurethane fake leather that honestly looks a little too plastic-y (is that a word?).  When I looked closely at that I thought to myself, “well, this isn’t going to last the ski trip. This is cheap and will tear or rip easily.” And I was actually wrong. I skied hard for 5 straight days, 6-7 hours a day.  I put these gloves through the wringer, and as far as the quality of the materials and the stitching, they held up wonderfully. Not a single rip, tear, and not a single stitch came undone.  I was impressed with that. The polyurethane surface on the fingers allows you to use your smartphone without having to remove the gloves, and it works great. Now, using your cellphone with the really thick fingers of a glove isn’t the ideal experience, but it works.

The gloves come with a zippered carrying case which is really nice.  It is made of sturdy nylon fabric, with an attached strap to enable you to carry it easily, or perhaps hang it somewhere. The case can also hold the charger and the batteries, so it keeps everything together while transporting, which is very nice.

The power button for each glove is located sort of below the base of your pinky finger, on the outside edge of the back of your hand. (see pic below)  At first this didn’t seem like an issue, but I learned why this is one of the downsides of the GOKOZY heated ski gloves. When you are using ski poles, there is a strap that goes around your wrist, and it basically sits right on top of the Velcro strap that goes around the gloves. As you can see from the pictures, the power button sits literally right next to that Velcro strap. So when I was skiing with poles, I noticed that the ski pole straps would often ride up onto the back of my hands, and rub onto the top of the power button, turning off the gloves. I didn’t notice this the first time it happened, so when my hands started to get a little cold I glanced down and saw what happened. From that point forward I was conscious of it and had to regularly look at my gloves to make sure they were still turned on. When I look at other heated gloves, most of them will have the power button located on the other side of the back of the hand, closer to the thumb and index finger. That makes more sense to me, and would prevent some accidental power button presses.

Having said that, the power button on the GOKOZY gloves is beneficial because it has a visual indicator to show you battery levels of 100%, 70%, and 30%. Many of the more expensive gloves don’t even have that! So it’s very easy to tell how much power you have left.  And of course, the power button shows a color indicator as you press it repeatedly to cycle between the 3 heating levels:  red (high), white (medium), and blue (low). The higher the heating setting, the quicker it burns through the battery, of course!

Performance

On my ski trip I faced some pretty intense conditions.  A winter storm blew in and dumped a couple feet of snow over a 5 day period.  That’s wonderful for skiing, but while you are in the middle of a snow storm that’s wet and blowing 30 mph winds sideways with a wind chill below zero, the quality of your gear becomes readily apparent. My DOACE heated jacket was a god-send, and kept me warm and dry. GOKOZY says that when you turn on your heated gloves to the highest setting you should get 2-3 hours of use.  Over 2 days of testing this at temps below 20 degrees, I only got 1.5 hrs of use, which was disappointing.  On the day where the temp was 32 degrees, I got a little over 2 hrs of use on the highest setting. So clearly the bitter cold affected the battery performance.  I used the gloves on the medium heat setting for 2 days I got right at 3 hrs of use, which was still below the 4 hrs that GOKOZY said I would get.  The batteries are 2500 mAh in size, and when I looked at more expensive gloves on Amazon I am seeing battery sizes that are generally in the 4000 to 6000 mAh range, but of course you have to pay those much higher prices to get that. So I can see that GOKOZY saved a lot of cost by using smaller batteries, and had the batteries been bigger I would have seen longer use.  But then again, the cost would be higher, so that’s one of the tradeoffs with the GOKOZY heated ski gloves.

As far as the performance of the heating itself, I was not ‘pleased’, but I was ‘satisfied’. The heating elements on the gloves are across the back of the hand and the back of the fingers. So the palm and front of the fingers aren’t heated. Now, on a mild day like the 32 degree day, this didn’t matter for me. My hands stayed nice and warm throughout the entire time the glove was heated. The top heat setting is supposed to heat to 140 degrees, and it didn’t feel anywhere near that level of heat. My hands never got hot the entire trip, just warm. It was enough to make my hands comfortable, so when using the gloves, even in bitter cold conditions, my hands stayed comfortable and not cold.  So for that, I give props.

Finally, let me mention a couple of things that are a little negative about the gloves.  First of all, the batteries are charged with a 240V wall charger, and it takes about 4-5 hours to fully charge them. You can’t charge these batteries with a portable charger, like a power bank.  And that’s disappointing.

The gloves are billed as “waterproof, but you can’t immerse them in water”. I found that in the aforementioned weather, the outside of the gloves became waterlogged with the wet snow coming down in the storm and the inside of the fingers became damp by the end of the day. The outside of the gloves dried up pretty quickly in the room overnight, but the fingers inside the glove remained very slightly damp.  Not enough to annoy me or make my hands cold, but clearly slightly damp and of course it’s harder to dry the inside of gloves with fleece inside.

What I like about the GOKOZY heated gloves

• Very comfortable, and adjustable
• Easy to use power button with level indicator
• Easy to use with your cellphone
• Great price for what you get

What needs to be improved?

• Bigger batteries to last longer
• Charger is 120V so you can’t use a portable charger (like a USB power bank) to charge the gloves
• A power button placed in a better location
• An outer shell that provided a little more water repellant

Final thoughts

My experience skiing in some pretty extreme conditions showed me that you get what you pay for. The GOKOZY heated gloves can be purchased at an amazing price, cheaper than many regular gloves without the heating feature. Would it be nice if the battery were bigger and lasted longer? Yes. Would it be nice if the heating elements covered the front of the fingers instead of just the back of the hand? Yes. Would it be nice if the power button were located in a slightly different place?  Yes. Would I rather pay $250 or more to get a glove that solved those problems?  Not really. I mean, if I were skiing the entire season, every week for several months, then I might spring for more expensive gloves.  But I am a once a year skier, maybe twice, and for what I get with the GOKOZY gloves for that incredible price, I am happy. If you are like me, you’ll like them too.  If you are a much more frequent skier and need better quality gloves, spend a little more money elsewhere.

Price: $39.99
Where to buy: Amazon
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by GOKOZY. GOKOZY did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.