Air Conditioning for Your Hands

WHAT: Dakine Ventilator Gloves WHERE: www.dakine.com HOW MUCH: $35

A glove should be a simple product, right? I mean, it’s just supposed to cover your hand, soak up sweat and snot, stop you’re hands from going numb, add some grip to your controls, occasionally be used to wipe mud from face or fork stanchion, and maybe protect your hand from errant branches and crash landings. Hmm…I guess that’s actually a pretty long list for a simple product. Well, Dakine’s Ventilator serves most of these functions quite well.

The Ventilator, as the name implies, is more of a light-duty, cross-country kind of glove—heavy emphasis on being airy, comfy and the like. I think of it as particularly well suited to hot summer days. The top of the glove is made from a stretchy, mesh material that breathes exceptionally well and lends a second skin-feel to the gloves. The undersides of the fingers also feature numerous holes which, I imagine, helps with the whole ventilation process.

Other noteworthy features include the requisite silicone grippy texturing on the first two fingers so that your grip on your brake levers stays nice and, uh, grippy when things get soggy. There’s a bit of padding in the palm, compression molded wrist cuff and knuckles (on the first two fingers), a terry cloth coating on the thumb (to aid in mucous and perspiration wiping), and dual, Velcro wrist closures which help you fine tune the fit.

Here's that sharp bit of material that can chafe your wrist--just tighten the dual, velcro closures equally and it's not a problem.

I’ve been running the Ventilators for about two months now—not an exceptionally long time, to be sure, but they’ve been getting daily commuting and trail riding, lots of mud-soaking and more trips to the washing machine than is probably good for any garment. So far, so good. The seams are holding up just fine and the mesh isn’t tearing a bit (I was initially kind of worried about that, but the mesh uppers are surprisingly durable). The palms are wearing a bit more than I’d like to see this quickly in a product test, but that’s the only thing close to a complaint that I’ve got.

I should also mention the fit—it’s excellent, but it took me a couple rides to dial it in. That sounds sort of brain dead, I admit, because how hard is it to wear a pair of gloves properly? Not too hard, but with the dual closures, I found that you want to run both straps equally tight (otherwise you can get a bit of chafing and pinching from the bottom end of the strap (check out the photo to see what I’m talking about).

I’ve walked away impressed by the Ventilators—they’re surprisingly durable for a glove this breatheable.