With over 17,000 nerve receptors in your hand, it’s immediately apparent how well a glove fits the moment you slide it on. My right hand was smiling by the time my fingertips touched the ends of the Racer Women’s Comfort 2 gloves. The inside is invitingly fleecy, and the fit closely follows my hand’s lines without being constricting.
I am not surprised. I have two other pairs of hand protection from Racer Gloves USA that have spent countless miles wrapped around the handlebars of a variety of motorcycles. Being a gloves-only company, Racer knows what’s essential to making a glove work—it needs to fit right while in action. This can be tricky if the focus is defending against cold weather, hard objects, or water. If the fingers are too bulky, if the fit across the top of your hand is constricted, or if your hands get sweaty and can’t breathe, it interferes with the seamless operation of levers, switches, and buttons, which can be a safety issue.
The Racer Women’s Comfort 2 gloves have navigated these pitfalls handily. The Comfort 2s are a waterproof, cold-weather glove with hard knuckle protection. A combination of nylon, leather, and faux suede make up the outer shell, with all elements well thought out, nicely cut, and cleanly stitched.
Extra padding is precisely where it needs to be—in the areas that get the most friction on the grips, and where your hands are most vulnerable in a fall. The goatskin palm provides flexibility and durability. Impact protection across the knuckles conforms to my hand without any tightness—frequently a weak spot in glove design. Parallel lines of reflective piping on the top of the wrist provide welcome visibility at night.
The Racer Women’s Comfort 2 gloves have a three-layer liner, each tasked with a different assignment: keep water out; body temperature in; allow your hands to breathe. That’s no easy feat, but the Comfort 2 gloves deliver. Testing the waterproof feature in real-world conditions is not simple when living in Southern California. Since the promised rain did not show up, I relied on submerging my gloved hand in the sink for five minutes—a much more challenging test than raindrops. The glove absorbed water, taking a lot of time to dry out, but the interior waterproof membrane keeps H2O from reaching my hands.
As for the insulation capabilities, I wore them in temperatures in the low 60s at freeway speeds without going numb. While that might not sound cold to those who experience real winter weather, I was satisfied. As someone with Raynaud’s phenomenon, my fingers can turn yellow/white with the temperature in the 70s.
A few days later, Mother Nature turned on a dime, and temps shot up to the high 80s. I pulled on the Comfort 2 gloves to see how breathable they were in unfair conditions. After a 20-minute freeway ride, my hands were pretty warm, though not clammy. A crude test, but enough to confirm that the Hipora lining was breathing as advertised.
The gloves are lightly elasticized on the underside of the wrist, and further snugged with a Velcro strap. The gauntlet is just the right length for weather-secure coverage, and opens wide enough to easily tuck your jacket sleeve in. A wide Velcro tab secures the fit to keep the elements out. Both adjustments are easy enough to manipulate with the other gloved hand.
Racer Women’s Comfort 2 gloves fit my hands well and allow enough flexibility for my digits to move freely. I can comfortably operate hand controls, and there is just enough room to add glove liners to extend the temperature range down another five degrees. It is marginally challenging to unzip pockets on my riding jacket, and I was unable to trigger the power switch on my helmet communication device when I forgot to turn it on at the start of a ride, but these are minor details.
The gloves come in Black only, sizes S-XL. Keep in mind that these gloves run a size larger than other Racer Gloves.
Waterproof cold weather gloves inherently have less tactile feel than summer gloves, but their raison d’être is clear—keep that riding window open as long as possible. Racer Women’s Comfort 2 gloves allow more days on two-wheels than four, and that is a good thing for $80 MSRP!
Racer Women’s Comfort 2 Gloves Review Photo Gallery
