Spiro Men’s Active Bike Gloves

Review by Colin Dennis

Soft and durable lightweight cycling gloves that fit the bill like, well ... a glove!

A good pair of cycling gloves has a number of criteria to fit, not at least they must help absorb road shock and vibration and soak up moisture from sweaty palms so your hands remain safely attached to the handlebars.

Cycling gloves must also be snug fitting without cutting off the blood supply to your digits. If they are too big and baggy for your hands, the fabric that makes up the area around the palms will bunch up and crease to create an ineffective and uncomfortable grip with the handlebars.

On a more personal note, I find that if there’s too much padding on the palms, I find myself detached from any feedback from the handlebars; sometimes there can be an uncomfortable lack of security to a glove that has too much padding. Shock absorption is one thing, lack of security and control is an important safety issue. A rider should always feel in control of the handlebars and therefore, the bike.

Spiro’s bike gloves certainly allow you to feel in control of the bike with plenty of feedback from the road without too much vibration. The medium sizing was a little too roomy for my slim fingers; a small size might have fitted better. But saying that, there was very little bunching or creasing in the palms and my grip on the handlebars was always secure.

I really liked the neat little feature of the pull-tab on the middle fingers. This little trick saves all the hassle of getting your fingers in a twist when pulling the gloves of – especially if they’re a tight fitting glove.

The lightweight mesh backing allowed my hands to breathe in the warm September sunshine while providing just enough warmth during early morning commutes to work. The Velcro adjuster at the wrist is superb, this little number is often overlooked by other manufacturers looking to save weight and costs, but here, Spiro have got it just right: security and adjustment mingles perfectly with comfort.

Points of contact with your bike should never be overlooked or undersold, where your body comes into contact with your bike, never scrimp on the kit that protects your body. Shorts, shoes and glove all fall into that category.

You could do a lot worse than start with Spiro’s excellent Cycle Gloves