Went out riding for about an hour this morning to test my Begleri heated gloves and Snailax heated/cooling seat pad. (Links below if you are interested.)
Took the gloves out for a dog walk first, about 20 degrees F. Batteries installed easily after charging overnight, glove buttons cycle through red-blue-green when you plug batteries in to let you know everything is working.
Batteries sit in a pocket above your wrist, there is a strap that snugs them up so they do not bounce on your wrist. Separate draw string snugs the gauntlet and keeps out wind - even when riding at 80 mph! Gloves are easy to turn on and adjust, even while riding, LED lit buttons are easy to see so you can tell high-med-low heat at a glance.
On high, gloves heat up in about 1 minute (about the same as heated seats in my SUV). From there, I found that low was plenty for walking at 20 F. Once in the Slingshot, I put both gloves up to medium and headed for Huntsville. Country roads, twisty enough to be fun, still a bit slick in some shady spots, and they spread pea gravel here instead of sand and this junk accumulates in the center of the lane making control of Ruby a little challenging.
Begleri gloves have execelent grip. Never a problem with them slipping on the wheel or the stick shift. The touch screen feature does work, after a fashion anyway. You need to have your fingers all the way into the tips of your glove, it sometimes takes a poke or two, but I was able to use the touchscreen okay. Fingers were also dexterous enough to use the ride command buttons without much trouble. Grip, touchscreen, and dexterity were all significantly better than my Carhartt gloves.
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Once on the road and at speed, I found that my outboard hand was getting more wind, feeling the cold more. Turned that glove up to high, and was warm & snug for the rest of the 90 min ride. On the way back, I stopped at Daylight Doughnuts for a breakfast sandwich. Met a couple of old fellows who asked about Ruby, shared stories about their HD & Goldwing bikes. One guy noted "heated grips are worthless!" I showed him the gloves & he asked to try one on. He was delighted and noticed that the gloves heated the top of your hand were the wind bites worst. I hadn't noticed before, but he was quite right, and at the end of the 90 min ride, my hands were warm, not cold and aching as is usual in this weather!
The Snailax heated seat pad was not as effective. Above 40 mph, the flow-through air design was bringing too much cold air in, this cancels all the heating! When tooling around Huntsville at 25-40 mph, the pad felt great! Lots of heat, felt great on my back & thighs - never too much on my bottom, no troubles with "sweaty ball soup" as the Captain likes to call it! I suspect that if I put a small towel over the forward part of the seat pad, it would cut down on air flow & help the heater do a better job at all speeds.
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I like both products and would recommend them. About $100 for the gloves, $50 for the seat pad. You would be in for $325 including a y-adapter for the 12V plug to outfit you and your riding partner. Well worth it to keep everyone warm & comfy.
Links:
Begleri gloves:
https://www.amazon.com/Heated-…2&sprefix=begleri+&sr=8-3
Snailax seat pad:
