Gear review: Furygan Revol Evo

Furygan Revol Evo

When it comes to motorcycle gloves, I suppose there are really only two things to consider:

1) Will they protect my hands in a crash?

2) Will they keep my hands warm/cool?

The first question is rather hard to answer definitively without, you know, hurling yourself from a motorcycle at speed. Yes, you can get a good sense of a glove's durability from safety ratings. You can smack the leather and hard plastic and tell yourself that you feel it would hold up well. But you don't actually know.

So, the bulk of my review of the Furygan Revol Evo glove is centred on how well they answer the second question. Unfortunately, after having ridden with them for a while I have to say they've not answered the question very well.

The gloves are marketed as winter gloves, and were bought on that same heady day after signing up for my CBT that I bought my helmet. Both items were promptly hidden from my wife until I was found out a few months later. Because they are winter gloves, one would expect them to keep hands warm in, you know, the winter. But unless you're spending your winters in Arizona I can't say they really live up to the billing.

For instance, on the super-bad no-good Mod 2 day it was cold enough that a tiny bit of snow was blowing around as we rode out to Swansea (a). You don't get more wintry than snowfall. And the gloves were simply not up to the task. Halfway there my right hand had frozen up so badly that I only had feeling in my index finger and thumb and had to force us to make an early pit stop. 

But, hey, perhaps that's an extreme example. And after all, winter in the southern parts of the UK is rarely cold enough to produce snow. You are far more likely to encounter temperatures ranging from 3-8 C (37-46 F). Those are the temperatures in the range I experienced on my trip to Dyrham Park, or a week before when riding in the Brecon Beacons, or a few weeks before that when I rode down from Mid Wales. In all those cases, however, I suffered cold hands after only about 30 minutes of riding.

Meanwhile, I discovered when I first got my bike and rode it down from Cheltenham that the gloves are sweat-tacularly hot when riding on a day that is 17C (62F). Indeed, my experience is that these gloves have a pretty limited temperature range: somewhere along the lines of 9-15 C (48-60 F).

With that in mind, then, I'd say they are sort-of adequate late-spring/early-autumn gloves. And to their credit they are cheap, comfortable and, at least, more waterproof than the all-leather summer gloves I use. After less than a year of use, however, there are definite signs of wear and it should be noted that the first time I used them, I set them on a radiator to warm them up and that caused the glue on the Velcro forearm strap to melt.

All in all, I suppose it's another lesson of You Get What You Pay For and if you can afford to do so, I'd suggest buying different gloves. That's what I plan to do. 

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