What's another product to complement your geekiness and keep your fingers warm during the winter months in the office?
Product: USB G-Gloves from Usb.brando.com.hk
Description: The "G" in "G-Gloves" stands for girls, because these USB heating gloves are supposed to be more suitable for girls' hands. However, I'm guessing that means girls aged 14 and under, because they're real snug on my hands (and I have small fingers). Each glove is made of wool and connects via USB to heat your hands.
How It Works: You can wear the gloves either with your fingers exposed through the holes, or with the top flap placed over your fingers. Each glove contains a USB cable and heating controls. Place the gloves on each hand and then connect the USB cables. Turn on each glove in the low heat or high heat settings. In order to actually feel the heat on your hands, you will have to turn over the flap to completely cover your fingers because that is where the heating pad is located. It takes about a minute for the glove to heat up when on low heat, and only about 10 seconds on high heat. They really do warm your hands! It's definitely a quick solution for me instead of having to put my hands in my pockets or run them under hot water! When turned off, the glove stays warm for only about 30 seconds, so if you feel a rush of hand chills coming on, you'll need to power the gloves again!
Performance: How hot do they really get? The company claims that every five minutes, the G-Gloves will rise ten degrees. To validate this, I borrowed an infrared thermometer from desktop analyst Joel Santo Domingo (thank you!). After leaves the gloves on low heat for a minute, they reached 80 degrees; high heat was 85.5 degrees. After five minutes, they reached 90.5 degrees on low heat and 92.1 degrees on high. So it's only the high heat that will increase just five degrees. This is fine though, considering right after I took the glove's temperature I pulled it off quickly because my hand was burning! There was even a pink mark on my knuckles from the heat!
Overall: My hands always get cold, especially while typing away at the office, so these heating gloves definitely come in handy for me. And, they really do heat well! They may not cure Raynaud's syndrome, but I definitely recommend them for anyone who is cold-sensitive! However, I do have a few caveats about the product: 1.) The gloves aren't made on one USB cable--so that means they take up two USB ports. 2.) You have to wear the flap over your fingers in order to get warm, which defeats the whole purpose of using them while you type. 3.) It doesn't warm your thumbs. 4.) Size doesn't fit all!
The USB G-Gloves sell for $22.00 at Usb.brando.com.hk. Or if you're of the male species, you'll want the USB Heating Gloves.
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September 21, 2006 1:33 PM
Just when I was thinking to myself that I don't think I could get away with wearing those at my new job and have them not think I'm crazy, I looked at the men's version. Much better! 22 bucks, too! Very nice! Still, I don't think I'll keep them up on high heat; I've burned my hands before cooking, and it's no fun, lemme tell ya. :) With the winter coming, this could be very very nice-and I have to admit, my hands do get cold easily. They'd be so comfy in these things! Something tells me that by the time you're finished with this series of articles I'm going to need a USB hub or two!
October 14, 2006 5:26 AM
Ridiculous temperature claim. Hideous ABCD labels. Actual wool? I mean vycuna, fine; but -huh-? What's the tiny mitten-hat about? True, Hong Kong can be cold and rainy. Let's face it though; these are for small children handing out lift tickets, logging where they put RF blasting caps and dynamite to do general winter maintenance in the mountains. Didn't the PRC win the -summer- Olympics, though? Do they not really care about that detail?