Heated Gloves vs Heated Grips for Cold-Weather Touring

Every fall, right around the first cold front that pushes through Pittsburgh, I get the same question from the guys at the shop: heated gloves or heated grips? I've been riding for about 35 years, and for most of that time I figured heated grips were the sensible answer, the permanent fix that was always on the bike. Then I bought a pair of SAVIOR HEAT heated motorcycle gloves and spent the last two seasons riding with them, including the annual run from Pittsburgh down to Myrtle Beach, about 600 miles each way. I've changed my answer, and the reasons are probably not the ones you'd guess.

Here's the short version: if you ride in real cold and your hands are the first thing to go numb, heated gloves do more for you than heated grips, because they warm the whole hand, fingertips and the back of the hand included. Heated grips warm the palm side only, where your hand touches the bar. The tradeoff is battery management, and you have to be honest with yourself about that part, because a glove with a dead battery is just a glove.

	SAVIOR HEAT Gloves	Heated Grips
Warmth coverage	Battery heat covers the whole hand, fingertips and the back of the hand included	Warms the palm side only, where your hand touches the bar
Fingertips	Heated all the way to the tips, which is where the cold hurts first	No heat past the palm, so fingertips stay cold on long descents
Install	None. Charge the batteries and put them on	Handlebar install and wiring into the bike's electrical system
Use off the bike	Wear them for snowmobiling, skiing, shoveling, or a freezing parking lot	Stays on the bike
Battery management	You have to remember to charge them	No battery to charge, powered by the bike
Works with your existing gloves	These are the gloves, so you wear them or you don't	Pairs with whatever gloves you already own
Best for	Cold-weather touring, whole-hand warmth, and heat when you're off the bike	Daily commuters who want set-and-forget heat on one bike

How I Compared Them

I didn't test these in a lab and I didn't test them on a dyno. I tested them the honest way, by being cold. The SAVIOR HEAT gloves went on every ride from late October through March, including the two-day push to Myrtle Beach with an overnight stop in Virginia. I wore them in rain, in wind, and on the kind of 28-degree morning where the frost is still on the seat when you walk out to the garage. I also put in miles on a friend's touring bike with heated grips, same roads, same weather, so I could feel the difference back to back. His bike has a set of aftermarket grips wired to the battery, the kind that stay on the bike year-round, and on the days we rode together I'd switch bikes at the halfway point to remind myself what the difference felt like.

The gloves run on rechargeable 7.4V batteries with an adjustable thermal control that heats up in seconds. The outside is 40% lambskin and 60% polyester, and the listing calls them water resistant, windproof, and breathable. They're also listed for skiing and snowmobiling, which tells you something about how they're built. I bought the Large, and the Large fits me the way a glove should: snug through the fingers, no binding across the knuckles.

The Myrtle Beach run is the test that matters to me. Six hundred miles each way, two days on the road, with an overnight stop in Virginia. The first day usually starts cold in the mountains and ends mild near the coast, and the second day is the reverse. By the time you're at mile 400, you know exactly what your gear is made of. That's where the gloves earned their keep.

Where SAVIOR HEAT Gloves Win

The big one is whole-hand warmth. A grip only heats where your palm touches the bar. Your knuckles and the backs of your fingers are still out in the wind, and your fingertips, which have the thinnest skin and the worst circulation, stay cold no matter how hot the grip gets. With the SAVIOR HEAT gloves, the heat wraps the entire hand. I felt the difference on the long descents through Virginia, where the temperature dropped and the wind stayed constant. My hands stayed warm in the gloves. On the same stretch with grips, I was flexing my fingers inside my gloves to keep them from going numb.

The second win is that there's nothing to install. Heated grips mean taking the handlebars apart, routing wire, and connecting into the bike's electrical system. The SAVIOR HEAT gloves mean charging two batteries the night before and putting them on. I'm a retired pipefitter, so I can wire a bike. I just don't want to spend a weekend doing it, and I definitely don't want to do it on a bike I'm about to trust for a 600-mile trip. The gloves also come off the bike with me. I've worn them across a freezing rest stop parking lot and while scraping frost off the windshield. Grips can't do any of that.

There's also the touchscreen thing, which sounds like a gimmick until you're standing at a gas pump in 30-degree weather trying to pay with your phone. The listing says these gloves are touchscreen compatible, and mine work well enough to get the job done. It's a small thing, but small things matter when you're cold and tired at mile 400.

Where Heated Grips Win

Let me give the other side its due, because it's a real one. Heated grips are always there. You get on the bike, the heat is on, and there's no battery to remember to charge. For a commuter who rides the same bike every day and doesn't want to think about gear, that's a genuine advantage. You never find yourself at a gas station at 6 a.m. with dead gloves and cold hands, kicking yourself for forgetting to plug them in. The heat also keeps coming as long as the bike is running, because it's fed by the bike's electrical system, not a battery pack with a finite charge.

The other win is that grips work with whatever gloves you already own. You can wear a light pair in the fall, a heavy pair in January, and the heat is still there underneath. Heated gloves are the whole system. If the battery dies, you're wearing an unheated pair of gloves, and they're not even your favorites, they're the ones you bought for the batteries. And if you sell the bike, the grips stay with it. The gloves stay with you, which is either a pro or a con depending on how you look at it.

Grips also don't change the feel of the controls. Some riders, especially guys who have been riding a long time, don't want anything between their hands and the bars. A heated glove adds a layer of lambskin and polyester between you and the lever, and you do feel that at first. It took me a couple of rides to stop thinking about it. If that kind of thing bothers you, grips are the answer, because the grip is the bar.

At mile 400 of a cold touring day, grips warm your palms and gloves warm your hands. That's the whole difference.

The Tradeoffs Nobody Mentions

First, battery discipline. The SAVIOR HEAT gloves run on 7.4V rechargeable batteries, and if you forget to charge them, you're riding with dead weight on your hands. I got into the habit of plugging them in the night before a ride, the same way I charge my phone. It's not hard, but it is a habit, and habits take a couple of weeks to stick. If you're the kind of person who forgets to charge things, this is the tradeoff that matters most.

Second, fit. These are real gloves, so they need to fit like real gloves. I wear a Large, and the Large fits me well, snug through the fingers without binding. If you're between sizes, I'd size up rather than down, because a glove that's tight across the knuckles cuts circulation, and cold hands are half circulation. The listing says they're ambidextrous, which sounds like a small thing until you're trying to sort left from right in a dark garage at 5:30 in the morning.

Third, the care instructions say machine wash, which surprised me for anything with a battery in it. I've never put mine in a washer. I wipe them down, let them air out, and they've held up through two seasons of hard use. I'd treat the machine wash note as 'the shell can take it' rather than an invitation to put your batteries in the washing machine.

What to Look For in Heated Gloves

If you go the glove route, the things that matter are the things I just described: whole-hand coverage, rechargeable batteries, and a shell that keeps wind and water out. You want the heat to reach your fingertips, because that's where the cold hurts first. You want an adjustable thermal control, because the setting you need leaving the driveway at 28 degrees is not the setting you need at noon when the sun is out and the asphalt is warm. Fit matters more than any other spec. A heated glove that's loose will slide around and let cold air in at the wrist, and a glove that's tight will squeeze the blood out of your fingers before the batteries even get a chance.

You also want a glove that does more than one job. The SAVIOR HEAT listing covers skiing, snowmobiling, cycling, and winter riding, and I've worn mine for shoveling the walk and scraping the car. A glove that only works on a motorcycle is a glove you'll use a few months a year. A glove that works everywhere is the one that earns its spot in the gear bag.

The Bottom Line

If I had to pick one, I'd pick the SAVIOR HEAT gloves, and it's not because the grips are bad. It's because the gloves solve the actual problem. The problem on a cold touring day isn't that your palms are cold. It's that your fingertips go numb, your knuckles ache, and your hands get stiff, and stiff hands are a safety problem when you still have 200 miles to cover. Heated gloves solve that. Heated grips solve part of it.

The way I see it, grips are a motorcycle upgrade. The gloves are a rider upgrade. On a long, cold day, the rider matters more than the motorcycle. That's the whole argument, and it's why the gloves go with me to Myrtle Beach every year.

Who Should Buy Which

Buy the SAVIOR HEAT gloves if you tour in cold weather, if your hands are the first thing to go numb, if you want heat off the bike as well as on it, or if you don't want to spend a weekend wiring your handlebars. Buy heated grips if you ride the same bike every day, commute in the cold, already own a good pair of winter gloves, and want heat that's always there with zero thought required. And if you put the bike away in October and don't take it out until April, you don't need either one. That's a perfectly good answer too.

I'll put it this way. The grips are the sensible, permanent solution for the bike. The gloves are the practical solution for the rider. On the days I ride to Myrtle Beach, I want the rider to be warm, and that means the SAVIOR HEAT gloves go in the bag every single time. Linda rides pillion on the shorter rides, and she's said more than once that she can tell the difference when my hands are warm, because I'm not white-knuckling the bars.