Tested: Black Diamond Wind Hood GridTech Gloves

 As someone with perpetually chilly hands, I'm always on the lookout for an awesome pair of gloves or mittens to keep me warm.

These count as both!

What it is: A pair of grid fleece gloves with a deployable wind- and water-resistant shell mitten

The shells roll into themselves at the cuffs, and they have a clip to keep them together

Why you'd want them: I've struggled to find gloves or mittens that are good in rainy weather near the freezing mark, and these are the best option I've discovered to date!

I'm quite pleased with them

Duration used: About 3 months - purchased online end of December, arrived early January

Price paid/purchased from: MSRP is $49.95 USD / $64.99 CAD as of Mar 2023 - I paid $50 CAD + tax during a Boxing Day sale

The silvery fabric at the fingertips is electroconductive for using your phone, and there's a thinner, non-gridded fleece-backed slightly stretchy fabric between the fingers

What rawks: When worn as gloves, they offer decent dexterity and quite good grip thanks to a pattern of silicone dots that cover the inside of your thumb, first two fingers, and most of the palm.

I mean I wouldn't perform surgery in them, but I seldom attempt that while running

The e-tip fingers work passably (I've never encountered a pair of e-tip gloves or mittens that did particularly well), with perhaps a bit more precision due to the fabric wrapping around the tips of your pointer fingers and thumbs rather than the pads of them, so you have a better idea of what you're actually poking on the screen.

The bands are quite narrow, though, and if you have nails that protrude past the ends of your fingertips they may not work at all

The gridded fleece provides a good amount of warmth (though very minimal wind resistance), while also breathing incredibly well and allowing you to dump excess heat.

Turned partially inside out so you can see the grid fleece interior.
It's 224g Polartech Power Grid - a well-respected insulating material for high output activities

They're very light and pack down quite small. The mittens stow nicely in the cuffs, turned in on themselves and kept in place by a narrow silicone strip at the wrist - it doesn't even really seem necessary as they don't often make contact, but seems to be there to keep the slick Pertex Quantum Pro mittens from slipping out.

They have not deployed on me even while running quite exuberantly 

The mitten shells offer excellent wind resistance, and what I'd consider enough water resistance: by that I mean they will keep you dry even in reasonably heavy rain long enough to start sweating, at which point it no longer really matters if they start to wet through.

The best part, though? The mittens include a cover for your thumbs!

I have never actually purchased a pair of gloves with flip-over shells before because they never had any coverage for the thumb, and mine get very chilly

They do a great job of keeping my whole hand warm: my palms usually don't get cold, so I don't mind that there's no coverage there - it actually helps dump excess heat, preserves a bit of grip (as the mittens don't have any silicone grip dots), and makes them quite easy to get on and off even while moving.

No, I did not try to film with my phone clutched in my teeth while running - you'll have to settle for something shot in my kitchen

The mittens stay in place quite well once you put them on, and I still seem to be able to use my phone at least as reliably through them as through the gloves without the shells. 

I find the shells inobtrusive when rolled into the cuffs, but I do make sure I don't use any sleeves with thumbholes with them

What sucks: There are some dimensional issues. I ordered a size Small (I couldn't find XS anywhere in Canada), so I did expect them to be a bit big.

I'm a bit less than 7" from wrist to middle fingertip

..which puts me in an XS (these gloves are men's/unisex sizing)

The finger length, though, is actually pretty good - I surely would not want the thumb to be any shorter. I did not, however, anticipate there being quite so much extra girth.

I don't have particularly svelte hands, but there's a lot of extra fabric width-wise

This is particularly surprising as the cuffs are incredibly tight. The fabric used seems to be a double layer of the same fleece-backed, hard-faced fabric used between the fingers, and it has very little stretch to it.

It is difficult to get the gloves on and off at any time, and nearly impossible when they're wet

If my hands were anywhere near wide enough to take up all that excess fabric in the palms, I would not be able to get my hands into the gloves with the cuff design. My other minor beef is that the gloves are quite long, extending a good 2"/5cm past my wrist bone.

This - coupled with the tight cuffs - means they bunch up on the back of my left hand, as the cuff butts up against my watch

This also means that the one tiny bit of reflective on the whole of the gloves - a small Black Diamond logo on the base of the mitten shell (there's nothing on the grid fleece glove) - is generally hidden by the sleeve of my jacket.

Not exactly a beacon in the darkness

Also - despite wearing a size larger than the size chart recommends - I don't have much extra room at the tip of the mitten, and that's with my hand fully flat; it's comes up almost snug when my hand is in a fist, so if you're near the top of a size by the chart I would go up one or risk them being too short. Conversely, if you have small hands - I usually wear a size Large women's glove - you probably won't be able to find a pair that even remotely fits you, as even the XS would have a lot of women's hands positively swimming in them.

Not a lot of extra room inside the mitten, though

Speaking of swimming: the downside to the open palms is that rain can make its way inside the mittens as you run, and the water resistance of the Pertex Quantum means that water can actually pool inside them.

..as I recently found out.

The elephant in the room is that these heckin things are ridiculously expensive. When I first saw them in an ad served to me on some social media platform or other, I was ready to buy them on site...until I saw the $65 CAD price tag! I waited for a sale, but even at that - and the premium, brand-name fabrics used - I feel they're overpriced. My other nitpicky complaints are that the seams are a bit rough until they've been washed a couple of times, and since there are nineteen of them that make direct contact with your hands and fingers, donning them for the first time was a highly disappointing experience. I also kind of hate feeling the little clip that attaches the one to the other swing when I run, and will most likely end up removing it.

Freezing rain did bead nicely on them on a recent shorter run, though!

What I'd like to see: A shorter, more expansive cuff, and a better price point.

What I'm saying: I am actually quite pleased with the performance of these overall - they keep my hands warm and dry enough, even on multi-hour runs in rain and cold temperatures. The versatility to add or remove the wind- and water-resistant layer makes them useful in a wide range of conditions, but the fit could really use some work. At this price point, I find it difficult to truly recommend them, even though I reach for them quite often. If they could sort out the cuff and general sizing, they'd truly be a winner!

We'll give them one thumb up for now

For further edification: There don't really seem to be any independent reviews of these, so you'll just have to go with those from Black Diamond's own site, or Amazon.