Bioflex Glove Zero

Pull the Bioflex Glove Zero gloves on your hands and they immediately feel like a pair of scuba diving gloves. The extremely long cuff ensures there's a generous overlap with your jacket, so there's no chance of water running down the arms of your jacket and into the gloves that way. They do make your hands look like something out a cartoon, a result of the thick neoprene.

On the handlebars you notice how squishy they are; that's good for comfort. However, their thickness does isolate you a little, though you still have a pretty good feel of the controls.

In the rain, these gloves work brilliantly. Neoprene is a good material for wet weather riding because it works not by keeping the rain out, but insulating against the chill. Eventually your hands will get wet, but unlike with other gloves, your hands won't freeze when they get soggy.

The downside to this is the lack of breathability that is neoprene's downfall, which eventually leads to sweaty hands. I used these gloves in heavy rain, in reasonably warm temperatures, and didn't find them lacking breathability quite as much as other gloves, certainly enough that I didn't get excessively sweaty in them. There's no getting away from the clammy feeling though when you remove them, revealing prunes for fingers. For some it may be a small price to pay for guaranteed warm hands in freezing rain.

They will suit some people better than others. I suffer from shockingly bad circulation and my hands will freeze up at the hint of a drop in temperature, so I found these the perfect accompaniment to the current weather, wet but not excessively cold. Having functioning hands in freezing rain and hail is enough to make any other issues fade away.

The biggest blemish for these gloves is the seams can be felt on your fingers and hands, and while this doesn't cause discomfort, it does mean they're not the most comfortable gloves you could wear. Given how good they are in the rain though it's perhaps a small price to pay, and after a while you don't really notice it, especially when the rain is pinging off your face and dropping off the end of your nose.

If you can put up with the slightly clammy feeling and occasionally sweaty hands, these are an excellent choice for riding in the rain. I'd like to see them working on the construction and remove the internal stitching - Castelli's Diluvio gloves manage to get around this with thermally welded inside seams. 

Verdict

Good gloves for riding in the rain but the seams are irritating.