Any Love for Agloves?

Scribbled by Lethal Illness @ 12:30 PM on December 23rd, 2010.

Winter – it’s cold, snowy [in New York], and a pain in the ass to use your capacitive touchscreen devices when your fingers are covered with gloves. Oh, you just got your first smartphone this summer and didn’t know gloves don’t work on most touch screens!? Sure, you could always cut the fingertips off your gloves but that will just leave your fingers cold and stiff. I think I’ve found a solution – meet the Agloves.

Agloves Logo

Agloves are specially designed unisex gloves that are supposed to work with capacitive touchscreen devices. How do they work? Well as their name and logo suggests (which is great branding and marketing by the way), Agloves are made with silver-coated-nylon fibers intertwined with comfortable material so that they’ll keep your hands warm while bringing conductivity to them. This works out because the element [#47] silver is the most electrically conductive element and capacitive touchscreens work based upon the conductivity your skin produces. The science and theory makes perfect sense and looks great on paper but does it actually work like it’s supposed to? Luckily, I’ve got my hands on a pair to review thanks to Agloves CEO Jennifer Spencer.

First Impressions

My Agloves arrived in New York from Colorado super quick in eco-friendly frustration free packaging. I immediately opened them to find the gloves neatly placed and tagged along side two “give-a-friend” cards and a little press printout. The print materials are of nice quality and have an attractive green, olive, and white color scheme. The tag on the pair of gloves states a little about their product while the “give-a-friend” cards have clever sentences with a logo and the site address on the opposite side.

As for the Agloves, they have a very stylish modern look to them because of the silver-coated-nylon fibers. They do have the product’s logo on them slightly down from the pinky-finger on the forehand side, which I find slightly obtrusive although it doesn’t take from the design.

Overall they are very attractive, in fact they look better than they do on the products website. Actually, one might think at first glance because of how attractive they look; that they might be uncomfortable – at least that was my concern. While in my hands they felt very durable and stretchy but not elastic stretchy like you can fit 10lbs of bologna into a 1lb package.

Meet the Agloves

Comfort & Warmth

While putting these gloves through some tests and taking pictures I obviously had to have them on and contrary to my belief above; they were actually extremely comfortable despite how good they look. I realized that the longer I was wearing the Agloves, the warmer and more comfortable they became.

According to their site’s neat size chart; because the circumference of my hand was an even 8”, I should be a “M/L”. While it isn’t a big deal the gloves were a little snug. But if you think about it, that’s probably what kept my hands warmer and more comfortable. I also think they are a little snug because if they weren’t, they might not work as well. I’m only bringing it up because some people don’t like a snug fit. Like I said not a big deal, but worth a mention.

Wearing the Agloves

In all honestly, I usually don’t like the feeling of gloves regardless of the material. However, the Agloves made an unusual exception. Especially being my assumption of how uncomfortable I thought they would be.

Performance

One of the most important factors of any product is making sure it does what it claims. Comfortable and stylish are only opinions of each consumer, but doing what your product claims to do is something that either is fact or fiction. In order to test my Agloves, I’ve gotten a bunch of devices owned by my family members to test all different levels of screens and sensitivity. Sure, I could have just used my iPhone and called it a day – but that wouldn’t be a HidinginSanity review.

The gadgets I decided to test goes as follows; iPhone 4 (w/ ZAGG Invisibleshield), iPod Touch 3G (w/ Speck CandyShell), Samsung Seek (w/ generic screen protector), LG Dare (w/ generic screen protector), Lenovo S10-3t, and the trackpad on my Macbook Pro.

First things first, the iPod and the 3 phones all easily unlocked and navigated through their respective menus and apps. The same devices minus the Seek (because it has a physical keyboard) all were very responsive while typing on but unless you memorized the spacial differences between the letters/keys you may have a little bit of trouble hitting the right key. This is because the glove adds an inevitable bulk. Albeit a small bulk, it’s still a bulk added to your finger in which you can’t fully see which tiny key you’re about to hit, but this won’t be an issue if you’re an avid user of your device. I also assume this wouldn’t be too big of a problem on something a bit bigger like an iPad being that while the iPhone and iPod Touch in landscape mode wasn’t a problem since the keys are bigger.

Agloves in action with iPhone 4

I thought it would be good to see if the Agloves could do more then just work with PDAs. So I explored with the fairly ugly Lenovo S10-3t which is a netbook tablet with a mediocre yet sensitive soft capacitive touchscreen. The S10-3t worked just as good with the Agloves as they would without them. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to improve the performance of the S10-3t whether you wear Agloves or use it in the nude.

Finally, I threw a complete curve-ball flying 100 MPH at the Agloves: the trackpad of my Macbook Pro. The Macbook Pros’ trackpad is made of a special silky glass that works like a capacitive touchscreen so I figured it has to work – right? Well, it did – kind of. With the Agloves I had to apply a slight bit of pressure that I wouldn’t normally need for the trackpad to pick up my touch. Multi-touch gestures worked great as long as I still applied that litte bit of pressure. Unfortunately the one thing I noticed that would not work is the ability to tap-to-click, neither with one finger for left click nor two fingers for right click. However it is important to mention that Agloves do not claim to work on trackpads.

Opinions

The one true gripe I have is sometimes when you first put the Agloves on, the stitching at the end of the fingertip might get in your way while using your device. It is easily fixed once you move it slightly up towards your fingernail it is perfectly fine and won’t get back in your way unless you take your gloves off again. There isn’t really too much they can do to get around that as most gloves have the same stitching at the fingertips.

Another idea for improvement would be to maybe find another way to make them even thinner while keeping the same warmth and comfort. This would probably fix the tap-to-click problem with the trackpad on the Macbook Pro and make Agloves approved for use with more than just capacitive touchscreens. A thinner solution would also help the less tech-literate users that don’t know their touchscreen keyboards see them better. I think it is possible being that Agloves already found a revolutionary, original idea in using silver in their gloves so I’m sure they can make another significant advance.

The last idea I have is a bit of a design issue rather than a product feature improvement. I think it would be clever to move the Agloves logo from where it is by the pinky-finger to the end forehand side of the wrist. This would be a little more stylish and more importantly much less obtrusive looking.

The Verdict

Before my verdict, I think it is extremely important to mention that if you aren’t satisfied with your Agloves you have 90 days to return them to get your money back. I believe 90 days for an accessory-like product is pretty lengthy, but it really shows their commitment and confidence you’ll like their product. It’s also really good to know Agloves are both washable and snow-compatible so you don’t have to keep them hidden in damp conditions. However, I think the most important feature to keep in mind about the Agloves is that all 10 fingers will work on your touchscreen (which is great for multi-touch gestures) while gloved, unlike similar competitor products that only support one or two fingers.

Agloves - The Perfect Electronic and Winter Accessory

Overall, based upon my pretty pleasant experience with the Agloves I think they are perfectly worth their $17.99 [+ $3.00 U.S. shipping] price tag if not more. Agloves are a necessary item in both your arsenal of electronic and winter accessories! You can order yours today via their website.