The 5 Best Touchscreen Gloves

Fingers with conductivity: 5 | Materials: Nylon, Acrylic, Spandex, and Copper

The GliderGloves touchscreen gloves offer sleek, understated styling paired with excellent scores in conductivity, dexterity, and warmth. This knitted glove's lining manages to maintain hand warmth without feeling bulky, while still retaining its touch accuracy for typing. The rubberized texture runs across the entire palm of the glove and up the fingers to the last knuckle, increasing overall hand grip.

Compared to the other touchscreen gloves in our testing fleet, these gloves run a little tight. If you don't need a warm glove and value more dexterity, check out the GliderGloves Urban Style. The two styles are quite similar, the Urban Style just lacks the liner. We bought and tested both the Winter Style and Urban Style and recommend the winter version because of the added warmth.

Fingers with conductivity: 3 | Materials: Acrylic fibres

Even before considering its low price, the performance of the Achiou Winter Knit Gloves impressed our testers. They are one of the most affordable pairs of gloves we evaluated. Their rubberized texture extends through all of the fingers and covers the entire palm, increasing friction as well as functionality.

Unfortunately, these gloves are not as warm as their name suggests, and the wind cut right through them. Wind-blocking properties are an essential feature of a good winter glove. That said, if you don't need a full-blown winter glove, these are a great option. We tested most touchscreen gloves in a size medium, but for these, we had to buy a size large to get a similar fit, so you may want to size up.

Fingers with conductivity: 5 | Materials: Polyester, Elastane
If knitted gloves aren't your thing, but you still want a dexterous glove that interacts well with your phone, we suggest checking out The North Face Etip Glove. This model was close to being our favorite pick, but it wasn't quite warm enough. They ranked around the middle of the pack in our warmth test, so if you don't need the absolute warmest glove, this could be a great choice.

These gloves use many separate panels, which increases their comfort and fit, but we felt it also distracted from the experience of using your phone. The seams on the thumbs run across the exact spot we make contact with our phones. Surprisingly, this didn't affect the conductivity, but it was slightly annoying. We tested this pair in a size medium.

Fingers with conductivity: 5 | Materials: Micro Fleece and 3M™ Thinsulate and wool

The Mujjo Knitted is an excellent choice for anyone seeking a relatively warm, stylish, and functional glove. We thought the knitted glove with a built-in liner looked great. The rubberized texture covers the entire palm and all fingers to provide a secure grip when you need it.

These gloves are quite a bit thicker than some of the other models we tested. Though this adds to their warmth, it slightly diminishes their dexterity, leading them to feel a bit clunky and imprecise compared to thinner gloves. At times the liner bunched up under the outer, causing us to remove the glove to smooth it out. We tested a size large.

Fingers with conductivity: 5 | Materials: Polartec fleece, goat leather

The Black Diamond Heavyweight Screentap gloves are a great overall option for high exertion activities in cold weather. They performed well across the board in our test metrics and manage to keep hands warm while still maintaining a reasonable amount of breathability.

The warmth of these gloves also comes with some associated thickness. That thickness can feel a bit bulky at times, especially in the seams at the tip of the fingers. This is a problem shared by The North Face ETip gloves, but it is amplified here by the thicker fleece. We tested a size large.

Fingers with conductivity: 3 | Materials: Acrylic, polyester, Spandex

The ViGrace Winter Gloves have a simple, clean design and stylish appeal. This pair features a rubberized texture across its palm and all of the fingers. The increase in the rubberized surface area allows these gloves to shine in daily tasks and remain comfortable. These gloves are fairly warm, especially compared to some of the other knitted gloves.

On the downside, these gloves were less consistent at relaying our touch to the screen. The rejection rate is noticeably higher than the higher-performing gloves, especially in the thumbs. The thumbs rejected our input about 1 out of 5 times, which led to some frustration. Note that this model runs small — we tested these in size large to get a similar fit to many other medium-sized gloves.

Fingers with conductivity: 3 | Materials: Leather and fleece

The Elma Luxury Leather Gloves come in two constructions. Both share a leather outer but have different liner options: one is cashmere, and the other is fleece. We tested the cashmere version of this glove. The leather lends a timeless aesthetic that's at home in urban environments, while the cashmere inner makes these gloves warm and very comfortable to wear.

Unfortunately, the pair of Elma Luxury Leather Gloves we received were not the same size. The wrist cuff of one was wider than the other. We understand that mistakes happen and did not incorporate the sizing differences in the results of this review. The inherent downside of this model is that the thick and rigid materials give it an intrusive feel. We tested in size 9.

Why Trust GearLab

Our testing team of Chris McNamara and Jason Peters have tested over 1000 products in the last decade ranging from iPhone mounts to the best snow shovels. They tested these gloves on their bike commutes to work in temperatures ranging from 6-60 degrees Fahrenheit. In the lab, the performed side-by-side tests with each glove to evaluate how fast and accurately they could perform the same screen tests. They then took them outside and performed similar screen tests in a variety of temperatures and activities — from hiking to using our phones while on the chairlift at the ski resort. Our performance tests capture how each glove performs in a wide variety of conditions and temperatures.

Analysis and Test Results

Each glove was put through the same tests to evaluate the metrics below.

Conductivity

In our conductivity testing, we evaluated how well the gloves' touchscreen capabilities worked. Aside from daily phone use, we tested scrolling social, checking emails, and playing games. We had each glove type, “The sample is simply how well do these type? How long does it take?” We also played Tic-Tac-Toe with all of them.

Our control took 17.03 seconds with two mistakes. A blistering time, right? In this testing, the GliderGloves won with a time of 19.25 seconds with one mistake. The GliderGloves were far ahead of the next closest competitors. Behind that was a virtual tie between the Achiou Winter Knit Gloves, with a time of 24.53 seconds and two mistakes, and The North Face Etip Gloves with a time of 24.57 with two errors.

We consider conductivity the most critical metric because if a glove performed poorly here, there is not much reason to pay any extra for touchscreen capability.

Dexterity

We repeated several fine motor skills to test dexterity, including zipping up a jacket, buckling a helmet, and operating a camera's fiddly little buttons. Once again, we found the GliderGloves at the top of the pile. Their thin, knitted design made them disappear into the background while wearing them.

A close second in dexterity was the Achiou Winter Knit Gloves. They are also a nice, thin pair of knitted gloves that allow you to continue with your day and nearly forget you're wearing gloves. Nipping just behind the Achiou in third place was The North Face Etip Glove.

Warmth

To test warmth, we did a side by side comparison making and holding snowballs. This allowed us to investigate the insulation capabilities of each model.

We found the Elma Luxury Leather Gloves the warmest in this test, likely due to their thicker leather outer and warm inner lining. However, these weren't our favorite warm gloves because their test scores in both conductivity and dexterity were low.

Second place in warmth testing goes to the Mujjo Knitted gloves, which were nearly as warm as the Elma gloves. They are the second warmest glove we tested while still maintaining good conductivity and reasonable dexterity.

Conclusion

We were surprised and delighted at how many of the less expensive gloves performed well. Given the narrow spread of prices, we found that the right pair of gloves is more about your needs for touch accuracy and finger warmth than the overall cost. We hope our in-depth review helps you find the perfect gloves for your needs.