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Tired of cheap gloves tearing on you while doing messy kitchen, house, or car work? Our review team researched the top-selling disposable gloves available today and purchased nine of the best to compare in a series of comprehensive tests. After using them in real-life situations, we determined the durability, comfort, fit, ease of use, temperature resistance, and versatility of each pair. We got our hands dirty, so you don't have to. Our results can help you find the right pair of gloves for your unique needs.
The Ammex Gloveworks Industrial Green gloves are up for just about any tough task. Of all of the gloves we tested, their thick nitrile material resisted cuts and punctures the best. The outside is textured with small bumps that greatly increase friction when working with wet or greasy materials, thereby reducing the risk of dropping whatever you're holding. Given the extra thickness of the gloves, they offer a relatively decent amount of temperature resistance. That, combined with their gippy outers, makes them great for dishwashing or automotive work.
These gloves are quite thick, and if you are performing delicate tasks that require serious dexterity and tactile sensation, they might give you some trouble. While they slide on easily, it takes a bit of tugging to get them off. All in all, these were the most versatile and rugged gloves we tested and are ideal for kitchen, cleaning, automotive, or any other messy work you find yourself doing.
The Gloveworks model are our top choice, based on their durability, comfort, and versatility.
The vinyl Ammex Gloveplus Industrial Clear gloves are versatile and an affordable option great for food service work and cleaning. These gloves proved to offer some of the best protection from hot water, making them great for washing dishes and general cleaning. The larger fit allows you to slide them on and off without a struggle, ideal for food service tasks where you might be changing pairs quite frequently.
On the downside, the baggy fit and thick vinyl noticeably reduce finger dexterity and tactile sensitivity. These gloves are also highly susceptible to puncturing and tearing. However, these are great for those seeking an affordable glove that doesn't need to be approved for medical exam use.
The Gloveplus Vinyl gloves are super thin and slide on easily.
The MedPride Powder-Free Nitrile Exam gloves are your basic nitrile exam gloves that hit the sweet spot between durability, comfort, and price. They are incredibly form-fitting and nonrestrictive, molding over our tester's fingers perfectly, leaving no dead space above the webbing between their fingers. These gloves felt thicker than the other nitrile exam gloves we tested and proved to be more cut and puncture resistant.
While the MedPride nitrile gloves fared better than most, it's important to keep in mind that none of these gloves are actually puncture-resistant. These also offered very little protection from hot water. Overall, these gloves are ideal for folks seeking a durable nitrile glove that offers good dexterity and tactile sensitivity.
The Med Pride are decently comfortable and offer mid-range durability.
The Curad Latex Exam gloves are a comfortable and durable option for people without latex sensitivities. The smooth latex feels soft against the skin and slides on with no issue. They offer fairly good protection against punctures and cuts. While they are thick enough to withstand some abuse, they aren't so thick as to significantly diminish your tactile sensations.
These gloves proved to be durable in use, though our testers did rip a few when trying to pull them on. They offer some protection against hot temperatures but wouldn't be our first choice for an extended stint of dishwashing. These comfortable gloves are great for medical exams, cleaning, kitchen work, and any other messy work — as long as you're okay with latex.
The Curad Latex Exam gloves are silky smooth and highly comfortable, so long as you don't have a sensitivity to latex.
The Basic Vinyl Synthetic Exam is one of the more affordable exam gloves in our lineup. The thin vinyl doesn't hinder your ability to use touchscreens and trackpads but still offers some protection against hot water.
Putting on these gloves is difficult as they don't have a ton of stretch, which also noticeably reduces hand dexterity. Whether or not they would tear at the wrist while slipping them on during testing was a hit or miss. Moreover, resistance to punctures and cuts is mediocre at best. Still, these gloves are ideal for those avoiding latex who need exam gloves that are more affordable than most nitrile options.
The Basic Vinyl Exam Gloves don't have a ton of stretch but are quite affordable.
The Dre Health Nitrile Exam is another quality non-latex option. These nitrile gloves are durable and comfortable, and they offer above-average puncture and cut resistance. The nitrile material is form-fitting, moves well with your hands, and does little to diminish tactile sensitivity.
The biggest shortcoming is the sizing. These exam gloves run incredibly small, even compared to the other Dre Health gloves we tested. In line with the other nitrile models, we found these do not offer any real significant protection from hot water but are otherwise great for just about anything requiring disposable gloves.
Be sure to size up with the Dre Health Nitrile Gloves, as they run quite small.
The Dre Health Advanced Synthetic gloves are made from a proprietary blend of nitrile and polyester. This proprietary mix of materials seeks to capture the best of both worlds. These gloves are more form-fitting and give you far more sensitivity than pure vinyl gloves.
Given the high vinyl content, these gloves are less durable and stretchy than pure nitrile gloves. We found them more puncture-resistant than vinyl but less so than pure nitrile models. All in all, they're an affordable option offering many of the same benefits you get with nitrile gloves yet at a reduced price.
The Dre Health Synthetic offers a good mix of the comfort and dexterity of nitrile, with the affordability of vinyl.
The Wostar Multi-Purpose Nitrile are the thinnest nitrile option we reviewed. These thin and comfortable gloves offer tremendous tactile sensitivity without compromising durability. Though they weren't the highest-performing pair regarding durability, they still provided good puncture and cut resistance considering their thinness. They conform to your entire hand well and barely restrict normal hand movement.
These gloves are a little hard to get on, but once they are on, they fit well. The thin nitrile material offers almost no protection from hot water. These gloves are ideal for people looking for an extremely thin pair of gloves that maximize tactile sensitivity.
The thin Wostar Nitrile offers great tactile sensitivity.
The Clinivex Disposable Vinyl slide on and off without much issue. They run fairly true to size, and if anything, a little large. Through our testing, we discovered that erring on a larger size is always a good choice because gloves that are too small often end up tearing.
The thick vinyl has minimal stretch and is somewhat restrictive when performing delicate tasks. These gloves offer mediocre cut and puncture resistance and little protection from hot water. They're ideal for cleaning or food service work where you'll be running through gloves all day long, and dexterity isn't as important.
The Clinivex Vinyl are an affordable option, good for house cleaning and kitchen work.
Credit: Buck Yedor
Why Trust GearLab
Our team began by researching the top-selling disposable gloves available today. We then narrowed the selection down to nine types that looked most promising. We independently purchased all nine to compare them in a series of controlled, side-by-side tests.
We cleaned our house, worked on our cars, and did our best to put these gloves through real world abuse.
We tore a lot of gloves trying to find the most durable.
Nitrile gloves are a great all purpose option.
Buck Yedor heads up our disposable glove testing. Between his time spent working in commercial kitchens and as an emergency medical technician, Buck has spent a lot of time wearing disposable gloves. He knows the importance of having a comfortable, durable pair that can keep your hands clean during the messiest jobs.
Credit: Laura Casner
Analysis and Test Results
After receiving all the gloves, we put them to work to see how they stacked against one another. We looked at durability, fit, comfort, ease of use, temperature resistance, and the versatility of each pair.
Credit: Laura Casner
Durability
Durability takes into account how easily the gloves tear, cut, and puncture. Gloves are most likely to tear when being pulled on. Throughout our testing, we made sure to try on at least five of every glove and note how often they tore. To test for cut and puncture resistance, we used a box cutter to see how well each pair resisted damage. The Ammex Gloveworks Industrial Green is far and away the most durable. The thick nitrile was highly durable. Both the MedPride Powder-Free Nitrile Exam and the Wostar Multi-Purpose Nitrile offered excellent durability.
The thick Gloveswork gloves proved to be quite puncture resistant.
Credit: Buck Yedor
The Clinivex Disposable Vinyl and the Ammex Gloveplus Industrial Vinyl Clear had some of the worst puncture resistance. The latex options like the Curad Latex Exam seem to offer protection somewhere between Nitrile and Vinyl.
The Nitrile was consistently more cut resistant than Vinyl.
Credit: Buck Yedor
Comfort & Fit
A big part of how comfortable gloves are is how much they stretch and conform to your hand. Across the board, we found that nitrile gloves offered the greatest amount of stretch and conformity. If you need high amounts of hand dexterity and a close fit, the MedPride Powder-Free Nitrile Exam and the super-thin Wostar Multi-Purpose Nitrile were extremely comfortable. Our testers also enjoyed the feel of the latex Curad Exam. The latex feels soft and almost slippery against the skin.
Med Pride nitrile gloves are some of the most comfortable on skin gloves we tried.
Credit: Buck Yedor
The Basic Clear Vinyl have a baggy fit and doesn't conform to your fingers very well. All of the vinyl gloves we tested had very little stretch, making them fairly uncomfortable for tasks requiring high dexterity.
The Dre Health Synthetic gloves are comfortable and form-fitting, but a little more restrictive than other Nitrile options.
Credit: Buck Yedor
Ease of Use
Ease of use is just how well you can get your hands in and out of a glove. All of the gloves we tested are powder-free, so their ability to glide over your skin is a function of material choice and stretch. The Curad Latex Exam were some of the easiest to pull on. Vinyl also proved to be an excellent option for quickly getting gloves on with minimal fuss. The less form-fitting and stretchy a glove is, the easier it is to get on. This obviously has some downsides, but if you take your gloves on and off frequently, it's something to consider.
The thick Nitrile and built-in texture on the Glovework's Heavy-Duty make them great to work with but require a little more effort to remove.
Credit: Buck Yedor
Nitrile options like Wostar Nitrile 2.5 Mil ultimately have the best fit but are hard to get on.
The added stiffness of the Nitrile Vinyl blend makes pulling the Dre Health Synthetic gloves on quite easy.
Credit: Buck Yedor
Temperature Resistance
None of the gloves in this review are specifically “dish” gloves, which are typically thicker and thus more durable and offer better insulation. For home use or cleaning, however, having a little extra protection from hot water can be a welcome characteristic in a glove. The Ammex Gloveworks Industrial Green offers the most protection against hot water. These thick gloves are also nicely textured, which makes holding onto wet and greasy dishes even easier. The Wostar Nitrile 2.5 Mil and the Clinivex Clear Vinyl gloves are too thin to offer any substantial protection against hot water.
The Ammex Gloveplus Industrial Clear offered decent protection from hot water.
Credit: Buck Yedor
Versatiity
Our versatility metric refers to how many jobs or tasks the gloves can handle. Can the glove be used for medical work, food service, automotive, or general cleaning? The Ammex Gloveworks Industrial Green is the most versatile because of its durability, comfort, and stretch. However, they aren't ideal for medical exam work. They are relatively thick and reduce tactile sensitivity by a considerable amount. The MedPride Powder-Free Nitrile Exam and Wostar Multi-Purpose Nitrile were the next most versatile. These options are appropriate for medical exams and ideal for cleaning, food service, and anything else that requires a thin glove.
The well fitting, comfortable, and durable Med Pride Nitrile gloves were highly versatile and excelled at many tasks.
Credit: Buck Yedor
The Ammex Gloveplus Industrial Clear are the least versatile. Their baggy fit and poor durability pigeonhole them into household cleaning or light food service work. The Dre Health Nitrile Vinyl Blend exists somewhere in the middle. They are more durable and comfortable than vinyl gloves but don't offer the dexterity and comfort of fully nitrile gloves.
The unique texture of the Gloveworks Heavy-Duty made them great for working with wet or greasy items.
Credit: Buck Yedor
Conclusion
After rigorously testing nine of the market's best-selling disposable gloves, our review team discerned each pair's best and worst qualities. We got our hands dirty in our test kitchen to see how durable, comfortable, temperature resistant, and versatile they were. Our comprehensive breakdown will hopefully help you decide which type of glove suits your unique needs and budget.
Nitrile gloves are highly versailte good for everything from medical exams to house cleaning.
