Gore C5 Gore-Tex Thermo winter gloves review

Gore's C5 Gore-Tex Thermo gloves fend off wind and cold really well, while still being breathable enough that your hands won’t get sweaty on warmer days.

The C5s make use of Gore’s expertise in specialist fabrics to give you excellent windproofing and insulation for cold weather rides. They’re right at the top end of Gore’s winter glove price range and it feels as if the designers have thrown their best tech at them.

• Best cycling gloves
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Even in cold, damp conditions at around 4°C they were comfortably warm from the start and stayed comfortable once I had warmed up – there was no feeling that they were getting sweaty with harder efforts.

That’s due to the really breathable uppers, made of Gore’s DWR-treated windproof fabric. They’d certainly be comfortable down to lower temperatures than we normally get in the south of the UK.

The gloves make use of elastane in their fabric to provide a bit of stretch, which is just as well because the fit is quite close. I found that my thumbs, in particular, were at the ends of the gloves, so if you have longish digits, you might find that you need to size up for enough room.

The plus from this is that, unlike some other gloves I've tested, I really didn’t feel that my hands were slipping around inside the gloves as I rode.

Gore’s synthetic leather palms are well padded, so the undersides of my hands were as warm as their backs.

Again, they don’t get sweaty and there’s extra padding for the pressure points in the heel of the palm and the underside of the knuckles, for good comfort on longer rides. You also get a large sweat/rain/snot wipe on the thumb and forefinger.

I did find that the rather stiff, bulky material these gloves are constructed from made working the small lever on Shimano mechanical STI shifters a bit awkward, resulting in some mis-shifts. I was often pushing both levers at once without meaning to. That’s an issue likely to be exacerbated if you have Di2 electronic shifting.

The Gore C5 Gore-Tex Thermo gloves have a shorter cuff than many winter gloves. Nevertheless, I found that there was plenty of overlap with jacket sleeves and the close fit and wide Velcro tab meant that there was no wind ingress.

The Gore and Gore-Tex logos on the backs of the gloves are reflective and there’s also a reflective fabric dart on the outside of the smallest finger, so low light visibility is pretty good.

If you want more road presence, the Gore C5 Gore-Tex Thermo gloves are available with yellow backs rather than the black version tested.