Its snowing and the weather has been extremely cold, imagine this, you’re going to work in the morning with your winter attire and all of a sudden your phone rings and it’s that important email you forget to reply to, with the Gloves on, your normal notion will be to take care of it when you reach office but until then, it keeps running in the back of your head to reply to the email, isn’t it?
If you remove the glove and reply to the email your hands will turn into icicles, what do you do?
Enter The North Face Etip Gloves
Almost everyone of us have a touchscreen smartphone, unless you own a Blackberry! and the capacitive screen require a finger interaction, a naked finger to be precise, try using a traditional glove and it would be nothing short of a nightmare.
The North Face have launched the The North Face Etip gloves which should keep your hands cosy and warm at the same time allowing you to tweet, play games, and generally navigate your way around your phone when out in the cold. MobileFun were kind enough to sent it across for review.
These gloves have an extreme versatile fitting and look elegant too, it offer flexibility to do plenty of phone, tablet and Laptop touchpad related tasks.
What is the sliver thingy on the glove you may ask, well thats the magic part, The gloves have a conductive tip made of silver metallized ripstop nylon on your thumb and index finger that touchscreens are responsive too. The other three fingers on each glove are normal.
The North Face calls it Xstatic, Both your index finger and thumb on each side of the Etip Gloves have this silver fiber tips which lets you use any capacitive/resistive touchscreen device including trackpads and touch-sensitive click-wheels. We’ve testing the Etip Gloves using the iPhone 4S as well as the Magic Trackpad, iPad 3, the built-in trackpad on a MacBook and even Nexus 7 Tab and it works like a charm.
The palms of the gloves are equipped with raised silicon dots for a better grip, and we found the gloves very comfortable, and although thin, they are still very warm.
The Biggest Question you may ask is, how does typing with the gloves fare?
In the beginning it takes time to adjust and get used to, but once you’re through, you can type almost easily, also you maybe able to use limited multi-touch gesture since only 2 fingers has the Silver ETip, Auto-correct will be your best friend while typing.
The Silicon grip which is ideal for using a phone etc is not as good to open a bottle of juice or anything of that sort. Also don’t expect to go Mountain Climbing with these gloves, they’re not that grippy.
Technical Specifications
- Multisport
- Fabric: 93% polyester/7% elastane
- Palm Material: Silicone grip pattern
- Water Proof: No
- Touchscreen Compatible: Yes, Capacitive/Resistive
- Gender: Unisex, although it says for Men
Would have been a fun touch to have a red LED fingertip for “ET, please call home” applications. 😉
Botton Line:
There have been a lot of mixed reviews in the market, but we want to clear the air and say that if you’re looking for a comfortable way to use your Touchscreen Smartphone in the current weather, they’re far better than the gloves available in the market. Also feel free to check out more iPad Mini accessories at MobileFun!
