How to evaluate general purpose gloves?

General purpose glove is the most frequently worn glove day in and day out. They can be worn with a wide range of jobs. The quality concept of general purpose glove should be well defined. Durability should not become the only metric we evaluate general purpose glove, some other metrics are also worth your attention. There are four common metrics that can be used to evaluate one pair of general purpose glove. They are durability, dexterity, grip and comfort. Only gloves that combines these four aspects are good quality.

Durability This is one metric most people pay all or most attention to see when they buy general purpose glove. For poor economies, durability is the king and means all. Durability, if not all, is the most important factor for them to make their purchasing decision. For them, durability stands for the best value. What I want to emphasize here is that don’t put durability as the only one metric to buy a glove, you should examine the other three aspects.

Dexterity Dexterity determines how effective you can get your job done. An ambidextrous glove can make your job easy and save your valuable time during working. Some precision jobs can not be done with poor dexterity gloves and you have to take them off to finish what you are doing. This would expose their flash hands into risk. To achieve good dexterity,three requirements need to be met. The glove has to be flexible; You wear the right size; And the glove has to be with thin and shorter fingers.

Grip Gloves with good grip can save much of your effort; Gloves without good grip can make you exhausted very quickly. String knit gloves are with little gripping capability that fits light duty jobs; Latex coated glove with crinkle texture has good gripping in dry condition; Foam nitrile coated glove has a better gripping under oily and wet condition; Sandy finish glove has the best gripping in whatever condition, dry, wet and oily. Leather gloves and other flat finished glove has moderate gripping in dry condition.

Comfort Comfort now becomes a more and more important factor that affects buying decision of developing and developed economies. In China, I see more and more people cares about glove comfort and are seeking comfortable gloves in market. To get a comfort wearing experience, the glove has to meet a few requirements: The glove has to be flexible which allows hands move freely; The glove has to be not too tight in order not to feel much pressure; The glove has to be well constructed and not irritant to hand skin; And lastly it has to be breathable which decides the comfort for long time use.