The Troy Lee Designs women's Luxe gloves are great all-around mid-weight full-finger gloves offering trail comfort in a stylish design. However, my hands did get quite stuffy and there are more competitive gloves on the market offering a little more bang for your buck.
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These lightweight trail gloves are of a slip-on design, which means there isn't a fastener around the wrist. The palm area is constructed with a single layer of soft material that's perforated to help promote airflow and prevent sweaty hands.
The palm, thumb and index feature has a pattern of silicone material to aid grip in all-weather conditions, and it's also compatible with touchscreen devices.
There are two colourways available, multi-colour snake print and oily iridescent floral black. Sizes range from small to extra large.
The Luxe gloves on test
Having tested a size medium pair of these gloves, I found them to be well-fitting, especially as I have long skinny fingers. However, I found the cuff to be quite small. So, it took some wriggling and pulling to get the gloves on and off again, and if you're someone who stops a lot to faff, admire the view or whatever else, these gloves take a little more than a fingertip bite to pull off - for me, anyway. Another thing to note about the cuff is that it comes up higher than traditional gloves, so it covers more of your wrist bone, which I quite like.
The palms offer no padding or inserts, which is fine if you have comfortable grips. While the perforations certainly helped disburse heat on muggy rides, it would have been nice to have some airflow between the fingers, like the TLD Ace 2.0 gloves. My hands became quite stuffy on warmer rides, especially as the cuff was tight enough to restrict airflow, and while gripping the bars, you end up covering all the perforations in the palms and fingers.
On the top of the hands, there isn't any protection other than the material itself. So if you're looking to get rough and rowdy on the downhills, or maybe you're just prone to wrapping your knuckles on rides, then you may want to consider a burlier glove like the Troy Lee Designs Gambit gloves. The material on the upper section is thicker than the Ace 2.0 gloves, and so it offers some wind protection, which is welcomed on downhill days and colder weather rides, but I wouldn't rely on these for ultimate wind protection or cold weather riding.
The lightweight material means that they dry relatively quickly once soaked. Although you may find the palm area a little bitty for the first few rides as the gloves "bed-in" and the softness of the palm area loses its top layer, this is fairly common for new gloves and doesn't impact the durability or performance overall.
And as we live in an age of social media and Insta-bangers, I'd be remiss, not to mention the touchscreen capabilities. Of course, this may vary depending on the brand and model of phone you use and its sensitivity to touch and material, but for my Huawei P30 Pro, these gloves interacted well with the screen.
Value & verdict
At £35 a pair, the Troy Lee Designs women's Luxe gloves are by no means the cheapest on the market. The Endura women's Hummvee gloves are a similar single-layer slip-on glove, and although it has a mesh backhand panel, they come in at £20. On the other hand (no pun intended), the Fox Ranger gloves at £25 are another single-layer slip-on type glove.
For an all-around mountain bike glove, the women's Luxe gloves are durable and stylish. The cuff provides more wristbone protection than many other gloves on the market, although they are quite tight to wriggle your hand through at first. If you're on a budget, other options are more affordable and offer alternative features that may be more suitable.
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