Gerbing Heated Jacket Liner and Gloves

I bought the Gerbing gloves and jacket a three years ago (2005) when my long lived Giali kit finally wore out. Firstly the jacket.

Plug it into the supplied battery connection and it heats up. Sizing is a bit funny, I'm a slim 6'1 and wear a medium. The sleeves could be a bit longer, the neck a bit smaller and the body should be good if weighed 18 stone. The jacket has glove connectors at the end of the sleeves and a connector for the heated trousers at the waist. Gerbing give a lifetime guarantee on the wiring, which is lucky as I've had to return two with wiring faults.

Gloves are fairly thick leather with Thinsulate insulation. Claimed waterproof, they get soggy rather than leak but still stay warm. They connect into the jacket sleeves or with a seperated supplied cable. They're adequate for the coldest of days but I've had a lot of wiring failures. Gerbing say they had a dodgy batch of the wire for the heating elements which meant I went through 7 pairs in the first two years. Two failures last winter plus the pair I keep as a spare bring the glove total to 10. Again funny sizing, I wear a small where a medium or large in any other make would fit.

There is apparently a new version of the gloves due out shortly and I'll post up some more when I've tried them.

As for a recomendation, the kit is good when it works and it's always been replaced by return post when it breaks, so make your own mind up.

Oct 09. As winter is approaching I thought an update would be nice. The jacket was still going strong at the end of last winter, so no complaints.

I received a pair of the new gloves in Oct 08 and used them daily through the winter. The right glove failed at the end of winter but by that time I wasn't using them every day. The failure may have been down to a small off I had in December, but who knows.

Last winter was fairly shitty. The roads were salted earlier than I've seen for many years and were salted through till late March/early April. By this time the gloves were in a fairly trashed state anyway with the salt having taken a fairly toll on them. I've got another pair I'll use for this year but if they break early I'll dump them and buy Klan.