Held Fresco Air Leather Gloves - Black

I have always had issues with hard armour rubbing against my bony hands and I needed a full gauntlet to go over the sleeves of my RST Sabre leather jacket. I don't have a commute and only ride when there's no salt on the roads, so these are perfect for me.

All the armour is soft except the palm slider, which is kind of a mix. It's like loads of hard beads stuck into some kind of textile material. Solid enough to slide on yet very flexible at the same time. With hard armour and depending on the glove, I can get discomfort or even pain, mostly on the knuckles, within a rather short period of time. These Held gloves I can wear all day.

Sizing was mostly spot on, though I did find the thumbs a little on the short side compared to the fingers. This may improve with use as they are leather and they do have stretch panels.

Ventilation is acceptable, though I'm comparing it with my DXR Spring gloves which use a mix of textile and leather, the textile bits let in a lot more air than perforated leather ever will. I use a silk under-glove too, mainly for hygiene reasons, but they do the job well enough without being too airy to also use on cooler days with a wind blocking thermal under-glove.

I would have liked the cuff to be a bit bigger and a bit longer for a better fit over the ends of my jacket sleeves. If your jacket sleeves are rather bulky then you might have issues but since mine are tight fitting leather it works okay.

I had to return the first pair I tried as there was something sharp, probably stitching or glue, digging into my fingers. A tiny chunk of leather was missing from the palm area too. No issues with the 2nd pair though. May be a Q&A problem but for a sample size of 2 it's impossible to say, I could have just been unlucky. I received the usual top class service from SBS which made this easy.