Held Phantom Gloves Review
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The Held Phantom gloves come in right at the high end of the motorcycle gloves scale and as such come with a price tag to match, at a RRP of £179.99 they are definitely one of the most expensive gloves on the market. So are the Held Phantom gloves worth it? A lot of people say yes, let’s take a closer look why.
The first thing you notice is that the Held Phantom gloves are rather bulky compared to other high end gloves, but there is a good reason for that. No it’s not a winter glove, it’s because other than the exterior kangaroo hide, there are a lot of extra layers of kangaroo hide and impact resistant foam and gel to make this glove one of, if not the best impact and abrasive resistant glove on the market. Looking at the glove you would be forgiven for thinking that being on the slightly porkier side the Held Phantom gloves would be cumbersome and lack feel, but on the contrary the vast majority of customer reviews say the opposite, that the Phantom is both non obtrusive when riding and gives excellent feel through the kangaroo leather on the palm.
Another benefit of the kangaroo leather construction is that it is almost sweat proof. Standard cow hide is quite prone to soaking up sweat, and when it dries it makes the leather stiff. Kangaroo leather on the other hand doesn’t suffer as much from this problem. On the lower palm areas the Held Phantom gloves have been fitted with Sting Ray leather, a very tough leather with a very low drag coefficient. This means that if the time comes when you part company with your bike and you put your hands out to brace the fall, the Sting Ray leather will have a greater tendency to slide on the tarmac, rather than grabbing and transferring all that falling energy right into your wrist and up your arm. There is more Sting Ray leather on the knuckles of the ring and little finger, backed up by special shock absorbing foam to further reduce energy transference into the hand. Behind the Sting Ray leather the glove has been fitted with shock absorbing gel pads to further help take some of the shock of the knocks away.
Further protection on the Held Phantom gloves come in the way of a knuckle shell with carbon-fibre at it's core, with a ceramic polymer matrix and Kevlar fibre coating, which all sounds lovely, but to put it into perspective it's said it takes 8000 revolutions with glass-paper abrasive before the knuckle area starts to develop any sort of visible holes, so it's safe to say the knuckle protection won't be wearing out in a hurry. This same mix has been used for cuff area where two large panels of the stuff have been placed on the outside of the glove to further help the glove slide.
A very nifty and well thought of safety feature is the Kevlar sleeves around the little and ring fingers. In an accident these two fingers are the most vulnerable, particularly to twisting, so Held have fitted them with Kevlar sleeves that are slightly joined to help reduce just that.
Other comfort features worth mentioning are the perforations on the inside on the fingers and back of the hand to aid cooling, as well as the double closing straps to give the glove a nice tight and secure fitting. Also the Held Phantom gloves have been manufactured with step seam machines, meaning there is no inner welt, meaning fewer pressure points against the fingers and hands and general better comfort all around.
Conclusion
Looking at pictures it's hard to see why the HELD Phantom gloves are worth so much, but as you dig deeper it all makes sense. So much time, thought and care has been put into the construction of the HELD Phantom gloves that I believe it is truly worth it's price tag, but also that it is one of, if not THE best sports motorcycle glove on the market today.