Montane Prism Glove
Colour: black
Weight: 58g/pair (size M)
Price: £35
Material: shell, 100 per cent nylon; lining, 100 per cent polyester; insulation, 100 per cent polyester
Country of manufacture: China
Recommended wash: Montane recommends you do not wash these gloves.
The Montane Prism, a brand-new product from the Northumberland brand, arrived too late for our main gloves test, so we ventured out afresh with a pair of these ultra-lightweight gloves keeping our pinkies warm.
The Prism gloves are light: just 58g for the pair; add 6g if you include the tiny stuff sack that they come with, enabling you to pack them into something about the size of a kiwi fruit.
Although outwardly a simple pair of gloves, the Prism has a wealth of design features that make them a pleasure to use.
The outer shell is made from Pertex Microlight rip-stop nylon and has a half-elasticated cuff with a further fully elasticated section at the end, so there’s no fiddling with adjustments. There is a handy loop to help pull the gloves on and the fingers are pre-curved with box construction and roll-shaped ends.
There are fabric grip areas on the thumb and first two fingers. The gloves are very soft and though they feel quite loose, still allow good dexterity because of they don’t have that typical numb feeling encountered with most insulated gloves.
The insulation is Primaloft Eco 40g, which packs down very small and offers great warmth for its weight. It also retains its insulating properties when wet, which is important as the Prism Glove has only a water-repellent shell rathern than waterproof, so it won’t keep out heavy rain.
The Prism's apparent simplicity belies a number of innovative features
The inner surface of the gloves is brushed polyester fleece.
We had the Prism Gloves out in a variety of weather, from persistent driving rain to sub-zero hillwalking in strong winds.
The warmth when slipping on the gloves is immediate, and they enable you to feel you’re still in touch as the fabric and insulation are both so soft. The Pertex shell feels like it should be slippery, but the gloves passed our ice-axe test – it didn’t fly out of our hand when simulating use.
Very intricate tasks are difficult, as with all gloves, but simpler tasks such as pressing watch buttons and using GPS units were a doddle because of the much softer feel of the gloves compared to many we tested.
The fabric doesn’t feel like it would stand up to massive punishment, but we gave the Prism Gloves a good workout over a few weeks and it was resisting well. The Pertex Microlight has an abrasion resistance rating of 40,000+ at 12.5 kPa.
By which we think that means it survived more than 40,000 laboratory rubs at that particular pressure. We thought you’d ask.
Windblocking of the Pertex-Primaloft combination is good, and in sub-zero temperatures the gloves kept our hands warm.
Importantly too, given the rather alarming advice of Montane not to wash these gloves, the breathability was good, and there was no sweatiness inside the gloves when working hard uphill.
Happily, there was no whiffiness in the gloves even after some fairly strenuous testing, but it still seems a strange instruction to avoid washing the Prisms ‘due to the many different components involved’.
On a pretty atrocious day with heavy rain driven by strong winds, the gloves kept the rain out for a while, until succumbing to the British weather. So in a torrent, your hands will feel wet.
The Montane Prism gloves gets a Good Buy rating
But, as Montane said, the Primaloft keeps its insulating properties when wet, unlike most down.
So although there was an slightly uncomfortable feeling, particularly when grasping things and compressing the insulation, the Prism Gloves did keep our hands acceptably warm even in grim, wet weather.
The simplicity of the gloves and their instant warmth made them first choice on many outings. We don’t think they’re quite up to the job of a real winter day on the Scottish mountains and for a trip when you are expecting constant rain, but for most other situations, the Montane Prism Gloves were great.
We can imagine these gloves will be a boon for mountain marathon runners and ultrarunners. Their small compressed size and featherlight weight mean they can be slipped in a pack almost without noticing their presence.
They are great for other activities right from tootling round town to mountain walking in cold conditions.
Just make sure they don’t blow away when you put them down.
More details are on the Montane website.
Warmth 25/30
Waterproofing 16/30
Dexterity 8/10
Quality 7/10
Value for money 16/20
Total score: 72/100
