eBay is a place for bargains… sometimes.
Other times, it’s a place for utter disappointment. The old saying of “if it looks too good to be true, it probably is” rings through my ears as I write this review. Seriously, what was I thinking? Troy Lee gloves for a fiver. Really?
I’d spotted them on eBay almost by chance and figured they’d be worth a punt. I knew they weren’t Troy Lee Designs from the get go (the price gave it away) but I figured they might well be factory rejects being sold off cheaply. They were advertised as new with tags and the description read well. I guessed they’d be worth a fiver and at the very worst I could just use them for the occasional ride if they weren’t great. They turned out to be awful.
The sizing wasn’t the problem, in fact they fit almost as well as my perfectly fitting 7iDP gloves, and so I thought I was on to a winner. The gloves pulled close to my fingers, were thin enough that I’d have good feeling through them and yet weren’t so tight that they caused a loss of dexterity.
That’s where the positives ended. After testing them at Lady Cannings (not the most dangerous place in the world), they left my hands a wreck. The seams rubbed on the end of my fingertips and the gloves themselves pulled and bunched up underneath my hand as I rode. They were so bad that they actually caused blisters to form on my hands, including one underneath a callus on my palm! The result was three days of discomfort as my palms and fingers recovered from the rubbing. Never have I experienced this with any other glove, ever.
It’s a shame they performed so badly because the material feels competent enough to take a bit of a beating and provide some form of light protection should I crash (though I can’t possibly mark the glove up for protection when it literally performed in the opposite manner by wearing away my hands). The styling is spot on too. They look almost identical to the 2017 Troy Lee Airs, aside from a bit of fading on the main logo on the rear of the glove and a not quite perfect velcro strap.
What am I going to do with them now? Who knows. Maybe I’ll cut them up and use some of the material to make something. Or maybe I’ll send them to the charity shop. All I know is: I’m never wearing them to ride in again and I’ll stick to buying actual gloves from the real companies.