Finding the right pair of gloves can make a huge difference to the experience of riding in winter.
These new Furygan Land DK D3O gloves use a new insulation material that promises to keep your hands warmer than other, similar linings.
The Thindown material is made from duck down and the way it’s manufactured allows its use in gloves.
Thindown’s manufacturer claims it’s twice as warm as using loose down (which you wouldn’t be able to do in a motorcycle glove anyway) and four times as warm as an equivalent polyester lining.
The lining sits inside an all-leather outer construction, with a breathable waterproof membrane sandwiched between the two to keep hands dry.
Add in a soft knuckle protector made from D3O and you’ve got gloves that mean business when it comes to quality materials.
The pricetag reflects that, with the Land DK D30 gloves launching at an RRP of £109.99.
I wore these gloves for around 200 miles, including an hour-long test ride where the temperature was stuck at 5°C and there was constant rain.
I was riding a Suzuki V-Strom 800DE, which has handguards that deflect some cold air away from the hands. The bike also has Suzuki’s official heated grips fitted, but I left those switched off at first so I could find out how effective the gloves were at keeping my hands warm on their own.
Photography: Jose Mas
It took 15 minutes of riding in the wet and cold for my hands and fingers to start tingling a little.
After half an hour I started experiencing a little numbness in my fingers, but was determined to keep going until I felt I needed some assistance from the bike’s heated grips.
At 45 minutes I felt I’d reached that point and turned on the grips at their highest setting to bring my hands back up to a comfortable temperature.
I found that performance to be consistent with the better winter gloves I’ve worn over the 22 years I’ve been riding.
There’s only so much we can expect from a pair of gloves when it’s cold and wet like this, and I was happy with the performance of the Land DK D3O in this regard.
For longer rides in temperatures like this I would say comfort will demand heated gloves or grips.
Switching on the Suzuki’s heated grips quickly restored comfort, and I feel this shows the insulating qualities of the gloves. Within 15 minutes of turning them on my hands felt perfectly comfortable, which proved the gloves were able to retain the heat provided by the grips.
The hour’s constant rain also showed the rain resistance qualities of the gloves, which held out all the water thrown at them.
I was disappointed by the lack of rubber blade, or even a suede panel, to wipe rain off my visor. However, in practice the seam of the left thumb seemed relatively effective at clearing water so it was less of an issue than I was expecting.
The Land DK D3O are short gloves and lack the long cuff of similar gloves in Furygan’s range, such as the Land D3O 37.5 and the Blazer 37.5.
This means you’ll need to make sure you have suitable length in the sleeves of your jacket to get an overlap between the two and seal out rain. In my experience, putting a jacket sleeve over the glove cuff is the most effective way of getting this overlap to stop rain getting in through the glove’s opening.
It’s also helpful if you have a wide opening at your jacket sleeve, because the cuff on these Land DK gloves can’t be tightened. When I wore a jacket with a narrower sleeve opening I found it tricky to get it over the top of the Land DK D30 gloves.
The potential difficulty in getting a decent overlap between glove and jacket is my main concern with this glove, so it’s worth checking in advance. The Thindown lining may be warmer than the 37.5 fabric used in Furygan’s other gloves, but if I couldn’t get a good seal between my jacket and this glove then I would favour the extra length of either the Blazer or the Land DK 37.5.
I found comfort to be good, especially the fleecy lining that felt great next to my skin, and the flexibility offered by soft D3O armour for the knuckle rather than a hard protector.
I didn’t find thickness to be a problem, although these are quite thickly wadded and they should definitely be considered as winter gloves.
Fit is a little different from the norm and I found these gloves to be slightly large in the palm yet just long enough in the fingers. I think riders with long fingers and slender hands may struggle to get a size to suit both.
The Land DK D3O gloves are approved to the basic Level 1 of the CE standard, including knuckle protection, and this is in common with the vast majority of gloves on the market at the time of review.
I found they put up a decent fight against low temperatures, successfully kept out rain and proved comfortable. I'd recommend, as long as you can get a seal under your jacket.
