GripGrab Nordic 2 Windproof Deep Winter Lobster Gloves

The GripGrab Nordic 2 Windproof Deep Winter Lobster Gloves are very, very warm and highly windproof, making them ideal for those crisp, clear, frosty winter days. Protection against the cold is excellent and they deserve their deep winter moniker, but the three-and-one finger split of the lobster claw design won't suit everyone.

Check out our guide to the best winter cycling gloves for more options.

The Nordic 2s are designed for arctic winter rides where the temperature hovers around zero, with added wind chill. As GripGrab is a Scandinavian company, you'd hope its designers have plenty of experience and know-how in making a glove that can cope with the most digit-numbing of conditions. But while GripGrab can certainly make a very warm glove, you may not find it perfect for cycling.

The toasty warmth comes from a 100 per cent windproof outer fabric combined with a Primaloft Gold Active inner lining, which gives an exceptionally high warmth-to-weight ratio that works outstandingly well at keeping glacial weather at bay. Heading out into a brisk northerly that saw perceived temperatures struggling to reach zero, I couldn't feel anything penetrating the gloves, while the rest of my body was taking the brunt of a chilly hit despite extensive layering.

And performance doesn't deteriorate after several hours on the bike, as temperatures might drop and chill and tiredness creep in. Even when my woolly-socked and winter-booted toes were starting to feel the nip, my hands were still as warm as when I left the house.

The forward-facing fabric of the glove has a high breathability rating of 15K (15,000 g/m²/24h if that means anything to you), so your hands will remain comfortable even if you work up a sweat. It's easy to take these gloves out when temperatures are too high; I'd say anything above 5°C would be too warm, depending on how your extremities deal with the cold. Taking them out on 10°C days made sure they had plenty of potential to get sweaty moist inside, but they never felt uncomfortably clammy.

The inside of the gloves is a Primaloft Gold Active+ material that's reassuringly fluffy to slip your hand into before heading out into the elements. Using a lobster design and bunching fingers together so they can cosy up for warmth is a common winter glove tactic, but while the outer three fingers are grouped together in a fat claw, they each get to snuggle into their own little compartment within that broader part of the glove.

The inner doesn't want to come out with your fingers when removing the gloves, either, which is a trait similar gloves can often like to annoy you with.

The gloves are best saved for those cold but crisp days as they're not waterproof. They do have a PFC-free DWR (durable water repellent) coating on the outside that will shrug off light rain and spray, but if my experience of this eco-friendly DWR is anything to go by, it will need topping up with an aftermarket wash-in repellent at intervals. I was lucky in not getting caught in the rain with these as they weigh as much as a damp bream when wet.

The wrist opening is nice and capacious and happily fits over the top of any layers of jerseys and jackets you may have on, although GripGrab suggests wearing the sleeves of your jacket over the top of the cuff of the gloves to help reduce water or snow seeping in.

The cuffs are held tight to provide a draught-free closure via a Velcro tab that's big and sturdy enough to adjust easily with the gloves on. A tight elastic seam around the wrist is a secondary barrier ensuring no chills make it down towards your hands.

The wind-facing part of the glove is very thick, and for all the cosseting bulkiness, the palm is a thinner but still cosy Primaloft Gold insulated material, with just the one small pad ensuring you still receive plenty of feel through the handlebar, while retaining warmth.

The inside of the thumb has an extra layer of material to cope with this high pressure area. Those thumbs are extensively covered in a thin fleece material which is a great snot wipe, perfect for the voluminous involuntary dribbly nasal discharge that a sharp wintry wind can blow up one nostril and down the other.

There's a slim reflective side panel along the outer edge of the fingers in a nod to dark and signalling visibility. There are also reflective graphics on the tip of the index finger and the logo is reflective too. If this isn't conspicuous enough for your liking, the gloves also come in a very high-vis yellow.

The palm and fingers all have silicone strips running across them that help with grip, and the fingertips have touchscreen connectivity, although as they're on the podgy side, dexterity isn't wonderful; you're not going to be wanting to compose any important mid-ride emails on them.

I'm usually a medium size in a glove, if on the slender side of the scale, and there was plenty of room in the medium Lobsters for my dainty paws – useful for trapping a warming layer of air inside or with enough space for a pair of liner gloves if you really do feel the cold. The gloves are available in six sizes, so finding the perfect fit should be easy.

Dividing opinion

While they are by far the warmest gloves I've ever enjoyed deliberately venturing into zero temperatures in, they're not without issue, and that's because of the way the gloves divide your fingers. GripGrab says the lobster-style design has been evolved to have an optimised finger split of three and one, and I'm not entirely sure about that.

How effective the three/one finger bifurcation is for you will very much depend on what bike you're riding, how good the brakes are, and how many fingers you like to brake and shift with.

On a road bike, in most circumstances, the GripGrab gloves are perfectly fine; there's a little bit of relearning to do as hand dexterity is obviously compromised with your fingers being both separated and bunched together, and it might feel a little odd initially, but you get used to it.

On the hoods it's easy to brake with either just the index or all of the lower three fingers, and STI shifting with either a lever swipe or electric button press is made super easy with the index finger separated from the main claw, or there's enough movement in the fatter bit of glove to shift with the top finger in the lobster if that's your preferred way of doing things.

It gets a lot trickier in the drops when you might want to do some serious and controlled braking, though. You might find braking with just the one finger tricky or even hazardous depending on finger strength, dexterity, and how efficient your brakes are. If you need more than one finger hauling a lever to stop, you're forced to use all four fingers on the brake and rely on just your thumb holding onto the bar, which feels precarious and can lead to a significant loss of both confidence and control compared with a thumb and two lower fingers holding on.

When I'm in the drops I'm definitely a two fingers on the bars, two fingers tugging the brakes kinda guy, and asking around, I'm not alone, so if you're the same then transitioning to using just an index finger might be a stretch.

On a mountain bike with decent brakes it's easy to do one-finger braking – it's often a recommended technique – and in this situation the GripGrabs' finger division was mostly fine, and thumb and index finger shifting was fine too.

But my tatty flat-barred town bike with old rim brakes definitely needs a lot more ooomf on the levers than one finger can provide, and it's at least a two-finger stopping machine, so having to brake with all four fingers of the GripGrab gloves felt very strange and having just a thumb wrapped round the bar certainly made control nervous.

I've used a few lobster style gloves before and, all things considered, I much prefer a two-by-two finger pairing. Your fingers might feel different.

Value

We've reviewed plenty of winter gloves on road.cc, but the lobster design is a little rarer, so there aren't many to compare these GripGrabs against.

The closest road.cc has reviewed recently are the Spatz Thrmoz Deep Winter Gloves – normal winter gloves that come with an integrated fold-out wind-blocking cover that turns your four fingers into a two-by-two lobster claw. But while innovative, they don't come anywhere close to the GripGrabs for warmth. They cost more, too: £79.99.

Specialized has its Softshell Deep Winter Lobster Gloves that come in significantly cheaper at £55. They have a two-by-two finger division, and are made from a Polartec material, but do look less sophisticated than the GripGrabs.

Sportful's Lobster Gloves are a similar price. They come with a two-by-two claw and claim to be both wind and waterproof, and come with a toggle closure on the wrist to keep draughts out.

If you're happy with a normal-fingered pair of gloves for the coldest weather, the Bontrager Velocis Softshell Cycling Gloves do a fine job according to Liam. Good down to -7°C according to Bontrager, they also offer a good degree of water resistance, have a decent snot wipe, good phone connectivity and all-digit dexterity. And they're a fiver less than the GripGrabs.

You can spend less: the Polaris Trigger Waterproof Gloves are £39.99 and separate the fingers the same way, but according to Neil they lacked warmth.

One bargain pair well worth considering are the Galibier Barrier Deep Winter Gloves, reviewed here back in 2019 but still available. Well, they will be in time for next winter. They've gone up since then, but not by a lot, and are currently £28.68.

Verdict

Beautifully windproof and warm gloves for dry zero-degree rides, but hampered by their lobster finger split