OTEX XT-850 Premium Gloves review – I think these might be the very best winter gloves for photographers

If you shoot outdoors a lot in the winter, then a pair of proper photography gloves is a godsend. They’re designed with specialist features such as flip-back fingertips, to aid with operating your camera in cold weather. These OTEX XT-850 Premium Gloves from Australian maker OTEX are an upgrade to its previous XT-801 design, with some neat extra features that promise to make them some of the very best on the market.

Otex XT-850 premium gloves at a glance:

• $119.95 (approx £73 inc postage)
• Fold-back tips for thumb and two fingers
• Zipped pockets for handwarmers
• Waterproof and windproof shell
• Fleece-lined, insulated inners
• Available in four sizes
• otexoutdoors.com.au

In terms of their basic construction, these gloves employ the same layered structure as before. The outer shell is made of waterproof and windproof ripstop nylon, and there’s a second waterproof liner too. Inside, you get insulation courtesy of 3M Thinsulate, rounded off by a fleece inner lining. A Velcro cuff secures the gloves snugly on your hands.

I’ve used the XT-850s on a couple of freezing cold mornings already this winter, and found them to be warm and snug. In this respect they follow on from the 801s, which I used a great deal last winter, including in cold, wet weather. Both are even better than the Vallerret Markhoff Pro V2s that I used previously.

Otex XT-850 premium gloves key features:

• Four Sizes: You can choose between S, M, L and XL, using a size guide on the firm’s website
• Touchscreen-friendly: The fold-back finger and thumb tips are coated for operating touchscreens
• Pockets: Large zipped pockets on the back are designed to accommodate handwarmers
• Grippy palm: Non-slip coating on the inner fingers and palm provides a secure hold on your kit
• Velcro cuff: This closes up to keep your hands warm

So what are the updates? Firstly, where most photography gloves have folding fingertips for your index fingers and thumbs, these go a step further in also having them for your middle fingers. This can be especially useful with cameras that have function buttons on the front beside the handgrip (of which there are many).

Secondly, there are now large pockets on the back of each glove, secured by waterproof zips. While you could use these to store such things as memory cards or a lens cloth, they could also be useful for handwarmers. Indeed, OTEX will sell you a pair of reusable gel handwarmers that match the gloves for £8. If there’s a flaw in this plan, though, it’s that the pockets are placed outside the gloves’ insulation layer, which means that much of the heat dissipates outside. But they’ll still be better than nothing.

In other respects, these gloves behave in the same way as impressed me so much with the XT-801s. Place them under a running tap, and they simply shrug off the water. Their touchscreen tips work well once you get the knack of using the tips of gloves themselves, and not your own fingertips. And those fold-back tips expose only the ends of your fingers to the winter chill, keeping the rest of your hands warm. In freezing temperatures, though, I’d supplement them with thin liner gloves.

The more affordable option

If you balk at the idea of spending this much on photography gloves, it’s well worth considering the firm’s XT-801s, which cost $89.95 / £59 including postage. The main differences are that these gloves only have a single fold-back fingertip, rather than two, and they don’t have pockets for handwarmers. But they’re still very good indeed.

Read my review of the OTEX XT-801 photography gloves.

Otex XT-850: Our Verdict

Overall, the OTEX 850 Premium Gloves take the same winning formula as their predecessors and add some useful refinements that make them even better. Yet they’re still very reasonably priced compared to their rivals. They’re probably the best photography gloves you can buy right now.