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By Nelson Schneider - 04/19/15 at 03:29 PM CT
Do you live where it gets cold during certain times of the year? Maybe you live in the desert where it gets bitterly cold every night? Maybe you just live in the Midwest where the weather can’t make up its mind whether to be Summer or Winter?
Presumably, no matter where you live, you own a touchscreen device of some sort (unless you’re Amish). Bitter cold temperatures and the bare fingers typically required to operate our modern smartphones and tablet computers don’t go well together. Fumbling with a touchscreen device with Winter gloves or mittens is a recipe for disaster via cold glass shattering on the frozen ground after inevitably dropping the thing, whereas foregoing hand protection is an invitation for frostbite at the worst, generalized discomfort and misery at the best.
Worry not, touchscreen owners living in cold environs! Ansell has you covered with their line of touchscreen-treated gloves. I received a pair for Christmas, and have finally had ample time to put them through their paces.
The main reason special touchscreen gloves are necessary in the first place is the fact that modern touchscreen devices have largely transitioned from resistive screens to capacitive screens. Whereas resistive screens function via deforming the surface of the screen with pressure – and thus can be activated via any poking tool – capacitive screens function via deforming the electrostatic field generated over the surface of the screen – thus necessitating pokes via some kind of electrically conductive material. Human bodies conduct electricity; wool mittens do not.
The solution to the gloves-on-touchscreens problem, then, is a simple matter of smearing a layer of electrically conductive material on the fingertips of the gloves. This is exactly what Ansell has done with their touchscreen compatible gloves, as each nylon glove has the palm and fingers completely slathered in polyurethane.
The result is gloves that, surprisingly, work just as well on touchscreen devices as a bare finger… that is to say, tolerably well, but with occasional-to-frequent misreads. I tested the Ansell touchscreen gloves on a Windows 8.1 tablet, a Windows Phone, an Android tablet, and a Microsoft Touch Mouse, finding the experience identical across all devices. The gloves work just like a bare finger, but are marginally fatter than a bare finger. I never had any problems scrolling, pinching to zoom, or selecting links while wearing Ansell’s gloves… at least no more than I usually do.
While they work great as capacitive touch manipulation devices, the Ansell touchscreen gloves don’t work particularly well as gloves. The nylon material is thin and provides very little protection from the elements. Likewise, the thin material and the capacitive coating combine in a way that makes the gloves feel like they could easily fall apart with too much real-world use. Of course, they are sold in cartons on Amazon for $5/pair (slightly less than mine cost), so they are obviously not meant to last, nor are they meant as work gloves.
Do-It-Yourselfers would probably get more benefit out of slathering some polyurethane on a pair of higher-quality gloves of their own choosing. I’m particularly fond of the form-fitting gloves worn by police and airforce personnel, which are made from quality materials and allow full range of motion while providing protection. I have no reservations about recommending Ansell’s touchscreen gloves for their functionality, but the build quality just isn’t good enough.
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