Comparing Every Crack Glove Side By Side

Previously, WeighMyRack reviewed [nearly] every crack glove there is in great detail via individual crack glove reviews. This post compiles all our findings so you can compare all the crack gloves side by side.

Each series of infographics below covers the info that we have found to be the most helpful when choosing a glove. We also go into tips we’ve found after months (and years) of use, specific recommendations, and even a few warnings.

These graphs cover

• Brand Sizing (should you trust the size chart)
• Hand coverage (where will you be protected because of the design)
• Jamming performance (the size of cracks they perform best in)

As you might assume:

• green – good
• yellow – ok
• orange – not great
• red – not good

PLUS our ‘Rack-amended’ seal of approval harness logo for the jams we felt each glove performed best.

Click any image and scroll through as a full screen gallery to see how they change from model to model.

BRAND SIZING

In our experience, almost no brands have their sizing dialed. On average more gloves seem to fit snug to small, with a few fitting true-ish to size and fewer still running on the large side. If you are on the border between sizes, you should pay extra close attention to the brands size chart, along with our sizing recommendations. Generally, if you’re towards the bottom of a range you’re ok, and if you’re towards the top you will likely size up.

Bottom line: Measure your hand, check the chart, then go up or down based on our findings (seen in the chart above on the first column) for a given model.

HAND COVERAGE

The second column doesn’t reflect how good or bad a glove is for a jam, but rather the amount of your skin the glove protects ‘out of the box.’ The amount of coverage from green to red generally tells you how much supplemental taping you should expect to do for jams that fall outside the best performing areas of a glove.

For example, most crack gloves ‘score poorly’ in thumb coverage, but it doesn’t mean they are necessarily bad for a fist jam; they simply lack the built in skin protection that some additional tape can provide for your thumb. Basically, expect to tape for red zones.

JAMMING PERFORMANCE

Most models seem to perform decently in hand-sized cracks with a few doing better for chunkier fists, while very few have performed well in thinner jams. If you have a specific size or type of crack in mind, pay extra attention to the third column of each chart to make sure you can expect good results.

NOTABLE NOTES

As long as they are sized correctly (see the section above), most gloves we’ve tested score pretty well when it comes to comfort, so you won’t end up with gnarled, knobby, gobie-strewn fists, even after prolonged use.

The graphs below, and the sliders in them, give a good indication of how you should expect a glove to literally feel on your hand as you stand around in it as well as during a jam.

For the average climber, we found that striking a balance of padding and glove height was pretty key in finding a glove that was comfortable but still maintained its performance and structure after a long day of jamming. Taller gloves mean more coverage and less wrist mobility.

Those with more crack experience tended to seek less padding than beginners, (except in fist stacks, where everyone liked a thicker glove) and finger comfort seems to either be a dealbreaker or of very little consequence for the average user.

Click any image and scroll through as a full screen gallery to see how they change from model to model.

FINGER COMFORT

There seems to be a bit of a divide in folks about the sensitivity of the webbing between their fingers. If a glove is sized properly there should be very little pulling between the fingers. We have had discussions with folks who claimed to dislike a glove completely, but then change their stance once they fitted it correctly. Softer materials made for better results in overall finger comfort; if you have stone hands this isn’t a problem, but if you have sensory issues with things between your fingers, opt for leather/suede.

GLOVE STIFFNESS

Stiffness was also a bit of a spectrum with a majority of gloves sitting at the soft end. This comes into play when talking about restriction of movement, but it should be noted that a stiffer glove generally performs better in oddly shaped jams (non-parallel) because it provides more structure for the glove to hold its shape and thereby maintain friction with the rock; think flaring fist jams. These types of jams also require more expertise and pressure, which also adds a degree of complexity for those with low body weight. Just like a shoe– if you can’t perform the move and put enough weight on it, that foot isn’t going to stick; this is jamming in a stiffer crack glove.

PADDING

Overall, very thin and very thick crack gloves are more fatiguing at the end of a long session of climbing either from the hand needing to do work to deform the glove, or from the hand doing all the work of taking the shape of the crack continually. Those with less experience have found staying in the middle of the padding and stiffness sliders has been beneficial while seasoned jammers preferred flexibility over padding.

NOTABLE NOTES

This set of graphics is where the rubber meets the proverbial crack for those looking to mine details on how a crack glove will perform in the wild. The friction scale on the left along with sample rock types and climbing areas is aimed at showing the range of performance we found from each glove from slippery to grippery.

• Green to Yellow -> Good to Average performance
• Orange to Red -> Below Average to Poor

While we haven’t climbed on every crack type, in every rock type, in every glove (though very nearly), we tried our best to push each model we tested to the brink of its capability in order to create a comprehensive understanding of as many situations as possible. Always remember that as rock type and friction changes, so too do the qualities and shapes of cracks and fissures in them. Not every glove is useful in every situation.

WARNINGS / SUBTLETIES OF ROCK PERFORMANCE

• Yellow is average. Because all crack gloves are only made to jam in cracks, we found they all mostly did a decently average job at that. A more experienced/stronger climber could push that yellow into green for a particular model on this scale, or the opposite could happen for a very new beginner.
• Each rock type and friction amount is assumed and a bit subjective. While soft sandstone wears from traffic to be wider, rock like basalt and some forms of granite tend to ‘soap up’ and get polished and slippery. We tried to climb easy to moderate-hard cracks in every location we’ve taken these gloves to get an overall feel of these averages. Just because a glove is ‘green’ for conglomerate doesn’t mean it will necessarily perform its absolute best on that 5.4 trade route in Eldo that has every Cub Scout flopping all over it in their Nikes every summer.
• This chart is made to help steer decisions along with the two charts above. To get the most out of it, you should understand the limitations of a particular glove when it comes to mobility, padding, and structure and how it relates to your experience and the size of crack you intend to use it in. A glove with a lot of padding may perform average on this chart, but if you put it on a thick hand, it won’t fit in that splitter hand crack in the Creek, no matter how hard you try.

NOTABLE NOTES

Bottom Line

When compared across the board, pretty much every crack glove brand has its strengths and weaknesses, with some covering a broader range of protection, comfort, or performance than others.

Though it would be nice to be able to say after all our testing that we recommend a particular model as the ‘one glove’ you should buy for most things, the truth is that crack climbing and crack experience is extremely varied, and the performance of a given glove on given sizes and shapes of cracks is too nuanced to say, “always start here.”

We CAN SAY that using the charts above we recommend starting with:

1. The amount of skin coverage you’re comfortable with / want
2. The amount of padding you’ll need
3. The size of cracks you expect to encounter.

Once you have these figured out, the answer to the ‘right glove’ for you should start to take shape. And if it turns out you have multiple crack jamming needs, don’t be afraid to embrace the idea that you might need multiple ‘specialty’ gloves. Many folks have separate shoes for granite bouldering and overhanging limestone, there is no reason that crack gloves should have a single model for your splitter cracks and your offwidth stacks.