Are Milwaukee Heated Gloves Worth The Money? Here's What Users Are Saying

If you're looking into winter gadgets to help stay warm, Milwaukee's heated winter gloves may have popped on your radar. And naturally, you want to know if they are any good, or just another tech gadget that ends up being a total waste of money? For starters, if there's one thing tool enthusiasts love about Milwaukee, it's the fact that the company seems to genuinely care about its customers. You can see that attention to detail in how the gloves are designed and sized.

They come in five sizes (S, M, L, XL, and 2XL), and Milwaukee even provides a sizing guide on its website to help you choose the right one. At the time of this writing, there are only 13 reviews on Milwaukee's own site, and all of them are positive. It's worth mentioning that they're all incentivized, as the reviewers received these gloves for free. Nonetheless, we did some digging of our own to see if what they've said corresponds with the experiences of other owners who purchased these gloves with their own money. 

But before we get into that, let's start with what you can expect. These gloves are designed with a mix of leather on the palm and fingers, and ripstop polyester on the shell. When you slide them on, based on reviews, there's a soft fleece-like liner that keeps your hands comfortable. Plus, there's an adjustable Velcro strap along the cuff to really lock in the warmth and a built-in terry cloth patch to help wipe off sweat. For $200, you'd expect nothing less. 

The gloves have high, medium, and low heat settings, and, according to one owner in a YouTube review, the gloves heat up pretty quickly, with the warmth radiating from the back of your hands and into your fingers.
The build quality appears to be one of the best things about these gloves. With reinforced grip areas and ripstop fabric, these gloves look and feel like they're built to last. And since they're also water- and wind-resistant, you can use them for a lot more than just shoveling your driveway. You'll find that reviews on Milwaukee's website define the use case as ice fishing, hunting, snow blowing, skating, and pretty much any winter activity where you'd appreciate not getting frostbite. And that tracks with what owners on r/MilwaukeeTool are saying too. One redditor commented, "I use them hunting in super cold weather here in Alaska. They keep my hands warm in single digit temps." 

The kit also comes with two 2-amp batteries, which are USB-C rechargeable, and two of Milwaukee's branded braided cables, which makes charging in your truck or garage more convenient. Plus, the batteries are light, and relatively thinner than what you'd find in some other heated gloves. But let's be honest: at $200, these aren't cheap. Sure, you're paying for Milwaukee's brand quality, but the real question is, does that justify spending that much on a pair of winter gloves?

Milwaukee claims the battery on these heated gloves can last up to 8 hours on the lowest setting, 4 hours on medium, and 2 hours on high. But as you'd expect, that depends largely on how cold it is and what setting you're using. That user on the r/MilwaukeeTool subreddit who uses them for hunting said his only problem is with the battery, "since it's so cold it seems to die relatively quick." Another owner detailed on their blog how they noticed that below 5 degrees Fahrenheit, the gloves struggled to keep their hands warm, and the runtime dropped to less than an hour. 

So, what they do instead is preheat the gloves by turning them on high for a few minutes indoors before heading out. When they did this, the gloves performed much better. Now, Milwaukee also advertises that these gloves come with SMARTSWIPE technology. It's supposed to let you use your phone or tablet even with the gloves on because the index fingers and thumbs are equipped to interact seamlessly with your screen. Honestly, though, it doesn't work as well as you'd hope.

We found this YouTube video where the reviewer kept struggling. While the screen did respond when they touched it, the response was all too random. So if you're counting on being able to text or scroll through apps with these on, there's a chance you'll be disappointed. In the same video, the reviewer pointed out that these have excellent dexterity for winter gloves. They might not be the most ideal for intricate and delicate tasks like tying knots or handling small parts like nails or screws, but they'll help protect your hands from a bad case of Raynaud's syndrome.