Black Diamond Solano Heated Review

Performance Comparison

Tested without the heating function on, these were very warm. These are a fine choice for cold-blooded resort sliders.

Warmth

When you consider any of the high-end heated gloves on the market under the Warmth rating metric, they earn a perfect ten when fully charged. This is considering only when the glove is used as designed, with plenty of battery life and the user switching to each heated mode as they wish. But what happens when the battery dies? This was a big factor in our testing here at OutdoorGearLab. What happens if you forgot to charge the batteries or you unexpectedly run out of juice while out in the sidecountry? To us, these details matter, and we did our best to describe the warmth when factoring in less than ideal situations.

Simplicity is best when wearing thick, insulated finger coverings. The single button for toggling through the heating modes is easy-peasy to use.

The Solano is not an especially warm glove in its off format. It does not benefit from the fact that they place a heating element (or exchanger) on the back of your hand, and once this gets cold, it is tough to maintain a comfortable temperature inside the glove unless you fire up the heating element. With that said, the leather construction added more warmth with dead batteries than competitors that use a softshell construction.

Charing these gloves is simple -- just don't forget to do it!

Dexterity

For a bulky, heavy glove the Solano is quite dexterous. The fit is right on point and what it loses in warmth with the battery off it gains in dexterity. This can be a huge advantage especially considering there isn't much insulation needed if the battery is charged and you keep another set in your pack. Testers were easily able to do normal ski tasks like clip a lift ticket or button a jacket, and the apres beverages never made our hands chilly even though it was turning to slush right before our eyes.

The Solano was a good resort glove, but heavy and bulky in the backcountry.

Weather Resistance

In our testing, the leather on this glove did not need an initial treatment. Out of the box, the leather easily shed any water that it came in contact with, and the glove did not allow any water to penetrate to the wearer's hand while submerged in the bucket test.

We put the electronics through hell and back to see if they would function. After soaking and then freezing the glove, we were able to turn on the heating element and thaw and warm out hands while inside the glove. The electronics in these gloves are excellent, and the designers of them should pat themselves on the back for making them so weather resistant. To put this in perspective, you could soak your phone for 10 minutes, freeze it overnight, then try to turn it on. If it works, it's just like the Solano. Disclaimer: Please don't actually try this, we aren't responsible for any phone damage!

Impenetrable to our submersion test, and toasty with the heat blasting inside.

Durability

Another strong rating for the Solano, the leather is what you would find on any high-end glove. With the addition of leather reinforcements throughout, the glove will last for years to come. We find this especially important with "investment" gloves like these. When you spend a small fortune on a heated glove, you expect to give the pair to your grandkids. It is safe to say that this glove is constructed with bomber materials and is reinforced with even more material in high wear areas. It even has a nice amount of padding on the back of the palm to deflect trees.

The leather construction makes this glove more tough than competitors.

It is tough to say how long the electrical system will hold up over many seasons, and we have to expect this to be the first point of failure. This is our estimate, but be prepared to buy replacement batteries for these gloves at least once or twice throughout the lifetime of the Solano.

Features

While the Solano does have the magnificent feature of heat, it has some significant shortcomings in the design of its features. To start with the good, it has an excellent nose wipe on each thumb and has a padded back of the hand. It does lack a wrist leash and finger loops for storing on a harness, but we can see it was not designed for backcountry travel. If you tend to fumble around on the lift, we would suggest keeping these gloves on as it would be an expensive loss to drop one of these gloves.

The biggest problem we had with this glove was the cuff. Most heated gloves locate their large battery packs under the wrist of the glove. This is fine, except when your gauntlet style opening is so tight it becomes and under the cuff style. With the extra width of the battery pack, the cuff of this glove bunched up on nearly every jacket we used and was a pain to the testers who wore watches. A compounding problem is when the glove is worn in the under the cuff style, the button is now hidden beneath your jacket. It is still possible to use the button in this situation but makes it significantly more difficult.

With the Solano's small gauntlet underneath the coat, the on/off button is hard to get to.

Value

For those that are crippled by cold hands at the resort, a high-priced glove is going to be well worth the investment. The Solano is not only heated but made to last-qualities that are not cheap. This glove is worth the high price if you want to continue skiing instead of sitting in the lodge warming your hands by the fire.

The wrong gloves for the job won't stop us from heading out in search of freshies. That said, heated gloves are not the way to go for most backcountry missions, in our opinion.

Conclusion

Extremely warm and dexterous are terms that do not go together when it comes to most gloves. The heating element allows the Solano to fit tightly like a less-warm, dexterous glove but without sacrificing warmth. The durable leather construction combined with ultimate warmth earned this high marks overall, with the only flaw being the cuff design (and the price tag!).