Performance Comparison
The Burton Gore-Tex is a solid glove for the price and very nearly won our OutdoorGearLab Best Buy Award. It only narrowly missed it to the Outdoor Research Revolution Glove that was a little more durable and dexterous but this globe was slightly warmer and offered a bunch more features including touch screen sensitive fingers.
Warmth
The Gore-Tex gloves are fairly unique in that they come with completely removable liner gloves when purchased. This is a nice feature that bumps the warmth when you use the liners. The liner also offers more versatility (AKA not using the liners on spring/warmer days), as it's nice to have the liner on colder days when you remove the outer gloves for specific tasks. Most of our testers felt good skiing or snowboarding in these gloves down to around 5F.
Compared to other similar models, the Gore-Tex, when used with the included liners, was slightly warmer than the Outdoor Research Revolution and was comparable to the Gordini GTX Storm Trooper II; however, the Storm Trooper was noticeably warmer if we didn't use the liner gloves. The Gore-Tex gloves were warmer than a handful of much more expensive gloves, such as the Black Diamond Legend, and Hestra Leather Fall Line.
Water Resistance
As the name implies, the Gore-Tex by Burton uses a Gore-Tex insert for weather resistance and earns an above average 8 out of 10. This contender provides solid overall water resistance for use during close to freezing or colder storms when you are out and about all day. It kept our hands fairly dry and scored respectably well in our side-by-side bucket tests. It's worth noting that when compared to most of the models in its price range, it performed extremely well in this metric. The two exceptions to models that are similarly priced (and performed slightly better in this category) include the $70 Outdoor Research Revolution and the $65 Gordini GTX Storm Trooper II.
The Burton Gore-Tex while warm was a bit bulky and offered slightly lower-than-average dexterity. What we did love about it was its' touch screen sensitive fingers that worked even better than our bare hands if it was cold out. Lastly its' worth noting that this glove runs a little wider-than-average which helps the fit and dexterity if you have wider-than-average mitts.
Dexterity
These gloves offer solid ergonomics and average dexterity overall. While they were decent performers, they just didn't overly impress us. We never felt like these gloves hindered us during fine motor skill activities or tasks, but they were not comparable to several of the other models. We found that the Outdoor Research Revolution and the Gordini GTX Storm Trooper II offered better dexterity, with the Revolution featuring the best of the three.
The Burton Gore-Tex comes with an included liner glove. Our testing team not only found this liner glove to be pretty solid in its' own right, but also loved how it made the glove much more versatile: wear it on colder days or leave it at home on warm sunny ones.
Features
These gloves have touchscreen capable fingers on the shell. This is obviously a sweet feature that could be enough of a factor to overcome any of the minor performance differences in other categories. Also unique to this glove was that the touchscreen feature works on all five of the fingers, which was an added benefit. It is worth noting that the included liner glove is not touchscreen sensitive.
The Burton Gore-Tex palms are made of durable proprietary leather Burton calls Gnar Guard (what a sweet name). We found that these held up far better than average compared to similar gloves in its price range but maybe weren't quite as durable as some of the more expensive glove in our review. After several weeks of use our testing pair was hardly thrashed, but it showed more wear from handling ski edges and lost a little more of its DWR (water repelency) than other models like the OR Mute Sensor Glove.
Durability
Our testing team found these gloves offered above average durability, scoring a 6 out of 10. However, they weren't exceptional and after a few dozen days of resort riding and backcountry days, the palms with Burton's Gnar Guard were holding up, but were starting to show some premature signs of wear. The DWR on the exterior of the shell (which assists in weather resistance) wasn't doing as well as many other models we tested, like the Outdoor Research Revolution or the Gordini GTX Storm Trooper II. If you have the money to spend, we'd recommend splurging on the highly durable Black Diamond Mercury Mitt, Hestra models, or the lower priced Black Diamond Legend, $130.
The wrist strap on the Burton Gore-Tex did a solid job of holding the glove in place and elastic cinches near the wrist did a respectable job of keeping snow out of the gauntlet on deeper days. Overall we found the Burton Gore-Tex to be one of the best gloves for the price and it nearly won our OutdoorGearLab Best Buy Award.
Best Applications
The Gore-Tex is a sweet all-around ski and snowboard glove at a great price. Our testers found it warm enough for most ski climates and weather resistant enough for others.
Value
At $70, this glove is a great deal for the performance it provides. There are hundreds of other gloves in the $75 price category, and we think this is one of the better models for several reasons: it offers solid warmth, dexterity, weather resistance, and comes with a pair of liner gloves.
Conclusion
It was an incredibly difficult decision to choose which glove to give our Best Buy award to. In the end, we found that the
Gordini GTX Storm Trooper II and the
Outdoor Research Revolution performed slightly higher across the board, with both offering better dexterity and weather resistance. However, the
Burton Gore-Tex is a sweet glove. We think that all of the sweet
extra features that the Burton provides are notable, like the included liner gloves and the touchscreen sensitive fingers, which could easily be the deciding factor for some folks that are deciding between these three gloves.
