The One Glove – Pulse Glove Review
As part of Keeper Portal’s recent relaunch we are keen to review a whole host of goalkeeper gloves and equipment to help you out with that difficult decision of what to spend your money on!
Over the last few weeks we have been testing out The One Glove Company’s latest release in their ever expanding range of gloves the ‘Pulse’ and are keen to share our thoughts on this glove with you all!
Basic Info:
- 4mm German Contact Latex White
- Medius Hybrid Cut (more in this later)
- Full latex back hand in striking black and blue
- Designed, Tested and Worn by Professional Keepers
- Percentage of all sales going to charity (Click here for more info!)
- Retail Price: £29.99
- Brand: The One Glove Company
Initial Impressions:
The gloves come in a standard glove wallet, each within their own individual plastic cover and have a layer of plastic over the palms (as is standard with contact latex). Whilst we would never mark a glove down for a standard glove wallet, we’re always excited to see innovation in this area to help keep the gloves separated from each other after use, but things like these unfortunately would add to the cost!
First of all lets get an idea about what a ‘Medius Hybrid Cut’ actually is, Hybrid cuts seem to really have exploded on to the market lately with all sorts of variants being produced to really cater to individual goalkeeper tastes (It’s about time! I mean look at all the different styles of football boots!). The ‘Medius Hybrid Cut’ is quite simply a Roll Finger glove with the two middle fingers on each hand being a Negative Cut as can be seen in the picture.
I’ll be completely honest at this point and state that I’m generally not a huge fan of a negative cut fingers, simply because of the feel of the stitching on the inside of the fingers just doesn’t make much sense to me and I’ve had issues with them twisting on other gloves but I accept the fact that negative and hybrid cuts with negative fingers have a huge amount of fans!
With that in mind, upon putting the gloves on the first thing I noticed about them was the feel of the stitching on the two middle negative cut fingers but otherwise they were very comfortable with my only small issue being with the elastic part of the wrist strap.
Admittedly I don’t have the largest of wrists (note to self: Get on the weights!) but the elastic wasn’t as snug as I would have liked. Obviously once I used the velcro strap to tighten it to my liking it felt nice and secure but this resulted in a slight fold in the elastic. A very minor negative, but was something I noticed when trying them on for the first time.
Appearance is always going to be subjective, everybody has their own opinions on which gloves look great and which look terrible so with that in mind I will cast my own verdict and say that these look pretty awesome! I think most youngsters like the look of black matched with a bright colour and the bright blue in the sign of a pulse looks cool to me.
One thing that is not subjective however is how much grip the latex gives, as soon as the plastic covers were removed from the palms on these gloves the fun really began! They were extremely tacky straight away, to the point that you could see and hear the glove sticking to the ball as you pressed against it almost like a suction cup. I managed to bore the girlfriend with this for at least a few minutes, but I was very impressed and decided that these gloves could skip my usual pre-wash ritual.
Performance and Durability
Anyone who has been playing football in the UK over the past few weeks will feel my pain when I talk about the weather recently, so these gloves have been used in some absolutely crazy conditions including: sunshine (admittedly not a lot), rain, hail, snow and a lot of wind! One thing that has generally been a constant though is that it has been wet and muddy which always makes testing a glove interesting.
As with any glove, before wearing it in an actual match I used the Pulse glove in a couple of training sessions to ensure that it wasn’t going to let me down in a real game situation and to make sure I felt confident when using it. I very quickly forgot about the negative cut fingers after about 20 minutes of using the glove and after a couple of training sessions where the gloves really impressed me I was more than happy to wear them within a few match situations.
I can honestly say that I have really enjoyed using this glove over the past few weeks, in terms of grip they have performed fantastic and well above my expectations considering the conditions lately and filled me with confidence when opting to catch driven shots.
Something that has impressed me almost as much as the grip on these gloves is that after playing in some truly awful conditions, I’ve washed them down and let them dry and the grip has been just as good the next time I’ve put them on.
In terms of durability, aside from a bit of discolouration they are still in fantastic condition with no noticeable damage to the latex what so ever after 4 games and 6 training sessions in them so a big thumbs up for durability. It’s also worth a mention here that these come with a V notch between the thumb and index finger which is a common area that I have had issues with splitting so I like this idea a lot!
Value for Money
These gloves retail at £29.99 a pair which puts them in a sort of middle ground price point for goalkeeper gloves, last season we saw a real emergence of brands who were selling some great gloves at the £19.99 mark and even The One Glove Company themselves have some great gloves at this price point so I had to have a think about what the main difference was between those gloves and the Pulse Glove and whether they justified the extra £10.
Comparing the gloves in The One Glove’s own range there is obvious differences in the design quality and appearance but for me the big difference is the latex – you are effectively taking the step up from German Super Soft latex to the Contact Latex which is exceptional on these gloves. I think the key thing to consider as well as the difference in grip – which I believe the Contact Latex has, in my experience there is a big difference in terms of durability in favor of the contact latex also and I believe these two factors are more than worth the extra £10.
Comparing value for money between gloves from the same company is slightly harsh though, as The One Glove Company are known for excellent value for money anyway, looking at some of the big brands i.e. Nike you are looking at around the £60 mark before you get your hands on a Contact Latex and when compared to that these gloves are exceptional value for money.
Where can you get them?
The gloves are available now directly from The One Glove Company’s own website:
Check out their YouTube launch video here:
One Glove - Pulse
Appearance - 95%
Comfort - 85%
Grip - 95%
Durability - 95%
Value for Money - 90%
92%
Exceptional Hybrid Cut Glove!
A fantastic glove based around it's exceptional contact latex. We would absolutely recommend this glove to anybody who is looking for a hybrid cut. It looks great, has fantastic grip and durability and is very good value for money when compared to some of the premium brands out there - with our only negative being the slightly loose elastic part of the wrist band which is a very minor flaw and won't bother most keepers.
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