A couple of weeks ago, we reviewed Etre’s Touchy line of gloves. These are touch screen compatible gloves that keep your hands warm while allowing you to use your touch screen devices thanks in part to having both the index finger and thumbs cut out of them. Well, that’s fine and dandy for mobile phones and small tablets but what about the 10″ tablets that require you to sometimes need to use all 10 of your digits to type? Well again, Etre has you covered with their line of FIVEPOINT gloves that are considered their top of the line gloves. Unlike the Touchy line, the FIVEPOINT gloves are completely closed off. How are you able to use your touch devises then? Easy. The FIVEPOINT gloves feature a specially designed contactwoven fingertips that allow all you to use all the functions of your touch device.
The Etre FIVEPOINT gloves are again made from high quality wool that help keep your hands warm and dry during the winter season. The tips however are made from a special blended, capacitive material that allows electrical charges from your fingertips to be transferred to your touch screen.
The touch-sensitivity of the average touchscreen device results from a layer of capacitive material that adorns its surface. This material stores an electrical charge that is uniformly distributed across the screen when you’re not touching it. When you press a finger or thumb against it, however, some of the charge is transferred to your skin, thereby causing the charge on the capacitive layer to decrease in the spot that you touched. It is this change that (a) lets the device know that you touched it and (b) tells it whereabouts.
This capacitive layer works well in many situations. But not all. It doesn’t respond to a pen, stylus or any other pointing instrument, for example. That’s because these items don’t conduct electricity and therefore serve only to act as a barrier that prevents your skin from altering the charge on the screen. The same goes for a normal pair of gloves. Which means that on a cold, wet and windy winter’s day, you have to keep taking them off to make calls; send emails, instant messages, texts and tweets; and play tunes.
Thanks to their specially-designed contactwoven® fingertips, our gloves do what other gloves don’t: They conduct electricity! Which means that you can touch, tap and type on touchscreens without having to take them off.
I gave the FIVEPOINT a little test with both my iPhone 4 and iPad 2. The FIVEPOINT definitely does allow you to use both devices with ease, however because of the much smaller size of the iPhone and its onscreen keyboard, it was a bit of a challenge to type correctly. The tips of the gloves don’t give you quite the accuracy you’d get from using your regular fingertips. That’s not to say it isn’t possible, it’s just a bit more challenging. On the other hand, using the FIVEPOINT with the iPad 2 was a breeze thanks to the much larger onscreen keyboard on the iPad.
Like the Touchy glove, the FIVEPOINT are quite snug fitting and fit really well. The wool is soft and is very tightly woven with some good elasticity. The FIVEPOINT is also made in the UK by Etre. The FIVEPOINT are available in 3 different color combinations – Rosemary with Pearl tips, Oxford Blue with Pearl tips, and Black with Charcoal tips. The FIVEPOINT can be purchased at Etre’s online store here for around $63.00 US.
