We tested the best surf gloves to keep your hands toasty warm this winter. Photo: Trent Stevens//The Inertia

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You’re cold. Hood still on, despite just walking 10 minutes back to the car, hands shaking, kind of wondering if you have snot on your face. You get to your car, attempt to gingerly place your board on the ground with stiff fingers, and realize as you reach for your car lock that you have no feeling in them at all. Cold hands when surfing range from annoying to downright dangerous, and there’s one obvious solution: surf gloves.

These cold water accessories are essential for a large contingent of the world’s surfers, despite the sport being billed as a sandal-and-boardshorts-only experience. The number of surfers who are paddling out in dark water that’s 40-60 degrees Fahrenheit makes up a large, large portion of the sport, and for those surfers, in those conditions, you need the right gear. A wetsuit, to say the least. A hood and booties, most likely. And last but certainly not least, surf gloves. They may be the last on that list, but they are often essential.

If you want to learn more about how these wetsuit glove compared to one another, check out our Comparison Table. Or, if you wish to learn more about what makes a good wetsuit glove, take a look at our Buyer’s Guide.

The Best Wetsuit Gloves of 2024

Best Overall Wetsuit Gloves: O’Neill Psycho Tech 3mm Surf Gloves

Most Eco-Friendly Wetsuit Gloves: Patagonia R3 Yulex Gloves

Fastest Drying Wetsuit Gloves: Rip Curl Flashbomb 3/2

Easiest to Use: Quiksilver Marathon Sessions

Best Overall Wetsuit Gloves

O’Neill Psycho Tech 3mm Surf Gloves ($75)

Thickness Options: 1.5mm, 3mm, 5mm
Glove Type Options: Five Finger, Mitten
Material: Neoprene

Pros: Warm, durable exterior 
Cons: Tight cuff makes them difficult to get on

O’Neill has a long reputation of being one of the best cold-water surf brand out there, mostly due to its Techno Butter line of rubber. From suits to booties to hoods, the Santa Cruz-based brand is often a top choice in traditional wetsuit wear, and we found this to be true with gloves as well.

While other gloves had more admirable characteristics in terms of specific features, the 3mm five-finger Psycho Tech was the best overall surf glove. They are quite warm and snug, are built with thick seams along the tips, have a medium-length cuff that keeps water out, and have a grip that performed well without being overly sticky or noticeable.

We were impressed with how little water got into the gloves after the initial fill-up. The sleeve doesn’t have a specifically thick or wide band to seal it off like other models but instead is entirely made of a tight-fitting material that O’Neill calls the O’Ring Seal. This meant the water that gets into the gloves warms up and rarely flushed, no matter how many duck dives our winter sessions required. These are warm, downright cozy gloves. Part of this is the fit and seal, and part is the thick “Smoothskin” that O’Neill uses on the exterior. It’s a windproof layer that makes the glove’s exterior impermeable to wind as well as water.

While we felt pretty mobile in the Psycho Tech gloves, the fingers are definitely thick. Our tester had issues adjusting his earplugs due to the lack of dexterity, and getting the second glove’s cuff to lie flat under a 4/5 wetsuit is not easy. However, this lack of dexterity did not affect our surfing performance.

The interior of the Pyscho Tech gloves features the legendary Techno Butter Firewall lining, which is not only warm but dries fairly quickly. They aren’t the fastest-drying gloves out there, but you’ll be pleased with their performance in this category. The seams on these gloves are thick and well-constructed, and the Smoothskin exterior is an extra layer that’ll keep the gloves lasting longer than most. The grip is well made, too. Fit is everything with gloves and is variable based on hand size. Our tester found these gloves to fit perfectly for him.

After all our testing, we found that what we wanted most was a glove that kept our hands warm and that we never had to think about during our session. The O’Neill Psycho Tech 3mm proved to be those gloves. The only real downside is that they are very hard to get on (especially the second hand) due to the very tight cuff. But we’d take that over cold water flushing any day. They are on the pricier end of the spectrum, and there’s a reason for that.

Check 3 MM Price on AmazonCheck 1.5 MM Price on Amazon

Most Eco-Friendly Wetsuit Gloves

Patagonia R3 Yulex Gloves ($89)

Pros: Easy to get on/off, durable, sustainable 
Cons: Some flushing occurred, takes a while to dry

Thickness Options: R2, R3, R5
Glove Type Options: Five Finger, Mitten
Material: Yulex

The Patagonia R3 Yulex Gloves are all-around excellent and generally hit the marks you’d hope for in a surf glove. They also have the added benefit of being made from truly eco-friendly material and come with a lifetime warranty that Patagonia honors.

The Patagonia R3 gloves fit our tester reasonably well. They have a long cuff with a microgasket at the wrist to stop flushing, and plenty of grip on the palms. We found these gloves provide a great balance between warmth and dexterity. Initially, we were worried about the flexibility of the gloves as Yulex is notoriously stiffer than traditional neoprene, but the gloves remained quite flexible. That said, the microgasket, which is more of a lip at the bottom of the cuff than a true seal, didn’t keep flushing entirely at bay.

We found the Patagonia R3 Yulex gloves to be solidly warm. Not outstanding, but solid. Our tester’s hands were never cold, the wind was blocked reasonably well, and the microgasket did keep out most water flushing, but not all. For a 3mm glove and a Patagonia one, which sometimes has a reputation for stiff wetsuits, the R3 Yulex gloves were surprisingly dexterous. Our tester could adjust earplugs and his hood, get both gloves on in under a minute, and take them off easily.

In terms of lining and drying time, Patagonia’s R3 Yulex gloves do have a liner (a 100% recycled polyester jersey liner, to be exact), but we weren’t impressed with the dry time. They remained damp longer than the other gloves we used and don’t have any of the microgrid lining used in Patagonia wetsuits.

We were impressed with the R3 Yulex surf glove build. The seams are well done, the wrist is well-constructed, and the palms are grippy. They’re made to last and Patagonia will repair them if they don’t. Our tester tried a size small, and they fit well but not perfectly with a little bit of extra room at the tips of the fingers. Overall, these gloves are a great choice, but it’s worth making sure they fit well before taking them out into the water.

Fastest-Drying Wetsuit Gloves

Rip Curl Flashbomb ($55)

Pros: Affordable, dries quickly
Cons: Clunky, flushing

Thickness Options: 3/2mm, 5/3mm, 7/5mm
Glove Type Options: Five Finger, Three Finger, Mitten
Material: Neoprene

Rip Curl is one of the most iconic surf brands out there, and their line of Flashbomb wetsuits has a lot going for it. The Flashbomb 3/2 surf gloves utilize the same E6 Flash Lining as their premium wetsuits and utilize a unique 3mm-thick hand and 2mm-cuff, creating a glove that should be warm yet slimmed down.

However, we found the Flashbomb surf gloves to be a bit clunky and our tester noted the fit to be quite a bit roomier than other gloves he tested. This led to extra water in the glove, which meant a more difficult paddle. We would definitely recommend trying this glove on before hopping in the water with it because the fit was off for our tester. But from a build perspective, these gloves are pretty solid.

Rip Curl uses a single heavier seal at the cuff to keep out water, and we didn’t find it to be as effective as other gloves. That, plus the flushing, meant our tester noticed the gloves a fair amount during use. The fingers were also all quite thick. Not so much that it distracted while surfing, but enough that our tester kept thinking about it in the water.

The real highlight of these gloves is the E6 Flash lining, which did produce warmth and did dry very, very quickly. On the Rip Curl box, it clearly states, “The fastest drying gloves in the world.” While we haven’t used every glove in the world, the Flashbomb surf gloves did dry at record speed compared to the other top-tier gloves we tried. Like, a couple hours. No other glove came close to this level of speedy dryness.

Our tester never found himself exclaiming at the Flashbomb’s warmth, but they kept his hands from getting cold, and he could always open a car door after a dawn patrol session. We did expect, due to the rugged build, a warmer experience, but we didn’t quite get one due to the flushing and less-than-perfect fit. We also did not find the Flashbomb’s particularly flexible when worn. This was partially due to fit, which led to poor fingertip mobility, but they also just felt rather clunky on his hands. That said, they were easy to get on and off.

The materials of the Rip Curl Flashbomb 3/2 ($55) are high-end despite being one of the cheaper gloves on this list. They use an excellent lining that will last, the palm grip works well, and the seams are bomber. We expect these gloves to last a long time. They are quite a bit cheaper than other gloves on this list and have a durable build, which may make them an ideal option for folks who are able to get a better fit.

Easiest to Use

Quiksilver Marathon Sessions

Pros: Long cuff makes it easy to take on/off, flexible
Cons: Run small, take a while to dry

Thickness Options: 3mm, 5mm
Glove Type Options: Five Finger, Mitten
Material: Limestone-derivate eco-friendly neoprene Bluesign Certified

The Quiksilver Marathon Sessions are 3mm, five-finger surf gloves that surprised us. For some reason — maybe the lower cost, but more likely the lack of press and online reviews for this set of gloves — we thought they were going to be less than stellar.

But after a lot of testing, the Quiksilver Marathon Sessions became our favorite glove for all conditions when it’s not really cold. They worked well in 55-58 degree waters. They are different from many of the gloves on this list in that they don’t have a long cuff, so they are much easier to get on and off, and despite being 3mm gloves, they remain very flexible.

The Marathon Sessions have a tacky grip, which we found useful for duck dives, but may not be everyone’s favorite. The gloves were warm enough for most sessions, and even though they got flushed more often than the gloves with full cuffs, they remained very comfortable.

The other gloves on this list felt like a real commitment — we put them on like a suit of armor against the cold and wind — whereas the Marathon Sessions felt like an easy add-on to our surf gear. We were impressed with the flexibility of the Marathon Sessions despite being 3mm gloves. You will still have thick fingers, but our tester found he could toggle a hood, adjust earplugs, and get the gloves on and off relatively easily.

If you have suited up and taken an extra five minutes to get thick gloves over cold hands while watching perfect right-hand point break in front of you, you know the quicker those gloves get on, the better. The Quiksilver Marathon Sessions remain our throw-em-on gloves, and we use them when the water is chilly but not unbearable.

The Marathon Sessions also have a few nods to sustainable materials, like the Aqua Alpha glues used, which are non-toxic and water-based, and StretchFlight neoprene, which is made from limestone and scrap rubber tires, a material that’s Bluesign certified. The gloves are well constructed, with thick-enough seams and a durable grip. However, the exterior of the glove feels less solid than the others we tested.

Most people will find that the Quiksilver Marathon Sessions run small. Our teser did, too, but this ended up producing a nice, tight, high-performance fit, which lead to the least amount of water getting inside the glove out of all that we tested. This aided in the gloves’ flexibility in the water, but most people will want to go a size up.

Best of the Rest

Vissla 7 Seas ($50)

Pros: Sustainable, full liner
Cons: No standout features

Thickness Options: 1.5mm
Glove Type Options: Five Finger
Material: Limestone-based neoprene

Vissla has quickly become a go-to wetsuit brand for reliable, durable, well-priced gear, and the 7 Seas gloves are quality contenders. They use limestone-based neoprene for an eco-friendly bent, have a long cuff with a tight lock, and a full liner for warmth and air-dry capability.

These gloves do everything well but are a bit on the expensive side for not having a standout feature.

Xcel Drylock Texture Skin ($85)

Pros: Warm, outer layer is wind resistant/durable
Cons: Pricey, difficult to get on

Thickness Options: 3mm, 5mm, 7mm
Glove Type Options: Five Finger, Mitten
Material: TDC Thermo Dry Celliant Black

Xcel is known for making some of the warmest wetsuits around, and the Drylock Texture Skin gloves were made for warmth. Even among the five-finger, 3mm variety, these gloves exude heat. They are heavy, hard to get on, have a medium-sized cuff and thick “Drylock” wrist seal, as well as an outer layer that’s wind resistant and highly durable.

These go toe-to-toe with O’Neil’s Psycho Tech and may be warmer, but they are also the priciest gloves on the market, and some of the most difficult-to-use that we tested.

3mm Glove on EVO 5mm Glove on EVO

Billabong Furnace Gloves ($46)

Pros: Warm
Cons: Only one thickness option/style

Thickness Options: 3 mm
Glove Type Options: Five Finger
Material: Neoprene nylon smooth skin blend exterior fabric

Billabong may be the sleeper wetsuit brand in the surf world. We interviewed Anna Gadauskas, a cold-water queen of surfing who has glided on waves in Iceland, Norway, and New England (to name a few), on the merits of cold-water surf gloves to help fill the experience gap in our knowledge of truly cold waters.

After talking with her, it became clear she knew a lot about different glove types, thicknesses and brands. She is also sponsored by Billabong at the time of this writing and told us they were hands-down the warmest wetsuit and gloves she’d ever worn.

Xcel Comp Anti Glove ($65)

Pros: Easy to get on/off, not bulky
Cons: Minimal warmth

Thickness Options: .05mm
Glove Type Options: Five Finger
Material: Neoprene nylon smooth skin blend exterior fabric

The Anti-Glove are aptly named — they’re made for people who hate wearing gloves. This means that they are not bulky, you can feel your fingers, and they’re easy to get on and off.

The downside? Basically no warmth. The Anti-Glove is not even a millimeter thick – its main feature is that it cuts wind with a full smoothskin exterior. So, for those who basically don’t wear gloves but need something for a particular windy session, they may be ideal.

For those who actually need gloves for warmth, though, the Anti-Gloves aren’t for you. And in our experience, putting on gloves to not actually get warmth is kind of a bummer. But maybe you’ll feel differently.

Best Wetsuit Gloves Comparison Table

Five finger gloves tend to be the most popular option. Photo: Trent Stevens//The Inertia

How We Tested The Best Wetsuit Gloves

Our Ventura, California based tester Daniel Zweier has tested a variety of surf gloves over the years, and he can confidently say that the quality of neoprene today is the best it has ever been – there’s truly been no better time to invest in some extra warmth for your hands. For this article, he specifically tested a number of five-finger 3mm gloves. These are the most commonly used in California, where the largest majority of surfers are in the U.S.. They are not the warmest gloves on tap (those would be 7mm mittens), but they fit the bill the largest percentage of the time, and trying the same type of glove from each brand gave us a basis to compare them on.

Our tester also runs extremely cold and is prone to thicker wetsuits than everyone else he knows, so you could say that he’s the ideal testing candidate for surf gloves in California. For this review, he considered the warmth, flexibility, drying time, durability, and fit of all of the wetsuit gloves.

Warmth and flexibility are obvious requirements, no need to explain there, as is durability – we don’t want to be buying a new pair of gloves every winter. Drying time matters, unless you’re happy with sticking your hands in a soggy glove before hopping in the water (we’re definitely not), and fit is perhaps the most important criteria here. We’ll explain more in the Buying Advice section of the article (scroll to the bottom), but for now, just know that you want your gloves to fit tightly so they don’t fill with water and create drag while paddling.

In summary, get some surf gloves. They’ll keep your hands warm, and when you decide to head to colder, emptier lineups, you’ll be glad you have them. A piece of essential advice, though: gloves go under the wetsuit sleeve.

The O’Neill Psycho Tech 3mm were our favorite of all the gloves we tested. Photo: Trent Stevens//The Inertia

Best Wetsuit Gloves Buyer’s Guide

Do you really need surf gloves?

We’ve asked ourselves this question a lot over the last 10 years. Our tester lives and surf in Ventura, California, where many people would argue that, no, you don’t need surf gloves. The water dips down to 54 degrees at its coldest and doesn’t stay there long, with average winter temperatures right around 58. This is not cold by many standards. So, while you don’t need surf gloves in Ventura, they are awfully nice on the coldest days.

Gloves may not always be a necessity, but they are a welcome luxury. Photo: Trent Stevens//The Inertia

The bigger question here is, what is a need? We know many surfers who have never worn gloves and have no desire to. They are of the “less is more” mentality, which collides with the intense, brusque surfer vibe that suffering is an essential part of the experience.

Our tester doesn’t partake in either of those beliefs; he believes the point of surfing (and the only real point) is to have fun. And after a certain number of years trying to open his car with frozen hands, he realized it just wasn’t fun to be that cold. Likewise, if you’re a young buck and don’t believe in things like pain, there will come a point when your body, head, feet, and even hands are achy and cold. It’s called aging, and it’ll happen to the best of you.

Then there’s the other half of the question: besides the extra cost, why not wear surf gloves? The downsides of booties are that you have much less mobility on your board (and they’re a pain to get on). A hood’s rough because you can’t hear and sense the waves in the same way, and you might get some neck strain (though we’d argue hood downsides are relatively minimal, especially with how they aid against surfer’s ear). We found in our testing that the downsides of gloves are actually less than booties and about the same as hoods, assuming you have the right-sized gloves.

Best Overall Surf Gloves

The 3mm O’Neill Psycho Tech Gloves provide the necessary warmth for keeping frozen hands at bay with flexible and comfortable O’Neill neoprene.
Price: $75
Buy Now

The main downside to surf gloves is that, when sized too big, water fills up the glove and creates drag when you paddle, which slows you down and induces arm and shoulder fatigue earlier than normal. On a paddle-heavy day in solid surf, this is a major bummer, and that’s often what you’ll get in the coldest moments of winter surf. There are also the downsides of any extra piece of gear — they aren’t as natural as your body, they get damaged over time, they cost money, and you have to deal with them.

Yet when surf gloves fit well, we have found that they give us a bit of increased grip on our board and a heap of warmth. Our hands were the warmest part of us after long sessions, extending our time in water and speeding up our post-surf routine. When the glove fit and warmth were on point, we basically forgot about them. And unlike booties, when you’re up and riding, they don’t get in the way at all.

To answer that question — do you really need surf gloves — we’d answer: “Needs are relative.” But if you run at all cold or surf in chilly waters, we’d recommend keeping a pair of surf gloves in the gear closet.

A good pair of gloves can greatly enhance your session. Photo: Trent Stevens//The Inertia

What Kind of Surf Gloves Do I Need?

There are three main components of surf gloves to consider:
1. The type of glove: five-finger, “lobster claw” (three-finger), or mitten
2. The thickness: 1.5mm, 3mm, 5mm, or 7mm (and corresponding water and air temperature)
3. Size: Small, Medium, Large, etc.

Different Types of Surf Gloves

The name is obvious, and you’ll find five-finger gloves in most surf shops. Five-finger gloves provide the least amount of warmth, the most amount of flexibility, and are often used in waters above 46 degrees.

Lobster claw gloves, also called three-finger gloves, are hybrid gloves. They offer a good degree of warmth because they sandwich multiple fingers together (which creates more warmth) but still provide a degree of flexibility. They are used most often in waters between 40-46 degrees.

Mittens are for the truly cold water surfers. You stick your entire hand inside at once, which makes them easy to put on, and they keep all your fingers sandwiched together, providing the most warmth. They have the least flexibility, but in waters below 40 degrees, they are often a necessity, and gloves in general at that temperature are an actual necessity.

Cold-water queen Anna Gudauskas says:

“Once the water is in the ’40s, I definitely want 5-finger gloves and anything below the ’40s, I’ll reach for mittens or lobster claw gloves. Having multiple fingers together really keeps more heat in.”

She also told us that in winter in Ventura, she doesn’t wear gloves, but she does wear a 5/4 wetsuit and that most folks who get cold just need a thicker wetsuit. So you could always try that out.

Five finger gloves. Photo: Trent Stevens//The Inertia

Mittens

As you can tell, this guide is about five-finger surf gloves, which certainly provide warmth but are not the top dogs when it comes to keeping your hands from freezing in truly frigid conditions. For that, you need mittens.

For all those winter warriors whose idea of fun is a sub-40-degree water session (often with air temperatures hovering around freezing), mittens are the surf gloves you actually need. We did not test these, but in our interview with Anna Gudauskas, she said mittens are the only way to go for temps that cold. Most of the brands above offers a pair of surf glove mittens, and they are usually in 5mm or 7mm varieties. If you’re in for truly cold water surfing, get mittens, and get the ones that fit you best.

O'Neill Mittens Quiksilver MittensPatagonia Mittens

Rip Curl’s Flashbomb lining makes for a super fast-drying glove. Photo: Trent Stevens//The Inertia

The Thickness of the Glove

The quick of it: The thicker the glove, the warmer.

Just like wetsuits, thickness is listed in millimeters and works its way up from 1.5 all the way to 7 for surf gloves. The sweet spot for most people, however, is 3mm, 5mm, and 7mm, the former being the most common in chilly waters and the latter being for those Northern Lights kind of surf spots. Generally, you match thickness and glove type to water and air temperature, creating some lovely middle point where you can surf comfortably, buy the gloves often enough that you don’t stress about it, and remain able to open your car door after dawn patrol.

Anna had this to say about the thickness of gloves and quality of gear for truly cold water:

“Wind is also a factor in this, so on a really windy day, I might go for thicker gloves. Good gear makes such a difference, and buying new gloves every year is a worthy investment. Despite Iceland and Norway sounding the most arctic, the coldest sessions of my life have been in New England during some of the winter storms where air temp doesn’t get over 15 degrees F. I didn’t really have the right gear for that trip, and we showed up the day after all those slushy wave videos were coming out, meaning the ocean temp was only 1 or 2 degrees above freezing. There’s a term called the ‘screaming barfies,’ which refers to the feeling of circulation returning to your fingers after they’ve been freezing cold. It feels something like nails being hammered into your extremities.”

To be clear, our tester fumbling for keys with “frozen” fingers in Ventura is a far cry from screaming barfies. That said, in both scenarios, surf gloves are helpful.

Easy to Use

The 3mm Marathon Sessions glove provides warmth without the struggle often accompanied with getting gloves on and off, thanks to a shorter wrist cuff.
Price: $60
Buy Now

In our testing, we found that anything below a 3mm glove is not really worth it. We tried 1.5mm gloves and felt that despite the fit being perfect and the water being on the warm side of cold (58 degrees), they just didn’t warrant the whole “wearing gloves” things. Our hands were not that much warmer, and we still struggled to take them on and off. For most surfers, 3mm gloves are warm enough, dextrous enough, and work in enough range of water temperatures to warrant purchase, even if you don’t always surf in waters that justify them.

When you get into waters below 45 degrees, you start to look at thicker gloves. And if you want to be prepared for literally anything, a 5mm mitten is probably the simplest answer. It’ll get you through the worst of most winters, and you can switch to 3mm five-finger gloves for the warmer days.

As Anna said, “If I had to pick just one pair, I’d go for mittens.”

Most people prefer 3mm, 5 mm, or 7mm wetsuit gloves. Photo: Trent Stevens//The Inertia

Wetsuit Glove Sizing

As a general rule of thumb, go with the smallest glove possible. The main drawback we found in all of our testing is that any glove that was too big filled with water to the fingertips and created a drag sensation while paddling. This didn’t bother us much when popping up or actually surfing, but it’s surprisingly annoying if you have a heavy paddle day. The gloves will always fill (and refill) with water, so you want the tightest-fitting glove possible.

Opt for the smallest glove size possible to ensure a high-performance fit. Photo: Trent Stevens//The Inertia

The only way to ensure this is to get hands on (in, rather) the product. If you’re ordering online, be sure to try the gloves out at home before you get in the water with them and make them un-returnable. It’s also worth noting that each brand’s version of “Medium” is different. Our tester is a Medium in most things surf related, but he found Smalls from every brand fit him best, and some brands’ Smalls were still a little big.

If you are struggling to get the gloves on, you’re on the right path. And remember, once water hits them, they stretch a bit.

Editor’s Note: For more gear reviews and features on The Inertia, click here.

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