Rennie Scaysbrook | May 25, 2017
The Dainese X-Strike is, for me, the perfect street glove
Rennie’s tough guy impression is about as effective as a guard dog chihuahua.
I wear lots, and lots, and lots of gloves. It comes with the territory of being Road Test Editor at this hallowed publication. But I’ll let you in on a little secret: testing gloves can be a PITA. The reason being is gloves rarely feel good until they are about two months old. Like jeans, gloves require wearing, sweating, stretching—if they are the right ones for you they will eventually form to the unique shape of your hand and you’ll feel like you’re wearing second skin. That’s why I love my Dianese X-Strike street gloves as much as I do.
The X-Strikes in motion on the hallowed Kawasaki H2.
The difference between these X-Strikes and the many other street gloves I’ve tried is those two months of getting to know each other never happened. We went straight to serious dating and are now in a long-term relationship. I’ve been wearing these bad ass looking X-Strikes almost every day for the past two years as my home/work/home glove. Former Dainese media man Chris Jonnum gave me a pair to test not long after I landed in the U.S. in 2015 and they have since become my default glove, the same as my Arai Corsair X helmet.
Two years of hard wear and the X-Strikes still have a bit of life in them. The palms have worn remarkably well.
The X-Strikes and I have travelled the globe as one. Together we rode Triumphs in Spain, Moto Guzzis at Sturgis, KTMs in Australia and shared a spiritual moment when we shared a Kawasaki H2 in Southern California. We’ve also ridden dirt track and supermoto together, just to prove we are a versatile couple.
Short-cuff gloves are my jam for street riding. I don’t like race-style gloves with a tall cuff when I’m pulling into a gas station, fumbling for a wallet or trying to find keys to get into my house. The short-cuff X-Strikes have many of the features other high-end gloves have—cowhide construction, reinforced palm, perforation here and there—but I’ll only note three really stand out features here.
Guzzi riding with the X-Strikes at Sturgis. They may have looked a bit out of place, but didn’t feel it.
These days, gloves are thankfully laced with either super hard plastic or carbon fiber across the knuckles. The X-Strikes have what’s called Ergo-Tek Polyurethane knuckles, with the index and middle finger knuckles separated and the ring and little finger connected. Having the knuckle arranged in such a fashion means the index and middle fingers are free to move independently, and as a two finger braker, that gives a greater and more comfortable range of movement than the gloves with a single carbon piece across the knuckles.
The best feature about the X-Strikes: separated knuckle protection.
The second part I love about the X-Strikes is two-fold: the Polyurethane inserts on the outside of the little finger and the palm. Having the protection staggered on the outside of the little finger means more comfort, more movement and less time to wear in, while the palm insert is so comfortable I have totally forgotten it’s there.
Finally, the remaining love point for me is the stitching. I’ve had a few pair of gloves from rival manufacturers in recent time where the stitching sinks into the skin on outside of each finger, almost like when you’d draw an outline of your hand as a kid. That is an intolerably annoying and eventually painful feature, which is thankfully absent on the X-Strike.
Throw in a bit of scrambling for good measure.
I’ve read on various forums some customers have suffered durability issues with their X-Strikes. Two years of all-weather riding, at least for me, have yielded no such concerns. But my X-Strikes are certainly getting ratty now, which is only reasonable considering where we have been and what we’ve ridden together.
Two of my friends bought X-Strikes on my recommendation and both tell me they love them as much as I do. This pair is getting towards the end of their life, but I won’t let the X-Strike love affair die—especially with my birthday coming up. And Christmas is only, err, seven months away.
