RDX A4 Professional Boxing Gloves Review

RDX A4 Professional Boxing Gloves (16oz) Review

Brand

RDX is one of the UK’s most widely known fight brands. They have a reputation for producing with reasonable price tags for beginner and intermediate level fighters. Because of this, RDX are a popular choice for people’s first equipment when they’re starting out in martial arts. RDX have now expanded to the US and their gear is available in a number of countries worldwide.

About the gloves

Like the RDX’s C4 Pro Boxing gloves (which we reviewed recently) we were quite excited to test out the A4’s, which are part of RDX’s new pro-range. This range is RDX’s first branch into the premium market, with all their previous gear aimed more at a lower budget. This higher price means that people are expecting better quality materials than in the budget ranges, and seeing as some of these new gloves are approved for competition by the BBBofC we’re interested to see the quality of the product.

The A4’s are designed as a pro sparring glove, and RDX sent us a 16oz pair to test and give our opinion on.

Visuals

As these are the lace up versions of the C4 gloves they are also only available in the one colour option; navy blue (across the back of the hand and inside the thumb) and grey everywhere else. This colour scheme is pretty uncommon, and does a good job of making the gloves stand out without resorting to a bright, garish colour.

The back of the hand has a large RDX ‘R’ logo and underneath this is a stylised ‘Apex-S Series’ (which is what the A in A4 stands for) both picked out in white. ‘RDX’ is printed on the thumb, ‘A-4 Pro Sparring’, ‘Pro Sparring Authentic’ and a genuine leather label are all on the inside cuff and palm, again all in white. The whole glove is finished off by a set of white laces.

Exactly as we said with the C4’s this is a stropped back aesthetic for RDX, and shows that they’ve targeted an audience who aren’t prioritising flashy glove designs.

Below you can find our Fight Gear Focus video giving you a close-up, visual look at these Gloves. Make sure you check out the rest of the video series and Subscribe to our YouTube channel so you don’t miss any of our future videos.

Materials/Craftsmanship

This is the area that we were most intrigued by, as RDX have a reputation for producing budget gloves, and seeing them step up to a premium price product meant we expected a lot more from their materials and craftsmanship.

To start, they’ve used full grain cowhide leather which is a standard for quality gloves. It certainly feels high quality and was neatly positioned and folded around the padding (which is made of layered foam to maximise impact protection). With the A4’s we didn’t find the same trouble we did with the C4 gloves, where the colouring seemed to be rubbing off after just a couple of sessions. The inner lining of the glove has also been well thought out, areas of the lining incorporate Korean satin for comfort (which we’ll get to in a second).

The construction of the glove is also well done. They have quite a slim profile for a pair of 16oz gloves, but fit nicely around your fingers and the thumb is positioned comfortably.

Comfort/use

Overall the A4’s are a very comfortable pair of gloves. They haven’t really needed breaking in and have been comfortable from the first session. The inner lining is particularly good, as we mentioned above RDX have incorporated Korean satin into the cuff of the glove, which definitely has an effect on the comfort and shows that RDX have put some real consideration into the A4’s.

While the C4’s we reviewed needed some breaking in before they were comfortable the A4’s felt good to go straight away. The padding is fairly firm, which we find better for pad and bag work but we’ve tested the A4’s all round and they’re good for sparring too. Similar to the C4 gloves the thumb on the A4’s is well positioned, tucked slightly behind the padding on the back of the hand, which stops you from catching your thumb when you’re striking.

Cost

The retail on a pair of A4’s is £119, placing them firmly outside the budget of your average beginner. The comfort and quality of the craftsmanship does justify the price RDX are charging.