RDX Fitness Gel Leather-X Boxing Gloves Review

RDX Fitness Gel Leather-X Boxing Gloves 14oz Review

Brand

RDX is one of the UK’s most widely known fight brands, who are now pushing their products over to the US, as well as already having popularity in a large number of countries. They have a reputation for producing quality gear for any level, with reasonable price tags. They’re often people’s first choice for equipment when they’re starting out in martial arts.

About the gloves

The RDX Fitness Gel Leather-X Gloves are at the low end of the market, with a low cost to undercut most manufacturers. They’re designed for boxing, but also work well for kickboxing and Muay Thai. As with other RDX gloves, they feature ventilated mesh palms for breathability. The gloves also come with a grip bar and an attached thumb, which somewhat limit the flexibility of the hand when clinching or catching kicks for those into Muay Thai or kickboxing, but it does improve the overall boxing experience.

Weight and distribution

The gloves are sold as 10oz, 12oz, 14oz and 16oz variants. We’ve personally reviewed the 14oz versions, so it’s important to note that the fit of the glove is relative to this. The majority of the weight is surrounding the knuckles with a lot less padding around the back of the hand, which usually implies they are specifically designed for boxing as opposed to anything else.

Aesthetics

The RDX Fitness Gel Leather-X Boxing Gloves are black with either red or blue highlights depending on which colour you choose. The gloves look great compared to other gloves for the same price range, but compared to RDX’s wide variety of interesting glove designs, these do look a bit plain. The ‘R’ logo on the back of the hand really stands out, using the highlight colour to appear colourful and stand out. The RDX logo also sits along the edge of the fingers, which also looks quite good with the highlight colour incorporated. The logo on the cuff is a bit oddly placed though. It was clearly designed to be large and fill the space with something, however the positioning means that you can never see the whole logo at the same time, which seems to defeat the point. We chose the red versions over the blue versions, however this is really just down to preference.

Looking closely at the graphics they are a little bit messy. The lines on some of the straight sections are a bit rough and look badly printed. They haven’t worn off though, even after many months of use, and you will only be able to see the issue up close, so this is really a minor problem.

Materials

These gloves are made out of real leather, which is okay and does the job, but feels rather cheap and has more of a rubbery texture to it. It seems to be pulled tight in most places, with a bit of bunching up around the thumb and the side of the hand opposite the thumb. Other than that the leather has kept its shape and not crumpled at all. Inside the glove is a black material with RDX patterned across it. The material on the inside is good. At first it has a good feel on the skin, however over time we found it starts to become covered with small folds, and for me the material also actually has torn on the inside. Luckily once you’re wearing hand wraps and have your hand inside the glove, you wouldn’t even notice. The Velcro is as you would expect from most gloves. It holds itself in place well and hasn’t deteriorated over time, and is also easy to take off, even with gloves on.

Craftsmanship

While the materials have started to deteriorate over time, the manufacturing thankfully seems to be on point. It may not be the neatest in the world, but for a glove in such a low price range, it is certainly well put together. The stitching for example seems secure in all places, none of it has started to come out. The glove actually has a nice shape to it, keeping a straight line all the way down the hard edge of the hand, with the padding curving slightly around the knuckles. The thumb is also in a good location. It could do with perhaps being a little lower down, but it does sit cushioned in between the adding of the hands and fingers quite nicely.

Comfort/use

The hand of the glove has a fairly slim fit. Even without hand wraps it feels like it would hold itself in place. This is great for anyone like myself who isn’t too keen on having spare room inside the glove. The same can’t be said of the wrist however, which is far too wide. To get the cuff tight enough you have to really pull the strap around tight, which then causes the strap to go round further than the Velcro does. This isn’t too much of a problem for boxing, however the Velcro sometimes scratches your partner during sparring or especially when practising clinch work. My biggest problem with the wrist of these gloves isn’t so much the Velcro, but rather the cuff in general. There is basically no support in the wrist here, the gloves simply bend around the red/blue strip with ease. I found myself on quite a few occasions hitting the bag/pads wrong and having my wrist bend round uncomfortably, and it worries me that somebody hitting harder could easily injure themselves.

The gloves are roughly the same size as other gloves of the same weight, but the padding on these seems to have a nice ‘bounce’ to them, which is especially nice when practising with pads or a bag. I actually found that they seemed to soften up after a while, and actually became quite comfortable and leaning more towards a more cushioned feel. Along with the grip bar, these gloves are actually quite enjoyable for light punching. These boxing gloves also have a mesh palm, with the intention of keeping the hand dry and moisture free. The loop where the palm meets the Velcro strap is quite far down the glove however, meaning that there is around an inch and a half of pure leather between that and the mesh palm, which seems to defeat the point, although I can’t say this makes any noticeable difference.

Cost

The RDX Fitness Gel Leather-X Gloves retail for just over £20, which is a nice price range for beginners who want to try out boxing or a martial art but don’t want to invest in a more expensive glove just yet. They would also possibly make a good spare pair of gloves for a more experienced fighter for some light simple bag/pad work. Compared to most gloves in the ‘value’ price range, these gloves aren’t bad, however we would personally recommend paying a little bit more. As the saying goes, you get what you pay for.