****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
First what I like a lot:The handwarmers themselves feel good in the hand, are not too heavy, seem well-made, are rechargeable and the 2 heat settings seem like they will work well for most situations. The lowest heat can be used with bare hands if needed, while the higher heat will work best when you are wearing gloves or mittens as it's too hot for bare skin for any length of time when fully heated. (Disclaimer: it's not yet brutally cold where I live so I have not tested these in extreme outdoor conditions yet. Also, I have not used them for more than an hour at a time, so I can't speak to the battery longevity.) I also like that they give you a small pouch to keep the handwarmers and chargers and instructions together when not in use.Now what needs improvement:1) The instructions! I read every word on the teeny tiny instruction sheet, some with the help of a magnifying glass. Not only are they hard to read, there are some things that I can't make heads nor tails of, such as something called the "protective function". After reading that section a couple of times, I just gave up and figured it was stuff I didn't need to know anyway. Also, the instructions state that they "are not waterproof to be used in rainy or snowing day". Hello? If you couldn't really use them on a snowy day, what good would they be? What they really mean to say is just don't submerge in water as it would short them out. This is a classic case of instructions being written by someone whose first language is not English, and they haven't bothered to have a true English speaker proof the copy.2) These come with little hanging ropes to attach to the units. This is actually a good idea, for storage or for attaching loosely to your wrists while using for a little extra insurance not to lose one on the trail. However, be warned that getting them attached to the units is NOT easy. There was no reference to these little ropes in the instructions other than mentioning them in the list of items included in the box. After looking everything over very closely, there was just one specific place where the ropes could attach, so I needed to thread the loop into this one little hole and push it through to a second little hole, then tie up the loop. Sounds simple BUT it wasn't. I pushed and pulled and worked on the first one for quite some time trying to get it to slide through to the second hole. Wouldn't go. Checked everything over again, kept trying, kept trying... finally went and found a safety pin and used it to "grab" the end of the loop and pull it through. Even that took a few tries and loosened the fibers on the loop in so doing, but I FINALLY got it. Now that I knew it would actually work, and how to do it, I turned to the second handwarmer and decided to time myself. It still took me 9 minutes to get the second rope onto the other handwarmer! The good news is that now I never need to deal with that again, so while it was very frustrating at the time, it was once and done. If I had to do that regularly these would have gone straight back. Most people are not are relentless as I am, and probably would have just thrown the loops away. There has to be a better way.3) The use of these is not exactly intuitive, as there is a light ring that flashes either green or blue when in use or when charging. Reading the instructions (which call these "breathing lights", whatever that means?), you learn that green is lower heat and blue is higher. And when charging, the green light just flashes until it's charged, then just stays green. I figured that out by trial and error since the instructions don't tell you that - they simply mention a red light to warn of low battery, which I have not seen yet given my light usage.Overall, the handwarmers themselves are very nice once you wade through the instructions and get the loops on and figure out how they actually work. Which is quite simple: on low, on high, off and charge is all there is to it. But don’t lose the instructions, because as I said, usage is not intuitive and you or another user might need to refer to them occasionally in future years.
