dhb Pace Roubaix arm warmers

The rain has stopped, the sun is shining, and here at road.cc towers it feels like spring might - just might - be in the air... enter the Pace Roubaix arm-warmers from dhb. When it's time to think about what to wear on rides that don't call for full winter gear arm warmers should be on your mind.

We've tested some other kit in the dhb range - notably shorts and tights - and been impressed with the quality. These arm-warmers are also very good indeed. The fabric is a medium density, smooth on the outside, and slightly fleecy on the inside, so it feels nice and warm. It's a stretchy, meaning a good close fit, but not too tight.

The close fit is thanks to the method of construction. Whereas some arm warmers are pretty much a tapered cylinder of fabric, the dhb versions have an 'anatomical' shape - which means they've got a bend half way down, to match the bend in your elbow when riding the bike. This means less material to ruck uncomfortably on the inside of your elbow. It also means a surprising number of panels, and lots of seams to join the panels together, but you can't feel the seams when you're wearing the arm-warmers, and there's no trouble with chaffing.

On sizing, these arm-warmers have a very generous length. We're testing a pair of size Small, but they're easily long enough to cover the wrist-bone and go almost up to the arm-pit, so there's absolutely no chance of an annoying - and chilly - inch of bare skin showing between the top of the arm-warmers and the sleeve of your jersey. (For the record, these size Smalls are being tested on arms that measure 66cm from wrist to pit.) And just to make sure they stay in place, around the elasticated cuff at the top of each arm-warmer there's a line of silicon on the inside to grip onto your skin, and a some dots of silicon on the outside to grip the inside of your jersey sleeve. Neat.

The Pace Roubaix arm-warmers are available only in black, with a very thin line of white around the lower cuff. For night-riders, there's a reflective tab sewn into the seam at around the elbow, and the dhb logo on each forearm is also reflective.

One word of warning. The medium density fabric is no problem if you're wearing these arm-warmers all day. If you plan to use them for the first few hours of a long ride then take them off and put them in your back pocket when the temperature rises, then you'll obviously find them slightly more bulky than the ultra-skinny all-lycra types that are available. But that's a fair pay-off. Something that's ultra skinny isn't going to be as warm. You pays your money...

Talking of which. A pair of dhb Pace Roubaix arm-warmers costs £18.99. It may seem a lot, but all those panels that go into making the anatomical shape inevitably push up construction costs, and this compares well with the full price of other brands of arm-warmer made from similar materials, where you can pay easily over thirty quid, and sometimes almost fifty, for some high-profile names (you can of course also get lightweight lycra-only versions for about a tenner, but they're a different beast), so overall this is fair value.

Verdict

Well-made, nice-fitting, fair-value arm-warmers, perfect for spring riding.

(Is that enough hyphens?)