In this video, I review a new accessory from AMVR, their VR Boxing Gloves for the Meta Quest 2.
You can buy these gloves for:
$38.99 from Amazon US → https://amzn.to/3zznlkD
£35.99 from Amazon UK → https://amzn.to/3MQOUcf
€39.99 from Amazon DE → https://amzn.to/3tysLIA
If you’re looking to add some extra immersion in your VR fitness or boxing games, then these boxing gloves from AMVR might be what you’re after.
In the soft packaging, you get a warranty card, and there are the pair of boxing gloves themselves.
Looking over the gloves then. At first glance, they look similar to a pair of MMA gloves, with the exception that these gloves have an open finger loop design that allows for a better grip of the controllers, as well as offering a better reach for the controller’s trigger button. The palm design is also more open and ventilated to help increase airflow and improve your grip on the controller whilst also reducing sweat from building up as quickly.
The PU leather material gloves come in a black and gold colour design. With VR motifs and illustrations on the outer padded side, and there’s some AMVR branding on the rather long velcro strap. Inside the glove, there is some high-density foam to help give you that boxing glove feel and this foam padding is also great at protecting your hands if you were ever to accidentally hit a wall or object with them on.
Fit
Attaching the gloves onto your hands is pretty simple. You first slide your four fingers into the four leather finger loops on the inside of the glove, followed by inserting your thumb into the leather thumb loop. Then with your other hand, loop the padded velcro strap around your wrist, keeping it tight as you bound it around your wrist.
With one glove on it can get a little tricky to put the other glove on, but it’s doable, and you shouldn’t need another person to do it for you – unless you want that authentic boxing experience.
They each weigh 146 grams, so that’s about 300 grams of total weight with a controller. This isn’t much, but it is enough weight that will help add some extra resistance to fast punching in games like FitXR, or whilst in a punching frenzy in The Thrill of the Fight.
With both gloves on your hands, you can grip the controllers relatively easily, however, this will depend on the size of your own hand and how much movement you’ll get when wearing the glove whilst also holding a Quest 2 Touch controller. With some regular use, I would expect these leather finger and thumb loops to become much softer, and as a result, make it easier to grip the controller, but fresh out of the box, they feel quite rigid and hard to fully grip the controller as naturally as I would have without the gloves on. Because of this, I think they might have been better if they had fabric loops for the fingers instead.
In The Ring
To try these gloves out I fired up my boxing game of choice – The Thrill of the Fight – and I played a few sweaty rounds against some normal difficulty opponents. Having the gloves on took some getting used to, my hooks and punches felt like they took more effort to carry out. Throughout my time in the game, I didn’t notice any tracking issues. Reaching for the thumbstick as well as the trigger button wasn’t as easy, even with its open palm and finger loop design, but as I said earlier, this will get better over time with regular use of the gloves, but I feel this might immediately turn off some people.
Due to the reduced levels of grip on each controller whilst wearing these gloves, I recommend that you use these gloves along with the official wrist strap – just in case you attempt a side hook or punch without fully gripping the controller.
My Impressions
Overall, I can see some appeal for these gloves if you’re looking to improve your immersion in boxing or boxercise VR games, they will also add some extra weight to help burn a few extra calories too. Like VR pistol grips, they can also look fun for anyone doing video streams or demoing VR to the public too.
For me though, I feel these VR boxing gloves are a little bit of a gimmick and aren’t something I would want to spend extra time attaching to my hands every time I wanted to play a boxing game. But if you play boxing games often, these VR boxing gloves from AMVR can make you feel that little bit closer to actually stepping into the boxing ring.
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 – Brief overview
0:16 – Unboxing
0:21 – Features
1:11 – Fit
2:35 – Demo
3:16 – My impressions
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