Cheap black textured nitrile gloves have flooded the Australian market in the last couple of years, and some of them are styled to look a lot like ours. I am not going to tell you every cheap glove is rubbish — for light, short tasks a budget glove can be perfectly sensible. What I will do is give you the checks I use myself, so you can tell a well-made glove from a cheap one before you commit to a pallet of them. If you want the benchmark to compare against, that is gripx gloves.
Every check below you can do on your own bench, with a kitchen scale and ten minutes.
1. Weigh ten gloves
This is the most useful single test, because weight is the best proxy you have for how much material is actually in the glove.
Take ten gloves of the same size from each box, weigh them together on a kitchen scale, and compare. Ten gloves rather than one, because a single glove is within the noise of a cheap scale.
You are comparing two boxes, not hitting a target. A box weighing noticeably less at the same size and duty level has less material in it, whatever the label says.
2. The donning test: put on twenty, count the tears
This is the test that settles arguments.
Take twenty gloves in your correct size. Put each one on, flex your hand, take it off. Count how many tear.
A well-made glove in the right size should very rarely fail during donning. If you are losing several out of twenty before you have started work, that is your answer — and it is a real cost, because every one of those is a glove you paid for and binned.
Do it in your actual size — an undersized glove tears on anyone's product.
“…Finally something that does not tear or break… We are on our 4th order!”
3. The inside shine check
Turn the glove inside out and look at the inner surface under a good light.
In my experience, the cheap lookalikes I have handled have had a noticeably shiny, glassy inner surface — and those have tended to be the gloves most likely to split, sometimes while they are still being pulled on.
Be fair about this one though. A shiny inner coating on its own does not prove a glove is bad. Plenty of good gloves are treated inside to make them easier to don, and that is a legitimate manufacturing choice. Treat shine as a prompt to do the donning test, not as a verdict by itself.
4. Texture depth, and the stretch test
This is the one that separates a working texture from a decorative one.
A raised diamond texture is meant to give oil and water somewhere to go so the glove still contacts the part. That only works if the texture is genuinely raised — and, crucially, if it is still raised once the glove is stretched over your hand.
Three steps:
- Fingernail test. Run a nail across the palm of the flat glove. You should feel distinct ridges, not a faint grain.
- Stretch test. Put the glove on and spread your fingers wide. Look at the palm under light. On a real texture the pattern is still clearly raised. On a shallow one it washes out into a flat sheen.
- Oily bolt test. Pick up an oily bolt or a wet spanner. This is the only test that really matters.
My observation of the lookalikes I have handled is that the texture is shallow — a surface pattern for the photograph. It is barely raised in the hand and it all but disappears once the glove stretches, which leaves you holding an oily part with the grip of a smooth glove.
There is more on how texture works in textured versus smooth nitrile gloves.
5. Stretch and snap-back
Take the cuff and stretch it steadily. Good nitrile stretches a long way and returns close to its original shape. A poor one goes pale and thin at the stretch point, and stays slightly deformed.
“These are perfect. Didn’t believe how durable and how much they stretch.…”
Do it steadily rather than snapping it — you are testing the material, not your grip strength.
6. Count the box
Genuinely. Count one box from a new supplier.
A box marked 100 should contain 100. Short-counting is one of the quieter ways a cheap box ends up cheap, and it is invisible unless somebody checks. If a box is consistently short, your real cost per glove is not what you calculated.
7. Smell and residue
Open a fresh box and smell it. A strong chemical odour is worth asking about. Then rub a glove between your fingers — every glove we sell is powder-free, and a powdery residue on a box claiming to be powder-free tells you something about the quality control.
8. Does the seller name the manufacturer?
Now we move off the bench and onto the paperwork.
Ask who makes the glove. Not the brand on the box — the manufacturer. A supplier who knows their supply chain will tell you without hesitating. "Premium quality" and "factory direct" are not answers.
Then ask for certificates, and check the certificate actually names the product you are buying rather than a different model from the same factory.
9. Search the ARTG yourself
Examination gloves supplied in Australia are regulated as medical devices and should be included in the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods. That register is public and searchable, which makes it the single hardest thing for a listing to fake.
Grip-X is listed as an examination glove, ARTG No. 448462. You can search the register at tga.gov.au/resources/artg.
A number you can look up yourself is worth far more than a certificate image on a product page. If a seller cannot give you one, that is information.
10. Is there an Australian business behind it?
The least technical check, and often the most useful. If a carton arrives short, or you need the same glove in six months — is there someone to call?
We hold stock in Ravenhall, Victoria, and there is a phone number and a person on the end of it. That is not a product feature, but it is the difference between a problem and a write-off.
The fair version of all this
A cheaper glove can be genuinely fine for light, short, clean tasks. If someone is doing two minutes of clean handling, a budget glove is the right economic choice and I would say so.
The problem is not cheap gloves. It is a cheap glove sold as a heavy-duty one, bought for work it cannot do, where the real cost lands as tears and lost time rather than on the invoice. Match the glove to the job.
Match the glove to the job, then check the glove
Before you run any of these checks, be honest about what you actually need. Half the complaints I hear about "cheap gloves" are really complaints about the wrong duty level, and no amount of checking fixes that.
If your work is clean, dry and short — handling packaged goods, light assembly, food prep — a light duty glove is the correct choice and a heavy-duty one is money wasted. If you are in oil, grease and solvents all day, you want heavy duty and a light glove will cost you more in the end. There is a full breakdown in the best gloves for mechanics and the material comparison in nitrile against latex and vinyl.
Once you know the duty level, then run the checks — and run them against a glove you already trust rather than in isolation. A comparison tells you far more than a single box ever will. If you want to verify a box you have already bought, how to check you have the real thing covers the packaging and register side.
Frequently asked questions
How can I tell if nitrile gloves are good quality?
Weigh ten of them, put twenty on and count the tears, check the texture is still raised when the glove is stretched, and verify the ARTG listing. Those four together will tell you most of what you need.
Why is the inside of my nitrile glove shiny?
Usually an inner treatment to make the glove easier to pull on, which is normal. What I would say from handling a lot of gloves is that the very glassy ones have tended to split more during donning. Use it as a prompt for the tear test, not as proof on its own.
Why do some textured gloves lose their grip?
Because the texture was shallow. A lightly raised pattern flattens out when the glove stretches over your hand, and stretched is the only state that matters in use. Check it with the glove on and your fingers spread.
Does a heavier glove always mean a better glove?
Not always, but for the same size and the same claimed duty level, materially less weight means materially less material. Use it as a comparison between two boxes, not as an absolute score.
Are cheap gloves ever the right choice?
Yes — for light, short, clean tasks. The mistake is using them for work that needs a heavy-duty glove, where you end up using several pairs and losing time.