Likes
The best thing about this glove is its dexterity while being full-fingered. You can confidently clean pieces without worrying you will drop them. In contrast, if you clean pitches with full-fingered leather gloves, you will have to concentrate much harder to make sure you don't drop stuff. Or, more likely, you won't want to clean with a full-fingered glove whether on a big wall or doing multi-pitch climbing. If you are belaying a sport climb, you have more confidence about being able to pay out rope quickly than with a beefier leather glove. With the full-finger protection, at the end of the day your fingers won't be all black and worked. These are great for people who find typical belay gloves too clunky. They also are by far the lightest gloves for belaying. You hardly notice them on your harness, which makes them great for multi-pitch free climbs.
Dislikes
For all the extra dexterity with this glove, you lose durability. If you are hard on your gloves, it won't take long to burn through a pair. If you are careful, you can get them to last for a handful of walls before needing to be replaced. If you are doing a lot of sport belaying, they will probably only last ten days of climbing. If you carefully baby them on multi-pitch trad climbs as I do, they can last a long time.
For big wall climbing, this glove is not suitable for leading. That means you either have to lead without gloves or bring a second pair of fingerless gloves for leading. For this reason, I don't bring these on aid-intensive walls. Instead, I bring them on a wall like The Nose of El Capitan. I lead without gloves and then put these on to clean pitches and belay.
Personal Stories
I have been through a lot of different “glove phases.” When I first started big wall climbing I used fingerless mountain bike gloves that only went to the first knuckle. Then I was introduced to making my own Homemade Fingerless Climbing Glove, which got me through the next 50 walls or so. Then I moved to 3/4 length mountain bike gloves. Now my favorite option for most clean aid walls is full-finger mountain bike gloves like these. On a big wall I use them for belaying and cleaning and then take them off for leads. The exception is a on a super-aid-intensive wall, in which case I would bring the Black Diamond Stone glove.
Best Application
These are good for mostly free big walls like The Nose or Half Dome or multi-pitch free climbing. For a really intense nailing wall they might get shredded before the top, depending on how hard you wear your gear.
Value
At $25, this is $10-15 cheaper than most belay gloves. That said, you really need to baby them to keep them from wearing out. And even then they are going to wear out twice as fast as a beefy leather glove.
