44 Pro Gloves is a company offering custom made gloves at an attractive price – $199 for the Signature Series. These gloves are made from Kip Leather, a lightweight leather typically considered the best offered on a mitt.
This review will reveal the good, the bad, and a final verdict on whether we recommend you buy a 44 Pro Gloves Signature Series mitt:
The Good
Customization Options: Tons of web styles, colors, sizes, and other options are all at your finger tips when building a mitt on their customizer. You will spend hours picking and choosing different options, but at the end of the day, the only limit is your imagination.
Leather quality: It doesn’t have the leathery feel of the Pro Preferred model (another Kip leather mitt), but the leather is nonetheless very nice. It’s smooth and surprisingly durable for its price, though it doesn’t quite match up to the A2000/A2K or HOH/Pro Preferred level.
Lace Quality: This is where I was the most surprised. Gloves at this price point, and even at higher prices, typically struggle with lacing, but the Signature Series has supple lacing that doesn’t stretch too much past the initial break-in period.
Dark Color Quality: The Black leather on our mitt was pretty much flawless after years of play. There was no discoloration and the majority of this part of the leather still looked like it was brand new.
Customer Service: 44 Pro’s customer service is ridiculously good. They give you updates on your glove, are more than willing to answer questions quickly via email, and put a lot of resources into place to ensure you’re happy. Out of all the glove companies, 44 was the most pleasant to work with.
The Bad
Other Color Quality: Our mitt has a bit of red on it (we were too tempted by the many options), and the color faded quickly. Even in spots that don’t get used a ton. Although this is commonplace for most custom gloves, it just reminds us that bright and flashy colors aren’t always a good move.
Pattern: While 44 Pro has updated the patterns they offer, out mitt had quite the odd pattern. The natural squeeze was a bit goofy, and the double-laced palm made for an interesting break-in. They have improved this, however, so this point may be less relevant now.
Stiffness out-of-the-box: I personally love stiff gloves that require some break-in, but this glove was too much. If I were to assign a percentage to it, I would have to say around 10-15%. If you’r short on time or a bit impatient, you may end up messing up the break-in.
Palm Liner: The palm liner is super smooth out of the box and feels pretty nice, but it’s very slippery if you sweat at all. 44 Pro has also upgraded this recently, so perhaps we’ll have to give it another shot.
Our Verdict
It’s tough to beat a fully custom glove for $200. And with the traditionally dominant models becoming more and more expensive each year, any quality glove at this price point is a bargain.
While there are certainly some areas their gloves need to improve, 44 Pro has consistently worked to remedy these issues. Even moreso than companies with much more R&D money.
If you’re in the market for a custom glove and simply do not want to spend anywhere from $350-$550 for customs from other companies, 44 is a more-than-excellent alternative that you will enjoy for many baseball seasons.
You can start customizing a 44 Pro Gloves Signature Series here.
Note: This review is based on an older mode 44 Pro Gloves Signature Series model. An updated review based on their new models will be coming shortly.