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The Best Hand Warmer

By Kaitlyn Wells
Updated
Several hand warmers we recommend piled together on a table.
Photo: Sarah Kobos

Having hand warmers in your pockets can make a below-zero winter’s day if not pleasant, at least tolerable. After 120 hours testing 23 hand warmers over four years, we think the Celestron Elements FireCel+ is the electronic hand warmer you should get. It’s easy to use and it packs over seven hours per charge, which should last a week’s commute or a weekend’s worth of your kid’s hockey practices.

Everything we recommend

Our pick

Its ease-of-use and a long runtime make this warm-enough hand warmer our choice for daily excursions.

Buying Options

$60 from Celestron

May be out of stock

Also great

Zippo’s 12-hour hand warmer ran nearly four times as long as other models, averaging 21 hours in our tests.

Also great

They’re inexpensive, small enough to fit into a glove, and reach temperatures as hot as our main pick.

Our pick

Its ease-of-use and a long runtime make this warm-enough hand warmer our choice for daily excursions.

Buying Options

$60 from Celestron

May be out of stock

The Celestron Elements FireCel+ is easy-to-use, long-lasting, and its rounded shape is easier to hold than other warmers. While it takes longer to charge than our other picks, it’s also the only model we tested that can charge an external device and warm your hands simultaneously. But it does run cooler than most rechargeables, topping out at 103 °F—which is cooler than our other picks, but still kept our hands plenty warm.

Max temperature: 101 °F average; 103 °F maximum
Run time: 7 hours, 25 minutes
Charging time: 6 hours, 20 minutes
Weight: 3.5 ounces (99 grams)
Battery capacity: 5,200 mAh

Also great

Zippo’s 12-hour hand warmer ran nearly four times as long as other models, averaging 21 hours in our tests.

If you need a really long run time or the ability to reload your hand warmer when you don’t have access to electricity, we recommend the Zippo 12-Hour Refillable. It’s a catalytic hand warmer that runs on lighter fluid and requires a flame to get started. It reaches the same temperatures as our rechargeable pick and runs for an average of 21 hours—longer than anything else we tested. The catch? Refueling is more of a hassle than simply plugging it in, and you can’t safely turn it on and off; once you’ve turned the Zippo on, it operates until it runs out of fuel or oxygen.

The Zippo 12-Hour is 3.9 by 2.6 by 0.5 inches and weighs 2.6 ounces. It comes with a carry pouch, and has a two-year warranty.

Max temperature: 105 °F average; 110 °F maximum (recorded at room temperature)
Run time: 21 hours, 48 minutes
Charging time: about 5 minutes to refill
Weight: 2.6 ounces empty; around 3.5 ounces full
Capacity: about 0.9 ounce of lighter fluid

Also great

They’re inexpensive, small enough to fit into a glove, and reach temperatures as hot as our main pick.

If you need a hand warmer for only a few days a year, if you work with your hands outdoors during winter, or if you want something to keep in an emergency kit, the HotHands are for you. They’re cheap, lightweight, and get warm enough to keep your hands comfortable outdoors. At less than 70¢ a pair at the time of publishing, they are easy to find in pharmacies, grocery stores, and major retailers. And if you work with your hands outdoors (like recreation workers and mail carriers do), the business-card-sized warmers are small enough to slip into a winter glove without impeding routine tasks. They reached 118 °F and lasted almost six hours in our tests, which is hot enough and long enough for most outdoor activities. Because they’re disposable, you can’t reuse or recharge them like our other picks, and you’ll have to open a new packet for every use.

Max temperature: 112 °F average; 118 °F maximum
Run time: 5 hours, 58 minutes
Weight: 1.6 ounces per pair

Wirecutter staff writer Kaitlyn Wells has covered everything from automatic pet food dispensers to smart-home-gadget misuse and abuse. She also suffers from a lifetime of cold hands, and is always looking for ways to stay warm while waiting for a delayed, above-ground train during freezing New York winters. For this update, she revisited our picks and dismissals, expanded our search for the best hand warmers, and spent an additional 60 hours testing the devices. She also interviewed Dr. Danielle R. Bajakian, a vascular surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia, to learn about hand-warmer safety, and asked her to evaluate our models.

Several hand warmers we recommend piled together on a table.
Hand warmers need to be easy enough to stash in your pocket to keep you warm on cold days. Photo: Sarah Kobos

A hand warmer feels like that mug of hot cocoa between your hands on lazy winter nights. They’re palm-sized portable heaters, and if you spend any time outdoors during the winter and want to fight off the freeze you feel in your bones, a hand warmer is for you.

Broadly speaking, there are two types of hand warmers: battery-powered and chemical. Battery-powered hand warmers average $30, can be as heavy as a baseball and as thick as a deck of cards, and can stay in a coat pocket between uses so they’re easy to reach when you feel cold. They use rechargeable, lithium-ion batteries to create heat, and turn on and off with the press of a button. Rechargeable hand warmers charge from a USB port on a laptop or wall outlet, and most of them work as a backup battery for your phone. They make the most sense if you’re running errands or are commuting to the office and need to turn the heat on and off for multiple short bursts during the day. They also work well at an outdoor event (like holiday light shows and high school football games) when you need something to both keep you warm and charge your phone in a photo emergency.

But a rechargeable hand warmer can be finicky, and doesn’t always work optimally on its first run. One model we tested heated quickly during the first test, but took three times as long on subsequent charges. Others ran slightly longer and hotter on their first uses than on later runs—but performance consistency increased the more we used them. And most never reached their advertised run times or temperature outputs. Regardless, we didn’t see dangerous temperature spikes from any device we tested, and an expert we interviewed, Dr. Danielle R. Bajakian, a vascular surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia, said that they’re generally safe to use.

Chemical hand warmers are useful because they’re cheap (less than $1 a pair) and are easy enough to find at a local pharmacy or major retailer, which comes in handy if you misplace your winter gloves or find yourself trapped in a surprise cold snap during your commute. And if you work outdoors and want to keep your hands warm without keeping them in your pockets all day, many chemical hand warmers are thin and small enough to slip into a work glove. They contain a main ingredient, such as activated charcoal, iron powder, or sodium chloride, that reacts to force (shaking) or a catalyst (like air or boiling water) to release continuous heat. Once the reaction has been ignited there’s no way to stop it, so you have to let the reaction fizzle out on its own. And some chemical warmers stop working altogether in bad circumstances, say if you drop it in snow or put it in an airtight container.

The classic reusable chemical hand warmer is the catalytic model, which requires lighter fluid and fire to work. They’re similar in size and shape to a rechargeable, and have run times three or four times as long—but like other chemical hand warmers you can’t turn them off on demand. Catalytic models are appealing for extended jaunts outside when you don’t have access to a power supply, like while camping or working outdoors.

A photo of us testing several hand warmers using a Bluetooth temperature sensor attached to each one, with an app on a iPhone displaying results.
We placed a Bluetooth sensor on each hand warmer to track how hot it got. Photo: Sarah Kobos

For this update, we read existing reviews of hand warmers, browsed cold-weather-sports forums, scoured hundreds of product listings across retailers, and reconsidered our existing list of dismissals. We short-listed 19 models, and prioritized quality reviews, advertised heating temperatures, run times or battery size, and price. That left us with nine models to test:

Rechargeables:

Chemical:

A line graph showing the temperature readings of eight hand warmers tested in this review, shown over eight hours.

In earlier versions of this guide, our writer ran the hand warmers on their highest settings and tracked their heat output with an infrared thermometer while in a room-temperature environment. He also manually tracked run times and charging abilities, and how subjectively “warm” the devices felt in a coat pocket while he ran errands in San Francisco. In 2018, we fine-tuned our approach and reviewed each hand warmer for quality of construction, ease of use, and performance, repeating each test at least three times:

Outdoor performance: We affixed a Bluetooth temperature sensor onto each device, set the sensor to record data in 1-minute intervals, and wrapped it in a towel to simulate conditions inside a jacket pocket. Then we stuffed the wrapped hand warmer in a freezer that averaged 4 °F and tracked the hand warmer’s performance until it ran out of power. To maintain consistency, we ran these tests at a common temperature that all of the hand warmers could reach. (We couldn’t run this test on the Zippo 12-Hour Refillable hand warmer because it starved for oxygen in the freezer.)

Indoor performance: We conducted the same test (minus the towel and freezer) at room temperature to see if cold-weather conditions affected the hand warmers’ overall performance.

Subjective performance: During a mid-fall week in New York City when temperatures frequented the mid-40s (°F), we used the hand warmers while running errands, walking the dog, or schlepping groceries home from the store (sans car). When the weather heated up, we tossed our top contenders into a walk-in refrigerator with a panel of testers, including a self-described popsicle, someone who’s unnaturally impervious to being cold, and someone with Raynaud’s phenomenon.

Charging capabilities: We timed how long each warmer took to charge by connecting each device to the Anker PowerPort 4 multiport USB wall charger.1

Puncture resistance: We squished, twisted, and pulled at the disposable hand warmers to see how breakable they were.

A hand holding the Celestron Elements FireCel+ , a hand warmer we recommend.
Photo: Sarah Kobos

Our pick

Its ease-of-use and a long runtime make this warm-enough hand warmer our choice for daily excursions.

Buying Options

$60 from Celestron

May be out of stock

It’s not the warmest of the handwarmers we tested, but the Celestron Elements FireCel+ is easy-to-use, long-lasting, and plenty warm enough for most situations. It has a more ergonomic shape than other warmers and it includes a flashlight.

The FireCel+ is roughly 2.5 by 3.5 by 1 inch, but it’s egg-shaped instead of rectangular, making it easy to hold. It has a 5,200 mAh battery, and is the lightest model we tested, weighing just 3.5 ounces (the same as a deck of cards). It’s also the only model with rubberized sides, which help you grip it.

The FireCel+ hand warmer's flashlight feature in use.
The FireCel+ has 10 different lights that activate when you press one of two buttons. Photo: Sarah Kobos

The FireCel+ can be confusing to use. Between the flashlight and indicator lights, the Celestron has 10 lights of various sizes and colors that activate when you press one of two buttons (one controls the flashlight, the other controls the heater and charger). The buttons are identical and are located on either side of the device, so it’s easy to press the wrong one when you’re fumbling with it in your pocket. This can get annoying, especially if you’re trying to run the charger and heater at the same time. (FireCel+ is the only model we tested that charges an external device and produces heat at the same time.)

A bar graph showing the run time and charging time for eight different hand warmers.
*Zippo Catalytic readings were recorded at room temperature.

This model has the longest average run time out of all of the rechargeables we tested. It ran for 7 hours, 25 minutes during our freezer test, and its sister hand warmer, the Celestron Elements ThermoCharge 6, came a close second at 6 hours, 52 minutes. It reached its average operating temperature of 101 °F in 20 minutes; our former pick, the Human Creations EnergyFlux Enduro, reached that same temperature in just 15 minutes on average. Though the FireCel+ should still get hot enough to keep you warm, it runs on a battery and battery performance may decrease the colder it gets outside. (In our tests, most rechargeables lasted longer on a single charge at room temperature than in the freezer.)

Despite having a battery smaller than the Enduro (7,800 mAh), the FireCel+ (5,200 mAh) was still slower at recharging, averaging 6 hours, 20 minutes (roughly two hours longer than the Enduro). Most devices we tested mirror the FireCel+ model’s battery size, but charged remarkably faster: the Fourheart Rechargeable and Zippo 6-Hour Rechargeable both charged in three hours or less; the EnergyFlux Ellipse charged in just over four hours.

The FireCel+ comes with a storage pouch and USB charging cable, and has a two-year warranty.

Run time: 7 hours, 25 minutes
Advertised temperatures: 104 °F to 113 °F
Temperature reading: 101 °F average; 103 °F maximum

The Zippo refillable hand warmer, which we recommend, on a table.
Photo: Sarah Kobos

Also great

Zippo’s 12-hour hand warmer ran nearly four times as long as other models, averaging 21 hours in our tests.

A rechargeable warmer is a good option if you need to warm your hands for only a couple of hours at a time and can easily recharge it at work before heading home. For more serious warming needs, the Zippo 12-Hour Refillable hand warmer has remained the endurance winner for four years—it runs three times as long as the competition, and gets just as hot. But it runs on lighter fluid, which can be stinky and messy to use. And because it takes lighter fluid and lasts an entire day on a single fill, it’s not ideal for on-demand use because you can’t turn it off and on at will.

When we updated this guide in 2018, this model’s shortest run time we measured was 16 hours and the longest was 26.5 hours at room temperature.2 This makes the Zippo the longest-lasting hand warmer of the bunch. (The ThermoCharge 6 came the closest at 11 hours, 14 minutes on its longest room-temperature run.) The extended run time may be ideal on long, cold days for people spending extended time outside and away from a power source, such as couriers, recreation workers, backpackers, and skiers.

This Zippo averaged 105 °F and reached up to 110 °F. It ranked second highest at room temperature (falling behind the EnergyFlux Enduro, which averaged 110 °F and reached up to 113 °F) during our tests—and Enduro ran hotter the colder it got, reaching up to 116 °F in our freezer tests and lasting 30 minutes longer than at room temperature. But you’ll scald yourself using the Zippo because the thick, chrome casing conducts heat better than the rechargeables we tested. So make sure you sheath it in the included bag. (Zippo is one of four models that comes with a bag, and it’s the only one that must be wrapped during use to prevent burns—our measurements were taken with the Zippo in the bag.)

The Zippo hand warmer being slipped into its carry bag, which is black and velvety with a drawstring closure at the top.
The Zippo is the only model we tested that must be sheathed in its carry bag to prevent burns. Photo: Sarah Kobos

Lighting this catalytic model is more work than recharging a battery, but it’s not difficult—just a little messy and smelly. You have to keep the Zippo upright when filling it with lighter fluid and for two minutes afterward so the fluid soaks into the batting before lighting the catalytic burner to start the reaction. As implied in the video below, it’s easy to spill lighter fluid when poured too quickly, so take your time. This Zippo also has a curved base, which makes it impossible to stand upright on its own—ask for help when filling it if you have limited hand dexterity. (A Zippo spokesperson said that the company now offers this catalytic model with a flat bottom on a rolling basis, but didn’t know when it would be widely available for this guide update.) A faint smell of lighter fluid from during filling lingers during use. If you’re particularly sensitive to smells, or are using the hand warmer mostly indoors, get a rechargeable instead.

Unlike a rechargeable warmer, this Zippo lacks an on/off switch. You’re starting a chemical reaction to generate heat, and it can’t be stopped until the fuel or oxygen runs out. You can tweak the run time by adjusting the amount of fuel, but that’s a blunt gauge. And as Wirecutter readers have noted, you can stop the reaction by starving it of oxygen—sealing the warmer in a plastic bag, for example. But do that at your own risk; the Zippo manual (PDF) states “once ignited there is no safe way to stop the heating action.” The company recommends letting the warmer run out of fuel “on a fireproof surface,” like a granite kitchen countertop.

The Zippo 12-Hour Reusable hand warmer is 3.9 by 2.6 by 0.5 inch and weighs 2.6 ounces. It comes with a carry pouch, and has a two-year warranty.

Run time: 21 hours, 48 minutes
Advertised temperatures: 115 °F to 130 °F
Temperature reading: 105 °F average; 110 °F maximum (recorded at room temperature)

A disposable HotHands hand warmer atop two gloves.
Photo: Sarah Kobos

Also great

They’re inexpensive, small enough to fit into a glove, and reach temperatures as hot as our main pick.

If you need to keep your hands free while working outside, or you need a hand warmer for occasional use—like when you misplace your gloves or travel to frigid climates for the holidays—the HotHands disposable hand warmer is for you. It’s cheap, often less than $1 a pack, and is sold at major supermarkets, pharmacies, and sporting goods stores. The HotHands is the size of a business card, so it’s small enough to slip into a winter glove if you need a little extra heat. It gets just as warm as our main pick, but it takes twice as long to heat up and that heat lasts for a shorter time than the company’s marketing claims.

HotHands advertises the warmers as having a shelf life of three to four years, so they’re useful to keep in a car’s glove box or an emergency kit. As long as they’re kept airtight, and haven’t gone stiff, they should still work—but double-check the expiration date when you buy them, as that long shelf life also means the batches sit around for an extended period.

The HotHands packets contain iron powder, water, salt, activated charcoal, and wood fiber. When exposed to air the ingredients oxidize and create heat. Just remove the hand warmer from its plastic packaging and shake it for 30 seconds to activate (and speed up) the process. HotHands is claimed to get up to 135 °F, but it didn’t come close to that temperature in our tests, reaching just 112 °F. Still, that’s just as warm as most of the rechargeables we tested, including our main pick, the EnergyFlux Enduro, which averaged 113 °F.

A HotHands hand warmer being slipped between a hand and a glove.
The HotHands warmer is small enough to fit inside a glove. Photo: Sarah Kobos

The HotHands warmer doesn’t last as long as most of the competition. Though marketed to run up to 10 hours, ours died just shy of six hours in the freezer (although it lasted up to nine hours at room temperature). The other disposable we tested, Grabber Warmers, lasted 7.5 hours but ran at cooler temperatures, averaging 103 °F. And although the manufacturer says that the HotHands warmer takes 15 to 30 minutes to heat up, we found that it takes up to 50 minutes to reach its average operating temperature. So if you purchase these as a last-minute effort to fight off the cold at an outdoor event or during a commute home, we recommend opening them in advance.

Run time: 5 hours, 58 minutes
Advertised temperatures: 135 °F average; 158 °F maximum
Temperature reading: 112 °F average; 118 °F maximum

A hand warmer should warm your hands without burning your skin, but it may feel uncomfortably hot when you first turn it on. That’s because you’re touching a heat source that’s warmer than your body (like when you sit in a hot tub after swimming in a pool), and after a minute or two the heat should feel pleasant against your skin.3

Although a hand warmer feels hot initially,4 Dr. Danielle R. Bajakian, a vascular surgeon with NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia, said they are safe to use. “I don’t really see a downside to it,” she said. “They’re not going to be against somebody’s skin for prolonged periods of time since they’re designed to be in the pocket.” She recommends following the operating instructions and tossing the device if the battery ever leaks. And to ensure that a rechargeable model warms you up quickly, look for one that’s flatter and has a larger surface area so that it’ll heat a more uniform area of skin.

As for the ideal temperature, that depends on the person. “A device that stays around 110 to 120 °F and not above that is the safest way to go. For kids, I would aim even lower around the 100 °F mark,” Dr. Bajakian added. (Our hand warmer picks average from 101 °F to 113 °F.)

If you have an underlying condition, such as diabetes, a nerve injury, or Raynaud’s phenomenon (decreased blood flow causing your fingers or toes to change colors and feel numb in response to the cold), you should be extra vigilant when using these devices so that you don’t get burned. Only use hand warmers with multiple temperature settings at their lowest outputs and limit use to 20 minutes at a time.

If you can find the Human Creations EnergyFlux Enduro: We still recommend this hand warmer, which had been a previous pick. It's easy to use, runs hot enough to keep your hands warm on a cold day outdoors, offers a bit under seven hours of battery life at its highest temperature setting, and recharges in just four hours. However, due to ongoing stock issues, we’ve demoted this pick.

Several hand warmers we tested piled on a table.
We’ve tested dozens of hand warmers since 2014. Photo: Sarah Kobos

New in 2018

USB rechargeables

The Celestron Elements ThermoCharge 6 is the only water- and dust-resistant rechargeable hand warmer we tested (an IP65 rating). But it has a single temperature setting that never got hotter than 95 °F.

The Fourheart Rechargeable is inexpensive and it heats up faster than most of the models we tested. It got up to only 110 °F in our tests, never reaching the advertised maximum temperature of 131 °F. It also has a poor customer service record and is a white-label product (meaning identical-looking versions are sold by unknown or unreliable companies)—we found a dozen similar-looking versions online.

The Human Creations EnergyFlux Ellipse was the previous top pick we recommended after an earlier version was recalled in March 2018. We tested the Ellipse and it didn’t get nearly as warm as its predecessor, and it had the third shortest run time (just 5.5 hours) of all of the models we tested.

The Zippo 6-Hour Rechargeable hand warmer had a short run time (on average 4 hours, 44 minutes), and took up to an hour to heat up during our tests.

Disposable

Grabber Warmers disposable hand warmers are cheap and convenient, and lasted about an hour longer than their HotHands counterpart. However, they averaged 9 °F cooler and took twice as long to heat up.

Hand warmers from our 2014–2016 testing

USB rechargeables

In earlier versions of this guide, we tested and dismissed the following models which have since been discontinued: Kozy Xcel from Komfort Solutions, Defrost Labs LE8K and LE5K, Celestron Elements ThermoTrek, S-Boston’s Pocket Hand Warmer, Celestron Elements FireCel, Komfort Solutions Kozy 7,800 mAh Rechargeable Hand Warmer, Verseo AH10118 ThermoSlim Rechargeable Hand Warmer, and Zippo “6 hour” hand warmer.

The HotPod is reminiscent of a first-gen iPod Nano, but it barely lasted over an hour and was too small to warm effectively.

The ThermaCell HeatPacks were recommended by a Wirecutter reader, but the limited run time and single-sided warming left us cold (literally).

Catalytic

The Peacock Pocket warmer has been around since 1923, but it didn’t last as long as the Zippo catalytic model and can be hard to find.

The rest

The Addao Stylepie is cute and looks like a macaron, but its 3,000 mAh battery can’t keep pace with our top contenders.

The Human Creations Energy Flux Lite is smaller than the EnergyFlux, so it doesn’t last nearly as long.

This article was edited by Ria Misra and Christine Ryan. Ray Aguilera contributed to an earlier version of this guide.

  1. Although all rechargeables we tested can charge an external device, we decided that was a nice secondary feature and didn’t test it for this update. (If you really need a USB battery pack, we have picks for that.)

    Jump back.
  2. Zippo wasn’t tested in a household freezer because it needed oxygen to maintain a chemical reaction.

    Jump back.
  3. Tolerance may vary. Our panelists said the hand warmers felt hotter in their dominant hand than in their nondominant hand, which is borne out in research.

    Jump back.
  4. For context, our main pick heating pad from our heating pad guide has heat settings between 105 °F and 140 °F, and we reported clothing and furniture can get damaged at temperatures above 140 °F.

    Jump back.
  1. Danielle R. Bajakian, MD, vascular surgeon, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia, in-person interview, October 15, 2018

  2. Chris Mecoli, MD, Raynaud’s Phenomenon, American College of Rheumatology, April 18, 2018

  3. Dorit Pud, Yael Golan, and Rivka Pesta, Hand dominancy—A feature affecting sensitivity to pain, Neuroscience Letters, December 31, 2009

  4. Hand Warmer Instructions (PDF), Zippo

  5. Julia Greenberg, The chemical reactions that make hand warmers heat up, Wired, December 26, 2014

Meet your guide

Kaitlyn Wells

Kaitlyn Wells is a senior staff writer who advocates for greater work flexibility by showing you how to work smarter remotely without losing yourself. Previously, she covered pets and style for Wirecutter. She's never met a pet she didn’t like, although she can’t say the same thing about productivity apps. Her first picture book, A Family Looks Like Love, follows a pup who learns that love, rather than how you look, is what makes a family.

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