How to change your music while skiing — without taking your gloves off

Low tech, high risk. It works but it costs you cold hands, an interrupted run, and a real risk of dropping a glove or a phone into deep snow or from a chairlift. On a cold day it is genuinely painful. On a powder day it is a major distraction.

Speaker pads that sit in the ear pockets of your helmet. They sound decent and they let you hear the mountain around you.

Main Issues: They can become inaudible in high winds or when riding fast. The buttons cover the basics at best, and finding the right one on the side of your helmet mid-run is guesswork — repeated pressing at your head is its own interruption.

Puck-shaped remotes with oversized buttons, designed to be pressed with a glove on. They usually strap to a glove, a pole, or a jacket strap.

Main Issues: You have to find the button by feel, which means looking down or guessing. The ones we've seen are not very stylish. Check a remote’s compatibility and support before buying.

If you already wear headphones, you can ask Siri or Google to change the track without touching anything.

Main Issues: Wind. Voice recognition struggles at speed with air rushing past a microphone, and it needs a connection that is often patchy on the mountain. The time needed to recognize a spoken command can vary with the assistant and conditions. And you have to be willing to talk to yourself around the mountain.

Instead of finding a button, you move. A wrist-worn sensor reads the movement and turns it into a command, so a flick of the wrist changes the song and your hand never leaves your pole.

This is the approach we took with Maestro. It is a wristband that comfortably fits under your ski gear. A flick left or right skips a track, a flick up or down changes volume, a tap plays or pauses, and a double tap sends a voice message to the people you are riding with. The controls are on your wrist, with your gloves on and your phone in your pocket.

Where it falls down: It is another device to charge, and gesture control asks you to learn a small set of movements rather than press a labelled button. It is also new — follow the Kickstarter campaign for production and delivery updates.

• You do not mind stopping to change the music and don't hit fast speeds — helmet drop-in speakers or bone-conduction headphones. Solves half the problem, and at mellow speeds the audio holds up.
• You want a physical button and do not mind looking for it — a big-button Bluetooth remote. Check when it was last updated before you buy.
• You want to change music without stopping, looking down, or removing a glove — Maestro is designed to put music controls on your wrist.