They are comfortable, easy to carry, and exercise the upper body as would be expected. One caution .... if you are already overweight initially adding even a little more weight to your walks/runs may hurt your knees or other lower body joints - as they did mine within hours of a "weighted" exercise session. And my experience has been it doesn't matter whether the "extra weight" is carried (like these), or worn elsewhere - such as ankle weights. Trying to continue to use additional weight before the joints stopped hurting only made the joint pain worse. Extra weight removal ended the joint pain after exercise sessions. You may need to increase these weights very slowly ....