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COPYRIGHT 2002 Consumers Union of the United States, Inc.
You'd think it would be a snap to buy a pair of what used to be called sneakers. But if you've shopped for running shoes lately, you know it can be an exercise in confusion.
What does a $100-plus shoe give you that its less expensive brandmates don't? Is one brand's "HyperPod Technology" any better than another's "Ground Reaction Inertia Device"? And which shoe category should you be looking in--motion-control, cushioning, or stability?
After months of lab testing and 2,800 miles of road tests, here's how we'd answer those questions: little if anything, not really, and it depends.
NOT WHAT YOU'D EXPECT
Our findings are based on tests of 14 shoes from the seven leading manufacturers: Nike (which accounts for about a third of U.S. running-shoe sales), Adidas, Asics Tiger, Brooks,New Balance,Reebok, and Saucony. Given the overwhelming number and variety of shoes on the market, we wanted to make sure we were comparing apples and apples. So we asked each manufacturer to suggest one midpriced and one high-priced shoe that should work for mainstream runners without problems such as overpronation (excessive inward rolling of the foot, which may require some motion control).
Based on their recommendations, we purchased at retail two models from each brand in men's and women's versions: one selling for $70 to $90 (a price range that should get you a high-quality running shoe) and the other for $110 to $120 (among the highest-priced running shoes on the market). The higher-priced model in each brand was often billed as having more cushioning, more durable cushioning, or both. That's not what our tests showed. Some of our findings fly counter to what you'd expect.
Paying more than $100 does not necessarily get you a better shoe. The less expensive shoes outperformed their costlier brandmates in four out of seven cases. In fact, our two highest-scoring shoes were the less expensive Adidas and Reebok models. And we found no consistent correlation between price and performance in the key attributes we considered--not cushioning, flexibility, fit, or stability.
Complicated cushioning technologies are not inherently superior to simpler constructions. The shoe that did best in our initial-cushioning test was the Adidas Supernova (Adidas has since introduced several variations such as the Supernova Cushion; the model we tested is called simply the Supernova). It has a fairly simple midsole made of EVA (ethyl vinyl acetate, or flexible plastic foam) without the air, gel, or other materials found in most of the other...
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