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UA Curry Flow 10 Performance Reivew

Many fans expected the brand-new Curry signature shoes for a long time. Curry Flow 10 has been released on the new sports competition season.

Appearance:

As it’s Curry’s 10th generation signature shoes, Curry Flow 10 is significant. Curry Flow 10’s colorway pays homage to colorways which have been released on previous generations. Such as the first released colorway is ‘iron sharpens iron’ which has been released by Curry 2. And it also released the ‘Sour Patch Kid’, ‘More Magic’, ‘Northern Light’ and other colorways. The insole of  Curry Flow 10 is also white. The X on the vamp represents that it’s the 10th generation signature shoes. The outboard Curry logo is not printed in, but it’s tridimensional.

Comfort Level:

Since Flow technology was developed, it’s used on Curry’s personal series, from Curry Flow 8 to Flotro series shoes. And the new released Embiid 1 also used the FLOW insole technology. The Flow insole technology is comfortable and has excellent traction performance. It’s always popular. Curry Flow 10 uses full-length Flow insole. The UA WARP material vamp is light and elastic. It covers the foot like socks. The cushion performance of Curry Flow 10 is better then Curry Flow 9. But the cushion of insole is not the center of gravity of Curry series shoes.

The UA WARP vamp and Flow sole design reduce the weight. The unit weight of US9.5 is about 350g. It’s 20g lighter than Curry Flow 9. The shoe tongue and shoe heel has leather pull-tab design. The cushion of Flow insole is enough for running and jumping. But the cushion not enough under big impulsion.

Protection:

Curry Flow 10 is low type. The shoe tree is almost the same as Curry Flow 9. It’s half sole is round and wide. The position of half sole is a little empty. The Flow extends upward in the arch position for improving the lateral supporting performance. It adds stiff TPU plate on the outboard heel position to reinforce support. The insole adds a piece of long anti-rollover plate. The WA WARP material is light, but also can offer good support. The overall supporting performance of Curry Flow 10 is strong, but not effect flexibility. The outrigger design on half sole is also made of Flow material, which not only can offer comfort level, but also has enough strength to offer stability.

Durability:

The traction performance is the best advantage of Flow. The traction performance is excellent. But as the traction performance is too strong, it can stop quickly, so it’s easy to twist the ankle. So the Curry Flow 10 adjust the pattern of outsole to keep the excellent traction performance and can offer buffer to protect the feet. After playing the basketball on indoor court some time, it still keep the good traction performance, but the outsole has obvious abrasion. So I tested it to outdoor court.

It’s surprise that the traction performance of outdoor court is worse than indoor court, maybe the outdoor court more dust and impurities, so that the FLOW sole can’t touch the ground directly. It doesn’t have big abrasion after testing a few times.

Overall:

As it uses the Flow insole technology, the Curry series shoes don’t have big difference. Flow is almost the representative of Curry. If you like running and flexible playing way, the traction performance and stability are the main considerations in your choice of basketball shoes, you will love Flow series shoes. Curry 11 should still uses FLOW. Hope that UA can change the density or thickness of Flow in the future to make the insole to match different players’ styles.

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New Balance Fresh Foam BB Performance Review

New Balance released the brand-new Fresh Foam BB with a limited Paris colorway. From the name, we can see that New Balance brings another cushion technology. The shoe tongue is printed with ‘FRESHFOAM’. The main colorway is powderblue.

Appearance:

New Balance Fresh Foam BB also released several colorways. The colorway that I purchase is the theme of Star Game. The vamp is black, gray and silver. The sole is purple and orange color. The appearance is retro type. The hot-melting design on the position of shoelaces to shoe head is similar to 991 & 993.

Comfort Level:

The insole of Fresh Foam BB is Fresh Foam X material. Fresh Foam X is New Balance which uses 3D motion capture technology to collect impact data from athletes to create a material which can withstand impact on your feet. Laser cut pits on both sides increase cushion performance and reduce the weight. The thick Fresh Foam X insole is soft. Comparing with the Fuel Cell insole of Two WXY, the cushion performance of Fresh Foam X is better.

The vamp is made of FitWeave, and the shoe head and position of shoelaces are reinforced by hot-melting and glue. The FitWeave vamp is light and elastic, and the air permeability is good. The comfort level is not great as expecting. The hot-melting position is stiff. The padding of ankle position and shoe tongue is thin. After fastening the shoelaces, the ankle is a little uncomfortable. It needs time to break-in.

Protection:

New Balance Fresh Foam BB is middle type design. The FitWeave vamp offer good supporting performance. And the shoe heel has TPU plate to support ankle. The outboard Fresh Foam X shape is the same. The TPU plate strengthen the stability of insole. For the fitness, both sides of vamp oppress the foot. It needs time to break-in. If your foot is not wide, we suggest you to choose the standard size. But as the ankle position doesn’t have enough padding to improve the fitness, so it needs to fasten all of the shoelace’s holes well. The outboard sole has outrigger design. The inboard side also extends to outward to improve the stability of half-sole.

Comparing with TWO WXY series, Fresh Foam is thick. But as the Fresh Foam has good resilience, the feedback is not bad.

Durability:

The semi-transparent outsole uses gradually changing color. The outsole patterns is composed of an imperfect circle. The traction performance on outdoor court is not good enough. But after cleaning the dust of outsole, the traction performance of New Balance Fresh Foam BB is excellent. The pattern of outsole is rough and stiff, so the rub fastness should be good. After testing a few times, it doesn’t have obvious abrasion.

Overall:

The insole system is quite resilient. Although the insole is thick, but it still has some flexibility. If it can improve the traction performance, New Balance Fresh Foam BB will be a pair of nice basketball shoes.

Before Fresh Foam BB, New Balance only has Kawhi’s signature shoes and TWO WXY team shoes. Comparing with TWO WXY, Fresh Foam BB emphasize on the cushion performance.

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ASICS GEL-CUMULUS 25 Performance Review

Highlight:

  1. Following GEL-NIMBUS , GEL-CUMULUS 25 also upgrade the insole technology.
  2. GEL-CUMULUS 25 has several colorways for your choice.

The famous ASICS running shoes series are GEL-NIMBUS and GEL-CUMULUS.

The designer of GEL-CUMULUS 25 Robert Fay aka Bob Fay “Re-engineer form the ground up and get bold with Cumulus”. ASICS brought the lessons learned from NIMBUS to CUMULUS development. GEL-CUMULUS 24 uses the FF Blast technology. Then the GEL-CUMULUS 25 uses the lighter and more resilient FF BLAST PLUS technology and brand-new PureGEL to meet the current trends in the running shoes’ market. The appearance is also different with previous series.

The distribution of outsole wear-resistant rubber is more streamlined for light weight. It also emphasis on the area where is easy to be abraded.

The configuration of GEL-NIMBUS 25 is similar with GEL-CUMULUS 25. Both of them uses FF BLAST PLUS material with PureGEL on the important area to improve the cushion. The drop height is also about 8mm. But the insole thickness of GEL-CUMULUS 25 is about 4mm thinner.

GEL-CUMULUS 25 emphasis on feedback and the propulsive feedback. And GEL-NIMBUS 25 emphasis on resilience.

The characteristics of GEL-CUMULUS 25:

*The insole uses full-length FF BLAST PLUS technology

*The shoe heel has built-in PureGEL. Comparing with traditional GEL, it’s about 65% softer.

*The outsole uses AHAR with wear-resisting rubber

*The drop height is about 8mm (the height of half sole is 18mm and the height of shoe heel is 26mm)

*The unit weight of women’s size US8 is about 231g.

The unit weight of men’s size US9 is about 263g.

*There are several colorways for your choice.