Talking about Adidas shoes in recent years, the first several words popping up in my mind were “cheap”, “emotional” and “moderate”. All in all, nothing to do with words like high-end. However, the fact is when the adidas Harden Vol.5 came out, I knew I had to ditch my stereotyped image about Adidas shoes.
The size of this one is US9 EUR42 2/3 and a single shoe weighs 480g.
Personally, the moment I got this adidas Harden Vol.5 , I felt it quite like a pair of children’s shoes. But as the saying goes, “Never judge a book by its cover”. And so is the case here : Never judge a shoe by its appearance. After some more testing, it turned out that this is a reliable comrade on court.
Like the sneakers, the shoebox is cartoonish and childlike with a lot of speckled patterns, and at the bottom of the box is a Harden’s handwritten signature.
And on the side, in addition to the shoes’ name, Adidas Harden Vol.5 , there is also a word “Futurenatural” which is the name of the major new technology of the shoes.
There is not an absolute official definition of the word “Futurenatural”, but as the name suggests, the shoe is quite futuristic and natural in its appearance.
As regards the midsole, it adopts a built-in BOOST+LightStrike, which is quite thick. And above the insole, there is a flannel-like material with the word BOOST written in a hollowed-out finish. But to be fair, such a built-in midsole is not uncommon today.
As is obviously seen, there is a super hard TPU extending from the midsole to the forefoot part. But as a rule, when talking about such design, people tend to related it with poor torsion resistance and arch support. However, you can be assured that the design in this Harden Vol.5 won’t fail you because it is an exception.
Then in terms of the upper layer of the midsole, there has been a lot of upturned processing so that the locking of the foot would be better.
In fact, only one layer below the blue part is the Boost, which is used to boost feedback while the lighter LightStrike wraps around the Boost. This design allows the overall weight of the shoe to be reduced as much as possible. So it’s the delicate treatment of these details that makes the shoe a little bit different.
The vamp of the shoe is made with a 360-degree hot-press forging technique. Simply put, the vamp and outsole are integrated, so we can’t see any stitching on the shoe.
Simple as the shoe looks, all the most basic setups of other excellent sneakers can also be seen in this one.
As a pair of mid-top shoes, there are totally 5 sets of shoelace buckles which offers enough support.
Besides, the thickness of the lining of the heel is quite impressive because there are four sponges in the heel.
With respect to the outsole, there is some resemblance to Harden 4, but not exactly the same. The horizontal and vertical grid is more dense in the forefoot and more rugged in the back with a big “boost“ and an ”inside“ next to it.
Overall:
In short, after a thorough and detailed understanding of the shoes, I really have great interest in them and high expectations for them. But can adidas Harden Vol.5 reverse some negative images of Adidas combat shoes？ Well, please wait and see. Maybe there would be some surprises.