Testers loved the Tecnica Mach BOA HV 105 W for its ample volume and plus-size curves, and that's without their huge appreciation for how the BOA closure system put a new spin on the Mach1 wide rid
If you've always been a narrow and stiff boot guy but you're tiring of the hassle to get them dialed, Rossignol empathizes. And delivers a delightful solution. The Allspeed Elite 130 is meticulously shaped to match the foot at the key fit zones: forefoot, navicular bone, instep bump and ankles. It’s built to ski hard like a race boot but with a suspension tuned for the rigors of off-piste hammering.
Fits tight like a 98mm last should but without pressure points or hot spots. Several testers mentioned its out-of-box fit felt as good as other narrow boots they'd put hours of work into. The toebox here is roomy in both width and height. Lengthwise the fit runs a little long for the category (try on the next smaller size and you may find a workable super low volume fit solution). Testers with high arches and insteps liked the extra room over the top of the foot.
The Allspeed Elite 130 is ready, willing and able to tackle all terrain and snow challenges with a lightweight but powerful feel on edge. Testers gave good marks to the upright cuff. It quickly engages the ski tip with the slightest move to the boot front. They felt the 130 flex index was on target with a firm but springy feel turn-to-turn. Testers across the board praised the neutral lateral stance set up. A few mentioned that the floor of the boot felt a little flat and found themselves in the backseat occasionally. They felt a touch more ramp underfoot would steady that feeling.
Sensor Blade ridging on the shell at key stress points adds lateral power and torsional rigidity while keeping weight down. Testers like the three pin anchor points on the rear spine; it provides a variety of ways to customize the stiffness and flex. Thermomoldable EVA foam ankle pocket construction works wonders for bony ankle folks; cook it and clamp it to mellow the fit.
Testers said this is how a performance-oriented, medium-width boot should fit:
They also said this is the way one should ski. It was the equal of anything in the entire All-Mountain category, testers said.
The liner and shell work closely together; there’s a squared-off, modern toebox shape in both. A seamless liner tongue and a tall, dome-shaped shell contour over the instep team to create a comfortable ceiling over the bony part of the foot. That’s where boots all-to-often crush downward, shutting off blood flow and creating numbness.
The entire fit is well-draped and cushioned on all parts of the foot. Yet it’s not too fluffy so it shouldn’t pack out. The foot hold is firm and performance oriented but with a surprising cushy feeling.
The cushioned and progressive flex feel of the Allspeed Pro 120 begs a skier to bang off short swings and hammer the bumps. This is not a one-dimensional side-to-side mover. However, the power on edge is shocking given the comfort level found here. It skis as well as any in the category including its slimmed down, stiffer big bro Allspeed Elite 130.
Testers liked the EVA foam ankle pocket construction and the grippy removable toe and heel plates that can be swapped for rockered-toe WTR (Walk to Ride) soles. Both plate styles are Cantology compatible in case the single-side cuff adjustment isn't enough to get lateral stance angles dialed.
A super-cushioned cruiser geared for the occasional skier seeking warmth and a walk mode at an attractive price. Gets it done on the hill and comfy in the bar.
Evenly roomy across the board, testers said, with no glaring fit issues. Great for thicker feet or those looking for a more relaxed fit and greater warmth. Testers say the tongue is well padded for comfortable flexing.
The slightly bow-legged stance set-up loaded power to the inside edge for strong carves on smooth surfaces, testers said. The fore-aft stance is upright and relaxed for all day cruising without killing the quads. Testers mentioned that the liner tended to slip around a bit inside the shell and suggested liner heat molding would help it seat better with the shell's interior.
Grippy toe and heel plates, a ski-walk mechanism, a single-side cuff adjustment and Ultralon foam liner construction for a $450 list price. A solid option for those on a budget.
The X Pro 130 returns like a hard-training middleweight: it’s lighter and stronger than previous incarnations. It now uses polyamide plastic (essentially a Grilamid-like nylon but without the brand name) in the lower shell. The X Pro 130 wowed testers (as always) with its perfectly even, firm, medium-width fit profile and bankable turn-to-turn dependability.
The first thing testers noticed after getting the boot on (and a little patience is required) was the thickly padded, dense liner that wrapped every curve on their feet. There’s no banging up against shell hard spots here. The ankle fit is snugger than the medium class norm and controls the rear foot with no-slip grip. There’s plenty of room for wiggling toes and forefoot spreading. The fit is strong and well-padded but without any forefoot numbing or top-of-foot crushing.
Most testers put it on, skied it, and forgot that it wasn’t their own boot. Yup, it's that user-friendly and comfortable. Skis rolled over and reacted on command with deep, solid medium- and long-radius carves. The upright stance make the X Pro an off-piste dream. You’ll spend all-day plowing pow and crushing crud with nary a hint of forward rake-induced quad burn. Testers hinted at only one minor flaw; perhaps, yes, perhaps, the snow feel and quickness is a bit muted due to the thickly padded liner. That's a fair trade to make for warmth and comfort with all-mountain ripping capabilities.
A slightly thicker foot will do well in the X Pro 130 as its Custom Shell molding capabilities can open the fit throughout. The ideal out-of-box feel for someone hot on employing the Custom Shell process is just a bit too tight everywhere. For bony ankle guys who feel the squeeze a bit there but love the fit everywhere else, skip the shell metamorphosis and have your bootfitter mold just the My CustomFit 3D Race liner. That should do the trick without increasing shell volume.
For skiers with the low volume foot who can’t seem to ever find boots that are snug enough, swipe right. The G2 120 Powerfit is shorter and narrower than almost every other boot in the narrow category, packing the foot into balanced and strong position over the ski. It’s surprisingly powerful to the edge for a light feeling 120-flex.
The G2’s closure is absolute, locking down even low volume feet with an initially firm liner feel that relaxes as the boot warms. The fit over the top of the foot is low and firm, favoring lower arch and lower instep feet. The fit at the forefoot is narrow in an old-school sort of way (i.e. no built-in bunion bumps; gotta visit your bootfitter for that) and our slender footed testers loved it.
While the fit consensus was "tight," it was a positive tight. The fit tension distribution was even and comfy enough except for testers with high insteps.
This is where the G2 shines. Make that rips. It is race boot strong and as quick edge-to-edge as anything we tested. Testers who hadn't skied the G2 before were blown away by how well it tamed the snow. Testers who had skied many G2's over the years wondered again why we don't see way more of this boot on the hill.
The 120 flex is understated; it’s firm and reactive against the shin with good pressure distribution along the leg shaft. Good skiers with minimalist tendencies will most appreciate what this boot has to offer; it’s not a fluff-and-feature model. Testers said skiers should be well-skilled in boot entry and exit; this is one of the more difficult boots to get in and out of.
The double pull loop PWR Fit 120 liner is pre-lasted but fully thermomoldable. It comes packing a super fat rear spoiler that some testers removed and others wished were thinner. The stance is jacked a bit farther forward than the current industry standard with it inserted. If you typically require a cuff angle adjustment, look elsewhere. There’s none here.
With a lot of brands, their mediums and narrows feel awfully similar. Or their mediums and wides feel about the same. Tecnica trod a different path: its wides are wide, its mediums are medium and damn, its narrows are narrow.
The Mach1 130 LV is an honest boot; that Low Volume bit is assuredly truth in advertising. Yow baby, it's snug. This is how a narrow performance model should fit, said our testers: just a little too tight out of the box, everywhere. Unless your feet are truly narrow and un-bunioned, in which case you'll find the Mach1 LV one of the very few to actually lock down without excessive buckle tension.
How can it be so darned snug and yet avoid the typical hot spots skiers experience? It's the shape. The extra room built in at the sides of the forefoot, at the navicular and ankle bones, and at the heel are well placed. There is just enough pocket space for the bony bits without rendering the fit too roomy. The Mach1 130 LV sits on the tight side of the narrow width group but received very few “ouch” comments on test cards. More often than not, testers said it set the standard for how a narrow class boot should fit.
If its medium-width doppelganger MV is a Porsche Cayenne Turbo, then the LV is a 911 Turbo S. It’s a little smaller handles a little better, rides a little more epic. How many ways can you say epic as it relates to skiing performance? We're not sure, but the LV is epic-er than the rest. It was, in fact, the highest scoring boot in the entire All-Mountain category. Common themes here were a limitless amount of easily-accessed and entirely-balanced power along with “quasi-telepathic steering control.” Yep, that's what one tester wrote.
While many skiers won't need to tap into the C.A.S. shell and liner fitting customization options in the medium width Mach1, many certainly will in the LV. The dimpled areas at the sides of the forefoot and navicular bone, for example, are spots where the plastic's mass has been reduced to better handle and retain a defined heat stretch. The firm, microcell outer foam on the liner is grindable, as a way to strategically reduce peak pressure points without overly widening the fit. Room where you need it, tight where you want it. Makes total sense.
At a time when many medium width boots achieve “comfort” by being too roomy, Tecnica creates comfort and performance through a more anatomical shape. From the inside to the outside of the liner and to the closely mated shell shape, careful attention has been paid to matching the contours of the foot and lower leg. Testers approve across the board: comfort is performance here.
The Mach1 130 MV resides on the snug side of the medium category average, meaning it fits the way a medium width used to not very long ago. It offers an evenly distributed squeeze on the average foot with a skooch more room at the bony points of the ankles, navicular and the forefoot.
The liner's interior has a firm but cushioned feel that wraps the foot well. It transitions seamlessly through the instep and throat of boot up into the cuff where the shin fit is firm but evenly matched to the leg's shape. Testers wrote many "made for me," and "perfect," comments in their fit notes. One simply wrote: "I love you."
Frontside category edge grip and stability at speed are paired with off-piste design elements (grippy toe and heel plates) and a thick-enough liner to help moderate off-trail chop. Testers noted confidence-inspiring accuracy and power through all terrain and snow conditions.
It steers with no loss of movement and rolls the ski onto edge with a no-compromises torsional strength that makes your ski edges feel instantly sharper. Several testers mentioned skiing better in this boot than in their own.
In many ways the best bootfitting is the bootfitting that you don't need to do. This is a boot, as many bootfitters will attest, that doesn't tend to need much babysitting, fit-wise. It sells, goes out the door and spends its life skiing bell to bell, not hanging out in the shop getting punched and grinded.
That said, The C.A.S. (Custom Adaptive Shape) shell and liner are designed to make bootfitting modifications targeted and effective. Make more room exactly where needed, not in a sloppy wholesale fashion that renders key fit zones too-loose as a byproduct. Bravo Tecnica (from all us bootfitters).
Oh yeah, most testers dig the cam lock power strap hook doodad that lets you disengage the strap without having to pull the strap end through the cam.
The Zay ZR 115 is very similar to the stiffer ZR 125 that we tested, with the exception of a standard Velcro powerstrap here—and as such received almost identical test results to the big brother model. The ZR 115 also got a lot of attention for how it looked and how it closed—which are by the boot's nature inextricably linked. It has no lower buckles, but rather a thin cable which encircles the lower boot along two grooves at typical buckle positions. These loops are routed beneath the boot, along the sole and out the back to a single, multi-hinged buckle that tensions them.
The brand new Zay boot also got a fair amount of attention for how tricky the boot was for many testers to get on, though slightly easier than the stiffer 125—the early generation liner tended to crumple down into the throat of the boot, blocking entry, and the cables at times failed to release enough tension to allow an easy slide in. Once on and properly adjusted for tightness using the barrel-nut cable adjusters on the rear buckle and two traditional upper, testers were reminded that this is a seriously snug fit.
The rearfoot (heel, ankles, instep and mid-body of the lower) is tight! As tight as anything in the category, testers said, with a particularly snug fit on the navicular and styloid process area. And then the fit opens up to the forefoot and very roomy toebox. The upper boot was snug in a manner characteristic of other performance 98 mm boots. Testers had some hot spots—mostly attributed to the prototype liner—especially at the inside ankle bone.
But damn did the boot ski well, the test team said—agile, precise and as powerful on edge as any of the other boots in the category.
The Ten.2 120 HVL has risen again as one of the favorite wide-loads of the boot test, putting its predecessor Phoenix deeper in its grave! This boot returns unchanged from last year, when it debuted with more anatomical shaping throughout the shell and liner for a better match with the wide foot. This look (and feel) features a revised asymmetric toe box shape, very high instep fit, and more sculpted ankle and heel—though still roomy as a bus!
One of the most noticeable elements was the more flared and more padded boot top, with better liner cushioning for both shin and calf and plenty of room for a big one (calf), at that. Testers agreed that for the thick footed aggressive skier, the Ten.2 has what it takes. Laterally strong was a unanimous description—plenty of edge power and firm enough in forward flex but definitely with a more progressive, longer travel flex feel than Tecnica's wide boots of yore.
The fore-aft stance is very upright, even with the removable Velcro spoiler installed, and a few testers felt they might utilize a little heel lift, which for the shorter guys would help with the height of the cuff, which is a little tall on the leg—great boot for gargantuans but widely workable for the rest of us too.
The new Mach1 series represents the biggest (and we think coolest) changes made to Tecnica’s line since the company ditched the swinging hinge on its upper cuff. The Mach1 represents a return to Tecnica’s performance design roots. The key element here is the acute attention paid to matching the shape of the human foot and lower leg, starting inside the boot and working out.
The new C.A.S. liner (Custom Adaptive Shape) sports a squarer toebox shape, room for the pesky navicular bone on top of the foot and anatomically correct ankle and heel pockets. The liner is closely sculpted around the shape of the foot using a fairly stiff, heat-moldable exterior material Tecnica calls Microcell. The contours are plainly visible in the perforated orange exterior layer. The new Mach1 shell is similarly fashioned to match those curves meaning that liner and shell shape are well integrated from the start. The shell's upper cuff is also shaped to better match the skier's lower leg profile. At 15mm higher than the cuff employed on its predecessor Demon, it provides better power and leverage to the ski.
None of this would be much more than marketing spew if our testers hadn't overwhelmingly loved this boot and by virtually unanimous vote pushed it up onto the top tier of the All-Mountain Traditionalist category podium with a select few others in this competitive group.
The Mach1 definitely sits on the generous side of the medium fit spectrum—another joining the current manufacturing trend to hedge toward the roomy side of medium fit. Not that this is a bad thing. Testers with a variety of foot shapes liked the fit but noted more length, toebox and forefoot width and instep height than the average medium width model. A few even downsized for testing with no gripes. Across the board they liked the contained heel and ankle fit. They said the contoured grip was ready to go out-of-the-box. Ski performance was bombproof and precise, according to testers who gave it evenly matched top scores for power, agility, balance and comfort.
The G2 110 continues to get better no matter what badge it wears (It was formerly a Garmont until Scott bought the company two seasons ago). This 110 is one of the most agile, reactive boots on the market according to testers who yet again found little fault here.
The G2 remains a stripped down, fundamental performance boot. There’s not much feature glitz but there is plenty of on-snow glamour. Testers liked the way the G2 generated plenty of edge power and elicited immediate response from the ski. The flex is firm (stronger than its marked 110) but evenly distributed against the shin with a springy quality that invites dynamic fall line skiing.
The lower fits a little short, is a little narrow in the forefoot and runs a touch low over the top of the foot. It’s more contained that most other narrows which makes this a perfect nest for a low volume foot. That foot should probably be attached to a fairly slender lower leg too, as the calf fit is tight with the rear spoiler installed even with buckles on their lightest settings.
Keep in mind that the G2's new liner is a fully heat moldable Ultralon EVA design, which will significantly relax the fit as needed once its formed to the foot and shell. Testers liked this improvement for the fit options it provided as well as its light weight and improved warmth.
Testers preferred the boot with the rear spoiler in place but a few mentioned that the boot was raked a little further forward than what’s found in most current boots. Some suggested thinning the spoiler thickness a few millimeters would kill two birds with one stone, opening up calf fit and creating a more upright stance. That’s something a bootfitter can easily accomplish for you.
The lateral set-up was ideal for virtually all testers. That’s good because there is no cuff adjustment available on the G2. So if you’ve got some wacky stance needs, this may not a good place to start your boot hunt. On the upside, no cuff adjustment means direct connection of upper to lower for maximum transmission of skier radness straight to ski—and that is what this boot is all about.
The X Pro 130 was our testers' favorite Salomon model this year. They liked the combination of X-Max-style on-piste power blended with a little more width and a thicker, more anatomically shaped liner. The stance angles put them right where they wanted to be and the boot skied with a strong blend of go-anywhere performance and comfort.
This was the first time for testers on the 130 flex X Pro (we sampled the 120 last year) and they said it was plenty solid. Our biggest, strongest testers welcomed the sturdy, firm flex feel and tall upper cuff. Our shorter and lighter guys felt a bit overmatched and said the 120 would be plenty for them.
The yawning width range cited here is based on executing a 360 Custom Shell cook job. After cooking, the shell’s magical heat-moldable plastic takes only five minutes to expand around the foot and lower leg. Our tests have shown that the 6mm range is no exaggeration—slam a Sasquatch foot inside and it will push the plastic waaay out. The out-of-box fit is roomy and long in the forefoot and toebox, yet snug through instep and ankle. The liner is firm and pre-shaped to match the foot with an aggressive grip on the heel.
The X Pro technology brings about some intriguing fit and performance decisions. The 360 Custom Shell’s enormous stretching capabilities led some testers to drop down a size and use the molding process to regain comfort—but now in a tightly-wrapped performance package. Our shorter legged testers often liked the lower-cuff feel that came with dropping to a shorter shell length.
The X Pro boots also come in five different men’s flexes. Each step down knocks a hundred bucks off the suggested retail price so buy only as much resistance as you need and leave some ka-ching in your pocket.
