Our women's test team has put the Promachine 115 W through the ringer before and absolutely loved it. That was the sentiment this time around, too, with our testers giving it a nearly perfect 4.94--in fact, five of the seven women who tested this model gave it a perfect 5.0, and incidentally this was the highest scored boot in the entire test across all categories, including men's models. One of the Promachine 115 W's most endearing characteristics is its generally flawless nature. One tester summed it up nicely: there's nothing wrong with this boot. See?
But it goes far beyond that, into the psyche of the skier, and those who haven't tested many boots may not understand this as intimately as veteran testers do, but boots can either make you or break you as a skier. We're talking good skiers, here. Some boots reduce the best skiers on the hill to struggling advanced intermediates! Well, not really, and to watch a great skier testing such a problematic boot you wouldn't see an obvious struggle, but that's what the skier will tell you--the boot made them unsure of themselves, tentative, and sometimes downright scared. Other boots may not have such a negative effect on a skier but require the athlete to change her approach to entering a turn or force her to make some extra movement she'd otherwise not bother with. And then, there are boots that go on and then promptly disappear. They are put out of mind as the skier discovers that they first and foremost fit properly but they also respond exactly as directed. Not only do these top tier boots not interfere with a skier's movements and intentions, they actually seem to anticipate them and even enhance them--these are the great boots that top each of our test categories, and the Promachine 115 W topped the most competitive category of all. There are no bad boots in this group, but the Promachine sat at the peak of the heap.
The Promachine 115 W is not for everyone--it's a real narrow boot, averaging the tightest overall fit in the women's narrow all-mountain group. But that said, for those with low volume feet this is a dream fit. Testers said that the shape is well contoured for the typical bony parts of the foot and the liner is well-enough padded to insulate and lock-in the foot. Testers said there's enough flare at the boot top (and a removable rear spoiler) to accommodate normal legs, but the lower boot is designed to hold onto the truly slender-of-foot and those skiers who want serious heel and ankle hold for absolute ski-driving control. The polyurethane shell and cuff are designed to be worked on with a variety of common bootfitting approaches, so skiers caught in between the fits of the narrow Promachine and the medium Speedmachine should opt for the narrow one (with a punch list) if the priority is performance.
One of the few critiques of this boot was also a compliment: it's stiff, one tester said. This shouldn't be a shock, as a 115 flex, but so few boots back up the advertised stiffness that it can come as a surprise to testers when one does. This boot suits the expert skier, first and foremost, but testers said it was easily accessed and didn't require mach speeds to perform--so, they suggested this would be worthy of aggressive intermediates looking for an instant step-up in their all-mountain performance game.
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