The new Lange Shadow 130 MV impressed our test team with a rare combination of race boot power and quickness paired with business class comfort levels. The old-school, core tester group was hesitant to let go of their long time love for the all-mountain RX line, but it didn't take long for them to kick it to the curb.
Sometimes testers are eloquent in their test form blather, so might as well share it here. One said: The best fitting ski boot I've ever put on my foot. I wish all my shoes were this comfortable. How do you improve on perfect? Well, Lange has done it again. Bravo. Another said: PERFECT in every sense. The list of superlatives is too long! Mack truck power without sacrificing feel. It's a balance of fit, performance, feel and manageable power. And a third: Excellent fit tension with total comfort. Like a Formula 1 car--nimble, quick, and intuitive (but with a comfy seat)! Overall, the best boot I skied in the test. Lange has a winner in the Shadow MV 130.
Testers' only complaint was that the Shadow 130 MV was a bit too roomy-feeling for a medium volume, though there was some discussion as to whether it was actually vacuous in fit or simply absent of hot spot indicators of grip along the foot. A semantic discussion perhaps, but the new Auxetic liner seemed to function as advertised, with its hexagonal micro-perforated shape in the liner's exterior material allowing for extra stretch and conformation at wide and prominent spots. It managed to contour and wrap the shape of the foot without being completely soft and amorphous, testers reported. Lange reps have been using that story line since the Shadow's inception--It's not loose, it's just so comfortable that it fools you into thinking it's loose. Yeah, uh huh, right. Testers said it was on the roomy end of the medium width spectrum, which is great for a lot of folks, and for those who can't get over it, well, they can try on the LV! Though, check out the update at the bottom of this review.
The other story the Lange reps have been telling is that the Shadow does more with less effort due to the leveraged power of the multiple, elastomer-loaded cuff to shell attachment points and rear spine redesign. The four, lower Dual Pivot anchor points create a rocker-arm type mechanical advantage lever of sorts and provide more points of connection than found on typical overlap designs, and the rear spine's gliding tongue-in-groove style Suspension Blade additionally connects cuff to lower in a non-fixed fashion designed to minimize plastic shape distortion upon flexion. Testers said all this gobbledygook was legit, and easily and immediately felt on snow! The basic run down was that the boot flexed in a firm but comfortable way that generated more power to the shovel of the ski than expected, and the lateral response of the boot was that of a much less comfortable race-bred beast. More performance with less effort, more comfort. Our otherwise skeptical tester bunch happily drank the Kool Aid on this matter.
What else the testers have to say? It was their favorite 130 flex for how easily it went on and came off. And they said it looked cool. They weren't sure if a cool $G for an all-mountain boot was a great new retail development, but they said that if you consider that a thousand could make you feel like a million bucks, then perhaps it's still a bargain at twice the price.
POST-TEST UPDATE: Lange informed us that based on widespread feedback of a too-roomy fit in the Shadow boots (both men's and women's in LV and MV models), they've made a running change to the production liners to address that. We like to think we were helpful in getting the message across and are excited to try the new versions this season.
Kudos
Caveats