NIKE LUNAR ENDOR SNOWBOARD BOOTS REVIEW
Price: £350
Flex: 5 – 7
Sizes: 6 – 12
Lacing system: Laces
We first heard about this model when we interviewed Nike’s chief snowboard boot designer Steve Pelletier last year. At the time he was working on some test models and was very excited by a material called ‘lunarlon’. It was already being used on Nike’s high-end running and basketball shoes, as well as Eric Koston’s signature skate shoe, and Steve reckoned its cushioning potential would also make it useful for snowboard boots.
Lunarlon is a special kind of foam that absorbs the impact of a wearer’s foot and spreads it across the whole sole, so that it doesn’t affect the heel or the ball of your foot as heavily if you land on them. A bruised heel, usually caused by landing too heavily or knuckling a kicker, is a surprisingly common snowboard injury, so anything that lessens the chances of it has to be a positive. Combine this with the fact that lunarlon is lighter than standard phylon foam and it makes a lot of sense to use it. Nike have combined this cushioning with the customisable flex tech introduced on their Zoom Ites model last season which allows riders to switch up plastic inserts of varying stiffness on the liner to give it different characteristics. This makes the Lunar Endor boot a versatile freestyle performer, as comfortable on massive cliff drops as it is in the park. Of course, tech like that doesn’t come cheap, but if you’ve got the cash to splash, this is a pretty awesome piece of kit. And that geeky Star Wars-inspired name (the moon of Endor is where the Ewoks come from) just makes us love it even more.
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