off-road.cc

Five Ten's Impact Pro shoes offer class-leading flat pedal grip with a comfy fit and a sole that manages to balance, traction, stiffness and comfort. They're not perfect, however, with the cheap feeling laces being a particular letdown on a premium-priced shoe.

• The best mountain bike flat pedals ridden and tested
• Buyer's guide to mountain bike and gravel shoes - flat and clipless option
• When should you replace your bicycle helmet?

The shoes use Five Ten's trademark sticky rubber, specifically their Stealth S1 mix. It still leads the pack when it comes to the stuff most other brands use, but a quick test with the durometer shows it's actually a bit harder than the Stealth Mi6 stuff used on the now discontinued Impact VXi shoes.

That's possibly no bad thing, as these might lack the absolute last bit of gecko-like pedal traction but they're looking much less mangled than the softer rubber did after a similar amount of use, which would hint that the usual short-life bugbear will be less of an issue. Even so, I'd much rather have a set of shoes that gripped well in all conditions and only lasted a couple of years over a set that slipped all over the place but lasted forever. 

A heel pull helps ease them on

The outer is all synthetic, with minimal venting save for a few perforations on the toe that also serves to let any water that gets in them out. It's also nice to have a big, solid toe bumper that works well when you accidentally toe-bonk a rock - these have taken some fair whacks without any injury to my feet.

The big dotty sole hooks up with pins well thanks to the Stealth rubber

In terms of sole stiffness, they're stiff enough to give you decent pedalling performance without killing any feel and they're still fine to walk in, with more aggressive tread at the toe and heel to help when scrambling up slopes.

A reinforced toe box is good to see

The sizing seems standard Five Ten; the correct size feels quite tight, to begin with, but once they've loosened up and the padding has packed down then they're true to size. They're also not as keen as the older shoes to hang on to moisture if they get soaked either, which is a definite boon.

The laces are pretty flimsy and low quality, plus there's no place to store them

What's no so good is the lacing. The laces themselves feel cheap and I've found them to rot and get brittle over time on other Five Ten shoes I've seen them on - the Impact VXi had much nicer items fitted and were the exception. The shoe also lacks any kind of lace tidy, which means they're flapping around rather annoyingly, just waiting to come loose and head into your chainring.

The big dotty sole hooks up with pins well thanks to the Stealth rubber

All in all, the Five Ten Impact Pros are still an excellent set of flat pedal shoes that offer class-leading grip, a decent sole lifespan and very good comfort and feel in a package that's more robust and weatherproof than the more casual shoes in the Five Ten lineup. It's an annoyance to have to change the laces on an already expensive shoe, but they're near-flawless apart from that.

• www.adidas.co.uk

You might also like:

• Five sneaky bike marketing terms you shouldn't trust
• The best four-piston disc brakes you can buy for all-mountain, enduro and trail MTBs