5.10 Team Shoe

I wanted to throw my opinions of these shoes out into the world since there are a lot of questions surrounding them at the moment and not a ton of answers. So here it goes.

First Impressions:

Fit - Out of the box I was very impressed with their fit. They sucked up nicely under my arch and the heel cup fit better than either the dragons or the Jet 7's. It still has that nice narrow profile to the heel but seems a bit more sculpted than before. The toe box fit, dare I say it, almost perfectly! No real dead spots and a nice close fit everywhere. I was very impressed and they were maybe the best fitting shoe I've tried on, out of the box. The only real tough spot was my left pinky toe which was a bit snug. Not bad, but noticable.

The one thing that people need to realize with fit is that this is a SLIPPER. They are a bit tough to get on at first, just like the old V10's were. Once you get them on though, they fit fantastic. Well, at least they fit me fantastic.

Of note is that these fit almost identical in length to both my Dragons and Jets. Not in my perception but in actual measured length of the outsole. Just an FYI.

Build - When I showed them to Katie the first thing she said was "They look like they're......well built. What gives?". They look just a touch more polished and well put together than what I've seen in the past from Five Ten. The toe rubber is glued down nice and clean and the velcro strap is sewn down tight so that it won't rotate. Thank you, Five ten. I was really hoping for that.

The only thing I seem to dislike about the shoe is that they went to the pull tabs on the Jets instead of their traditional Anasazi/Dragon pull tab. It's a bit thin and I'm curious how it's going to hold up.

Overall though, the build is much much nicer than any other Five Ten I've owned. At least my pair is!

Second Impressions:

Fit - I've climbed in them for about 2-3 weeks now and the fit has only improved. My heel is still locked in and the toe box has stretched maybe a 1/4 size and is just about perfect now. I have gotten a couple of small blisters on my middle toe of each foot. First my left and now my right, but it's nothing major and is going away already.

They're pretty much broken in and are one of the best fitting shoes I've ever had. Fantastic.

Build - They're holding up fine so far. The one interesting thing is that you can see the midsole and where it ends. Seeing it made me want to rip apart a shoe. I will do that soon.

Performance - Close to perfect. I'm really impressed with how these climb. They're a nice mix of sensitive and stiff and seemingly do pretty much everything well. The toe rubber works very well, and is a welcome change from the slab of rubber that was tossed onto the second edition of the V10's. Heel hooks feel fairly secure so far and the velcro on the top is a nice addition. On top of that the velcro actually stays in place!

One thing I want to mention is the rubber/midsole combo. It seems that they've hit a nice little sweet spot with their new bottom package. 3.5 mm Mystique along with a fairly thin midsole seems to give a lot of sensitivity while still being able to hold its own on more vertical terrain. It's a really nice combo and, in my eyes, is a better package than what's currently on the Dragon and Jet 7's. It'd also be interesting to have this shoe without the midsole, but that's just my own weird idea.

All told, I'm a huge fan of these things so far. As everyone knows I'm a bit too much of a shoe whore for my own good and I'm incredibly impressed by how much I like them. They took a near perfect shoe with the original V10 and improved every single downside of that shoe. They added velcro and a really nice toe cap along with fixing the heel and adding more rubber to that as well.

I was definitely underwhelmed when the Jet's came out as the V10's replacement. They just didn't seem worthy of taking over where the V10 left off. The Team Shoe seems to have finally picked up where its predecessor left off.

I'm curious what I'm going to think as I use the shoes more but I'm very happy so far.

Sizing info:
Street shoe - 8.5-9

Team Shoe - 8
Dragon - 8
Jet 7 - 7
Project - 6.5
Anasazi Velcro - 8

Testarossa - 37.5
Solution - 37.5

Booster - 38

I think that my perfect bouldering/spurt climbing quiver is going to end up being the Projects, Team Shoes and either Dragons or Testarossas. Just a nice mix of three very different shoes and styles.