Thanks for checking out our review of the New Balance Fresh Foam 880 v11
Thanks for checking out our review of the New Balance Fresh Foam 880V11. This shoe is a neutral trainer and is one of our shop favorites. The New Balance 880 is special to running stores as it’s a true running store specialty model. This is not the type of New Balance you’d find at any big box store. This model has a great step-in cushion and is darn durable.
New Balance Fresh Foam 880 v11 Details:
- Weight: Men: 9.7 oz / 275g. | Women: 8.57 oz / 243g
- Measured stack 32mm heel, 22mm forefoot.
- Drop: 10mm
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New Balance Fresh Foam 880 v11
This will be available in mid March of 2021. This shoe is special because it is only available with its companion the 860 in running specialty shoe stores. The New Balance 880 v11 is a mid cushion neutral shoe. This shoe is good from a mile to a marathon. This is really a workhorse shoe that you can do a bit of everything in.
History of the 880
Over the years, this shoe used to be a much firmer stiffer shoe. You could almost kind of hear people when they were walking around in this shoe because it just felt so stiff and firm. Not a bad thing necessarily some people really enjoyed that firmer feeling from their neutral running shoes.
Fresh Foam
Over the last two years, New Balance has made a change and made this shoe considerably softer than the previous versions by adding the Fresh Foam which makes sense there’s now a nice distinction between the 880 and the stability version the 860; you have somebody who wants a softer, neutral shoe, great if you need somebody who needs a little bit more arch support, something slightly more stable, great you have the companion 860.
Heel Cup
On the 860, some people found how the heel cup was curved, it put a little bit too much pressure on their achilles or didn’t feel like they were fit in the shoe. The 880 is sort of like a hybrid.
We’ve got some of the padding that we had in our previous version and just a little bit taller here, so it doesn’t have that much as a noticeable divot on your heel as we saw on the previous one like our stable guy the 860. However, there is more of a little bit more rounded and higher heel cup to it than where we’ve been on our previous version of it.
Width
This shoe is a little bit wider. That’s one nice thing because we always almost found with some of the New Balance shoes in the past. We had to sort of lean people up in size to accommodate the width, and sometimes they’re even just cut a little bit shorter.
Sizing
The 880 is usually pulled against like a Brooks Ghost which has pretty consistent sizing. In the past, I had to be wary in New Balance sizing usually having to go up a size or so, but with version 11 I think they are staying much closer to size and that the width is great on it. It really seems like New Balance is listening to their customers and getting just a little bit wider across the board.
I almost feel like I could still go up a half size. I’m 11.5 in a lot of my shoes. So I am ok with an 11.5 in the 880 v11 but I think I would also be pretty comfortable in a 12. I feel like if you’re on the cusp between two sizes if you sort of oscillates depending on the model, I would still probably consider rounding up to the higher to the larger size in your New Balance 880.
Durability
There’s a reason why New Balance has been around so long as they make really good durable products. This shoe is a workhorse shoe this should be your 400-500 mile shoe that you can be able to do a little bit of everything in and as it’s not super heavy at 9.7 oz / 275g. | Women: 8.57 oz / 243g. It’s not like you have to put on a shoe now that’s 11 or 12 oz to get that extra durability. In terms of weight the 880 is pretty comparable to stuff in that category some of the other brands that have that mid-cushion neutral shoe the difference being you’re going to get a little more miles out of it and compared to some of their stuff in this mid-cushion category.
In Conclusion
I’m curious if you’ve had success in the past couple of generations of the 880. Especially, if you notice some differences going from the stiffer version 9 moving into the fresh foam. Which you felt about that if it was something that you enjoyed. Or if you felt like you lost some of the inherent stability.
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