Men’s Mountain Hiking Boots MH100 - Grey

Review after 1 month. AVG. 20k steps/day I was genuinely surprised by how good these basic hiking shoes are, but Decathlon have to do something about the the squeaks and squeals that develop in their footwear after just a few weeks. Aesthetically these things aren't up to much but that's not my highest priority for budget hiking shoes. So, I'm a UK size 9, but I bought these in size 43 (8.5), because decathlon only do UK half sizes, and I tend to find their shoes either slightly too small or way too big these days. They were a little snug getting into them, but once they were on I completely forgot about them, which is a great sign of comfort in shoes. Went out for a little 5k walk to try them out and found that they are really comfortable. Excellent grip on dry soil, grass, mud, pavement etc. Terrible grip on very slick, untextured surfaces, or flat, wet surfaces. An aspect of the experience I'd never considered before buying these shoes was their stability. In the past I'd only ever used trail running shoes as day to day footwear and hiking shoes, and switched to these because the price of trail shoes has increased a bit too dramatically. I'd purchased these in time for a trip to Kefalonia, so I knew I was going to be in for lots of hot, dusty, gravelly trails up and down hills. As soon as I started up the first hill the stability of these shoes became apparent. You know when you're hiking along and your shoe comes into contact with a pebble or stone that's a little unstable so you sort of adjust your weight a little to account for the tiny yet inevitable slide that's about to happen? Well it doesn't happen with these shoes, they are just so stable! Perhaps this is a characteristic of hiking shoes compared to trail shoes, but it is a very pronounced benefit! The soles are solid enough to protect your feet from this type of surface too. In terms of how they wear, I would say that apart from the noise that they develop, wear is OK. I'm 100kg and walk between 15k and 35k steps a day over fairly varied terrain and the front grip lugs have definitely worn down a bit over the month I've had them, but I guess that's not too bad really for budget hiking gear. The biggest problem these shoes have is the same problem all Decathlon shoes seem to have, whether it's hiking shoes, trail running shoes, women's or men's, and that's an irritating squeak they develop after a very short space of time. What is that all about? Until decathlon I'd never had to return a pair of shoes or trainers because they're too noisy! Bonkers. To summarise: they're ugly, they have zero grip on hard wet surfaces, all of which I can forgive for such excellent dry weather performance, comfort and stability at a good price. I just can't forgive the squeaking! There would be no doubt in my mind about buying another pair of these shoes if it wasn't for the noise problem, but now I'm not so sure.

Decathlon should stop using Royal Mail. They should also stop using third party firms for customer service. You only get your item fifty percent of the time, and the interactions with CS are laughable. 7 hour wait times for responses on WhatsApp, they lose the first line of the address even though it's on the billing address details and they seem to deliberately stall resolution. This sounds like it's reached the point of industrial sabotage at this stage!

Great shoes and for price