UA was originally a company that produced sportswear for American football players. The founder Kevin Plank is also a American football player. UA is also producing other sports equipment except American football equipment, such as jogging shoes. Today, I want to talk about UA HOVR Phantom which uses the newest HOVR technology.
The vamp of UA HOVR Phantom is socks type design. The vamp is made of two pieces of material. The top half vamp is high-elastic knit material. The side of vamp is made of tough and tensile material. The high-elastic material fit the foot very well, and it doesn’t press the instep. It’s improved, comparing with UltraBoost. The side vamp is filled with foam. It has good supporting performance. And it has ventilated holes to improve the air permeability.
The foam in the shoe heel is soft and comfortable. It also has TPU stabilizing plate on the shoe heel. The stabilizing plate is soft. As the vamp uses socks type design and the high-elastic material has excellent fit, so the oneness of shape is on high standard.
The shoe-pad is also the fixed type. It can’t be taken away. The material of shoe-pad is soft. And it has the sweat guide groove design.
The insole is new HOVR technology. It’s made of two kinds of material. The outer layer white part is supporting layer to stabilizing the whole insole. We can see the red HOVR cushion unit from the opening window. The core material of HOVR is INFUSE (OBCs =Olefin Block Copolymers). The elasticity of HOVR is better than Boost.
The outsole design is also very special. The rubber of outsole is thick, so it should have high durability. And it’s also soft, so the traction performance is excellent. The rubber of forefoot sole is easy to bend, so it will be easier to run.
BTW, UA has running APP, that is, UA RUN. It can connect with the chip of HOVR Phantom and Sonic.
I want to talk about the difference of hantom and Sonic. The biggest difference is the vamp material and design. The vamp of Sonic is thinner, which is closer to the design of traditional running shoes. And the ventilated holes of the Sonic’s vamp are big. There is only a opening window on the side of Sonic. The outsole rubber of Sonic is not so soft as Phantom, but the durability is better.
Let me make a summary of Phantom. I’m not very surprised at the performance of HOVR technology. I don’t mean that it’s not good enough, but it doesn’t bring new surprise to me. When running, HOVR can defuse the impact force, the cushion performance is excellent, but the elasticity is not strong. Due to the Speedfoam 2.0 shoe-pad, it’s very comfortable when walking. But it’s not good enough for running.
I recommend UA HOVR Phantom for the beginners and intermediate runners, but not suitable for runners who have heavy weight.
We can see that UA is trying to capture the market. Hope the next series can bring us more surprise.