Mizuno has always been one of the more innovative brands when it comes to carbon plate running shoes, with mixed results.
The Mizuno Wave Rebellion Pro line had crazy cutouts and an incredibly high midfoot stack height and was a bit too wild for my liking, but the Mizuno Hyperwarp Pure is an excellent lightweight racer I’ve loved for 5K and 10K events in particular.
While the Pure is light, the new Mizuno Hyperwarp 96 takes things to another level with a design that tips the scales at just 96g/3.4oz, making it the lightest carbon plate racing shoe yet.
It comes in a gram lighter than the Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 on listed stats, and given the success of the world-record-breaking Pro Evo 3, runners will be itching to get their feet into the Hyperwarp 96 too — I know I am.
Here’s what you need to know about the Mizuno Hyperwarp 96.
The Hyperwarp 96 goes on sale in December and it will be very expensive
Mizuno has announced the Hyperwarp 96 today ahead of the Berlin Marathon, but it won’t be available to consumers until the end of the year.
The price is yet to be fully confirmed, but is set to be about £400 in the U.K., which I’d expect to translate to a U.S. price of around $450 based on the prices of other Mizuno shoes.
That would make it less expensive than the Adidas Pro Evo 3, which is $500/£450, but more expensive than every other carbon plate super-shoe.
It has a spray-on, laceless upper
The most striking aspect of the Hyperwarp 96’s design is the spray-on upper, which looks a lot like the LightSpray uppers On uses on some of its shoes, like the On Cloudmonster 3 Hyper LS.
This 3D-engineered upper is very light and designed to be denser at the bottom.
I like the LightSpay uppers on On’s shoes, but they can be tricky to deal with if you have wide feet or high arches, and you can’t adjust the fit if it’s not perfect out of the box.
The midsole is made from an all-new foam
A new foam called Mizuno Enerzy XP+ is used for the midsole of the Hyperwarp 96. It’s an extremely light material, and Mizuno shaved off every area not critical to performance to reduce weight as much as possible.
Unlike the Hyperwarp Pure, which achieves its low weight partly by having a lower stack height than most super-shoes, the Hyperwarp 96 has as much cushioning as rival racers.
It stands 39mm tall at the heel and 36mm at the forefoot for a 3mm drop, which is exactly the same specs as the Adidas Pro Evo 3.
It has a full-length carbon plate
The Hyperwarp 96 has a full-length carbon plate with a section cut out under the heel to reduce the weight.
This isn’t a novelty with super-shoes in general, but other super-light options have used other systems to add stability and propulsion without the weight of a full-length plate.
The Pro Evo 3 uses a carbon rim rather than a full plate, while the Asics Metaspeed Ray has a teardrop-shaped plate that only sits under the forefoot.
This means Mizuno might have an easy way to make the shoe even lighter if it wishes, by opting for a half plate or some other design, if it can do so without impacting performance.
Maybe this time next year we’ll see the Mizuno Hyperwarp 86?
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