UKC

If you're only going to buy one shoe for all your climbing, then make it an all-rounder. We check out six versatile models at the performance end of the market. 

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They run very large, surely?

Would be useful to know what toe shape the shoes favour (and what shape the testers feet are, have photos in all their bunion displaying glory) - lots of those on the list are designed for people with longer 2nd toes (e.g., instincts) and can be problematic for people with longer big toes or squarer feet. It is a real shame that manufacturers seem to neglect this aspect of feet and ignore making shoes for all foot shapes in favour of forcing your feet to follow their function dictat (Scarpa, I'm looking at you, having dropped the booster, leaving no wide softish shoe in the "classic" shape but maintained 7 versions of the Instinct!. Not to be an anti-scarpa rant, having worn nothing else for 15 years, but I tried to engage with their designer about the disparity in the range of Scarpa shoe shapes to the distribution of foot shapes in the population (Nathan something?) and he basically said that the use dictates the shape, seeming to believe that feet are made of jelly or something).

Having worked in climbing shops fitting shoes this (IME) is the biggest determinant of whether a shoe works (and is "comfortable") - good rubber on a toe crippling shoe is pointless.

Having climbed in the Voltage I have to say that it is a superbly comfortable shoe for the performance. The sock liner is so nice compared to other brands.

The one thing that let it down is that  my pair's rand rubber developed dry rot and tiny cracks. Bit of a bummer since they can't be resoled now.

I hope Red Chili has fixed that issue by now.

In comparison, my go to outdoor lead shoe, the Instinct Lace, is almost through it's third sole and is holding up great.

Oops, yes you are right. We have updated this.

it’s probably one of the most-repeated points of advice in a bouldering discord server i’m in, when new people join and ask whether this or that shoe is ‘good’ – depends whether it fits. and while choosing size is something you don’t really need to explain to people, width and volume are already a bit more tough (and can rule out a model for good much easier than shoe size), and getting all of those right isn’t worth much when the toebox shape doesn’t agree with the proportions and mobility of one’s toes.

that last factor i’ve found to be surprisingly tough to give simple and actionable advice on, because one could very well have a longer second toe, but it might also scrunch up far more than one’s big toe – so a foot’s comfortably scrunched shape can deviate quite a bit from what it looks like relaxed. and then there’s how much (or rather, little) information shoe manufacturers offer on their models, and how well different manufacturers’ information can be compared to each other.

outside of every reviewer having a couple of paragraphs detailing their feet for readers to look up, i believe this to be really difficult to tackle exhaustively in a review.

these are the moments where i start wondering how far behind the foot fetish people we climbers are when it comes to attention on the peculiarities of foot morphology.

I have a sort of related question and it drives from seeking a toebox that fits my very blunt angled toes (little taper).

I think there is just as much art to the length issue as anything else. Nearly every modern shoe is designed with a randing system that applies forwards pressure. That means that, within a reasonable range, they will always encourage your toes to curl - all that changes is how far your heel stretches this rand and goes back into the heel pocket.

The result is that - should you want to get a shoe that doesn't have any bag in/below your heel - you are effectively sizing to the tension of the rand. 

I run in a 44-45 or 10-10.5. If I put my foot into a Skwama, I cannot get a heel without baggy space until I size into a 7.5 or 40.5. I think RockRun suggest -2.5 Euro, The article suggests I should wear something like a 43. I could probably put that on with two pairs of Mountaineering socks.

But the logic dictates that I don't climb anywhere near hard enough - perhaps one should just do everything below 7a in approach shoes? And everyone's got a story about they one bloke (normally a bloke) who undersized for so long that they got permanent foot problems. Do I want to be that guy?

I see plenty of people at the wall wearing something like a Drago so large that they could get someone else's foot behind their foot in the shoe. Am I the dinosaur? Does space in the heel when you point your toe mean anything?