After buying a $70 pair of Vans at famous footwear and having them literally fall apart after using them as daily walking shoes, I’ve realized the quality of shoes overall has gone down over the last decade or so.
I don’t mind if they cost $100 or more, are there medium-light weight walking shoes that can withstand the horrors of walking on pavement? I remember checking out some Ecco shoes at the mall years ago, didn’t pull the trigger as they were almost $300 but the way the construction was described to me it sounds like those could last 5+ years.
What shoes do you have that you wear almost daily (not during the winter), and have had for almost a year but aren’t falling apart?
I’ve been wearing Reebok Walk Ultra 7’s for ~8 months and I haven’t had any major complaints so far. The outsoles are wearing down as I expected them to, but they’re wearing down slower than I expected, tbh, especially for how soft they are and how often I use them. And as someone with quite big feet, seeing a big, established footwear brand like Reebok make a good shoe I can actually wear (and not look completely like an off-brand New Balance) is nice.
I’ve also owned a pair of Airwalks with gum soles that held up quite well for walking around. In my experience, athletic and skate shoes with harder outsoles tend to last MUCH longer than a typical sneaker, and that pair of AWs had harder outsoles than any other shoe I’ve owned. That pair was made before the brand went out of business a few years back though so YMMV on their current lineup, though it seems they still have a handful of gum sole shoes available.