I skated in the Old-School "pros" and the Sk8-HIs "pros." I got a pair of the new SK8-HIs about two weeks ago. Normally when I get a new pair of shoes, I wear them for about two weeks before I even step on a board with them--I hate the "new" shoe feel on a board. So, I have not even skated in these yet. That said, here is my initial reactions to them. So far, most of it is negative.
(1) They are hot. Much hotter than the Pros.
(2) The tongue does not move, at all, because of the internal tongue straps. This is good, because I hated how the tongue would always slip around on the older versions. This also makes them much harder to put on/take off.
(3) I still have some pressure points around the little toe on one shoe. This never happened before with the Pros.
(4) Two weeks in and they still feel quite stiff, as in, not broken-in at all. Around two weeks is when I would normally start considering skating in the Pros. These do not feel like they are anywhere near "ready" yet. What that means long term remains to be seen. Further on this point, Vans always felt "comfy" to me, almost out of the box. These have not yet reached that state. When I got home from work last night I was dying to take them off. That never happened before with the Pros. I'll follow-up more as time goes on.
Anyone else had more in-depth experience with these yet?
Follow-up from my own previous post. Despite my new Sk8-HIs not feeling "ready" yet, I took them for a quick session today. I realized after about 10 min of skating that while they are not "broken in" yet, that these were never going to feel "ready" in the same sense the Pros did, simply because the Skate version is stiffer. I made some peace with that, and just went on skating. There were three distinct things I noticed.
First, board feel is NOT the same. Pros def have the advantage on this. It's not like wearing cupsoles or anything, but it's not the board feel I loved about Vans.
Second, pop was much more crisp. This was a really interesting one, that took me a bit to figure out what I thought was going on here. But when I did, it made perfect sense. So, Pros are more flexible than the Skate line, which is stiffer. So, imagine running in sand, or trying to ollie on grass. Think about how much power/energy gets lost when you push-off/ollie, because the energy gets dissipated into the sand/grass. Now think about running/ollieing on hard concrete. You get a much more explosive run/ollie, because not as much energy is lost. To me, it seemed like this analogy was like Pros vs. Skate line. With the Skate line being stiffer, it felt like
more direct power was transferred into my ollies/noilles, and as a result, the pop was much more crisp and responsive. The trade off, of course, is board feel. I'm really curious to see if anyone else noticed this "crisp pop" phenomena, or if it was just in my head.
Third, the comfy factory (mentioned in previous post) still isn't there. I skated for about 30 min, and afterwards I was really like, "Damn. I want to take these things OFF!"