HOKA ONE ONE Zinal Performance Review

So of course HOKA would go and make a minimally cushioned speedster.

The HOKA ONE ONE Zinal is named after a Swiss village that hosts one of the most competitive, fast, and furious trail races in the world. Huge climbs, smooth singletrack, and bomber descents. It has everything one would want in a true mountain trail race. It’s hard to find a shoe that can handle all of that terrain with equal fervor, but HOKA believes the Zinal could be the one (obviously).

With a low-to-the-ground stature (stack height of 22 mm to 18 mm men/ 21 mm to 17 mm for women) the Zinal is nearly half the weight of the Stinson, its cousin on the other side of the spectrum. Pair that with some of HOKA’s best tech and the Zinal is chambered and ready to be shot through some rough terrain. And If performance is half as hot as any of the colorways, we’re going to be in for a treat.

ROBBE: Taylor covered most of the background regarding the Zinal. I wish I could’ve gotten more miles in this shoe but after my last trail run, I had left them in my car with the doors unlocked. Which is basically like putting a ‘Yard Sale – FREE STUFF’ sign on your car in Baltimore. Needless to say, they were stolen along with my Nike Terra Kiger 7, so fun stuff for sure. (My Endorphin Trail shipment was then stolen off my steps last week, so some douchebag is loading up on trail shoes for no reason whatsoever.)

MATT: HOKA has been pushing the creative envelope for the past year or so, but I was still shocked when I unboxed the Zinal. The sheer lack of mass and trimmed-down midsole lacked all of the textbook characteristics of a HOKA trail shoe.

HOKA is marketing the Zinal as a lightweight trail shoe, geared towards speed and nimbleness.
It also is targeting a bit of a different trail segment, in that the Zinal may not be an “ultra” distance shoe, but rather a shoe to go hard and fast across shorter technical trail events.

The Zinal had my attention, and I was eager to find out if it would translate to East Coast terrain, or if we would have another “For West Coast Use Only” entry on our hands here at BITR.

THE GOOD

TAYLOR: Light and fast is the goal with the Zinal. At 9.1 ounces (men’s 10.5) Hoka licked the stamp and went full send on this one! It’s one of the lightest trail shoes that you could slip your feet into.

A lot of that weight is saved because of the dual density Profly midsole. It’s the same midsole compound found in recent fan favorites – and two of our favorite shoes of 2021 – the Carbon X 2 and Mach 4. Profly is happily responsive, but not a bounce-your-face-off kind of foam. It’s the type of softness and bounce that you would expect from HOKA; there’s simply not as much of it as we’re all used to!

Mild protection is added with a rubberized EVA underneath the Profly. Again, same combo used in the Mach 4. This makes for a slightly more reactive ride with a little bit of protection and a moderate amount of ground feel. Until now, I haven’t been in a HOKA with any ground feel really.

The Zinal hits a happy medium of being protective and having awareness of what’s underfoot. From this standpoint the Zinal is not HOKA-like, but I’m diggin’ it for sure. If I were to compare the underfoot feel to any shoe, it would come close to something like the Nike Terra Kiger, inov-8 Trailroc, and a little like the Merrell Skyfire.

I’ll always respect a company’s commitment to being environmentally friendly. Some fall flat with grand attempts, but HOKA always comes up with something good (though they need to take some packaging tips from their sister company, Deckers X Lab). The Zinal has a beautifully crafted soft mesh upper made out of recycled yarns. Overall, it is light on foot. The mesh and integrated tongue hug nicely throughout so that your foot isn’t slingshotting around inside.

Environmentally cautious and performance doesn’t stop up top. Underneath is Vibram’s Litebase outsole. Only about half of the outsole material is used for this specific outsole which saves on the amount of rubber and cuts weight down pretty dramatically. Don’t worry your pretty little mind (thanks T-Swift) because performance isn’t cut one bit. Even though the lugs are pretty shallow and the outsole is only partially rubberized, I confidently ripped some dry and wet trails here in the Colorado Rockies. I was very pleased with its performance in a variety of conditions.

ROBBE: This is a really fun shoe, and probably my overall favorite HOKA trail shoe I’ve run in. I took it down Barr Trail in Colorado after Taylor and I did The Incline together (worst climb of my life), and it cruised.