You won’t mistake it for the Pebax found on a Vaporfly Next% or Asics’s own nylon-based foam from its top-of-the-line MetaSpeed Sky, but it offers an excellent combination of cushioning, energy return, and durability. To help you sustain those long efforts, it uses a lively FlyteFoam Blast midsole that’s bouncy and springy underfoot. We also love this shoe because it holds up to a heavy amount of speed training. The Magic Speed was designed with some trickle-down knowledge from shoes like the MetaRacer and has more budget-friendly components from shoes like the NovaBlast, making it a good race-day option for those of us running marathons competitively in the three-to-four-hour range.
It had our wear-test team running faster than they’d planned, even on easy days. That extra thickness not only improves cushioning, it also gives New Balance more space under the hood to beef up the engine: The carbon-fiber plate has been reshaped with more curve, delivering better responsiveness and propulsion.
And the forefoot got an even bigger boost, reducing the drop from 10 mm to 8 mm. The heel stack-a measure of everything between your foot and the road-is up to 39 mm, 7 mm taller than before. But v2 is way softer and springier than before, thanks to a much thicker midsole. It fell short, mostly because the sole was thinner and just didn’t deliver a similar bouncy, propulsive ride. The v1 was an admirable first attempt at getting something in NB’s lineup that could compete with Nike’s Vaporfly. But, for v2 of this plated racer, New Balance rebuilt it from the ground up-all for the better. Typically, running shoes only see major updates every other year. We found that the Vaporweave just didn’t stretch at all-particularly a problem for those of us with high insteps-and created a lot of pressure late in a race. The previous Vaporweave upper, a ripstop nylon–like material that didn’t absorb water, has been replaced with an engineered mesh.
If you’re going long, you’ll appreciate the small yet important updates this version received. It’s the kind of package that allows elite marathoners to race well under five-minute pace, but we love that it delivers a screaming ride whenever we push it hard, even at shorter distances.
The sole of the shoe is still where the magic happens, thanks to the exceptionally lightweight, soft, and springy ZoomX foam and rigid carbon-fiber plate that help you bound down the road with less effort. In fact, the changes to version 2 were limited just to the upper, focused on improving comfort and durability. When you make the world’s fastest shoe, you don’t mess it up.
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