S. Wong

...or this much fun. Belaying with the Cinch is easy, and feeding the rope, as some reviews have it on the nose, is "as smooth as butter".. really! It's almost effortless with absolutely no resistance whatsoever (assuming you have the Cinch angled the correct way). In fact, it has so little resistance that if I wanted to, I can literally "throw" rope out of the Cinch to feed to the climber if I needed to.

When the Cinch is locked off, it stays locked. So much so in fact sometimes it's a bit hard to get it to release the rope (you have to rotate the Cinch back into its belay position, with your thumb and index finger grasping the pivot hole), but that could be a nice back-up on its own - to not release the rope until the climber is climbing and the rope becomes slack enough again for you to resume belaying.

Releasing the rope IS a bit counter-intuitive, but it's very easy to get used to. The only flaw to the Cinch that I can think of is pulling on the release lever to lower the climber takes a bit of effort, and yet, it's pretty sensitive once it gets going, especially if you're belaying a heavy climber. A solution to this is to use a redirect to give your brake hand a bit of extra leverage in feeding the rope through.

The Cinch overall is a great belay device. Very light, small size, and cost less than a GriGri. However, the Cinch is one of those devices where you really need to read the instructions to use it properly, so make sure you don't just toss the box away when you open the package (instructional video can be found here: http://youtu.be/R9TO5ikqXwo).

This is a long over-due review for these pair of climbing shoes as I've been using them for over 2 years, but it took this long for me to finally put my foot down (and into these beasts of a shoe) permanently and say that the Solutions ARE the best shoes I've ever used.

ALL TOE
The down-turn of the shoes are very aggressive, put huge power into the toe for those micro edges. And believe me, they'll stick on dimes. And the deal maker: the shape stays! The yellow band that is very visibly wrapped around the heel also wraps around the arch and toe box of the shoe in a mobius-style orientation, keep the shoe's aggressive posture permanent and arching proud for the life of the shoe.

STRAPPING UP
Putting on the shoes is like sticking your feet into a vacuum. I've heard many climbers who use these shoes, myself included, say that it feels like the shoe is "sucking" your feet in when you put them on. If fitted right, it's practically impossible for the heel to come off, no matter how hard you heel (believe me, I tried when I first demo-ed these).

MEAT AND POTATOES
When I demo shoes, I look for 4 criteria: fit, rubber, heeling power, and toe power, and these shoes really exceeds all expectations. For those that want their shoe to feel like it's a part of their feet and not just an extension, and having them do exactly what you want them to do, this is it. Feels like I dipped my feet into a bucket of stiff rubber. And the heeling and toe-ing power on these shoes is tremendous. Heeling or toe-ing on small edges have little difference than on larger holds, and the all-around rubberized toe box, made possible by the extra rubber at the top of the shoe, prevents the excruciating pain when toe-ing on sharp edges. I would even dare to say that the Solutions heel and toe better than the Five Ten Dragons or Jet 7s, especially since neither have rubberized toe boxes.

ALMOST PERFECT
While powerfully versatile and exceeding in many areas, the Solutions do have a few flaws. The first notable flaw is the velcro strap, not so much that it doesn't hold your feet in, but it's very fragile in design and nature. The single strap redirected with metal eyelets causes immense strain on 3 areas of the strap. Half of the people that I know that wear these shoes have complained on the strap heavily fraying, threatening to break at any moment, or have theirs already snapped and forced to using duct tape. And speaking as an engineer, I doubt it has anything to do with the strap, but the metal eyelets themselves. They tend to rust and become very abrasive, and combined with the amount of tension that's exerted on them and the strap, it's a disaster waiting to happen. If the strap breaks, your shoe is pretty much useless.

Also, the piece of rubber that covers the top of the toe box isn't very well-adhered. On one pair of brand new Solutions, I did this massive toehook on this gritty rock face, and the sharp rock texture almost ripped the rubber piece right off. The newer Solutions seem to have an extra layer of glue to keep the rubber piece of coming off, but what La Sportiva really need to do is extend that rubber piece until it hits the velcro, much like how Five Ten have done with the Teams. This will prevent any rock edges from catching the edge of the rubber piece.

The heel is also very specific in shape (ball-cup design) in that it doesn't fit well for people with narrow or flat heels (the back of the heel where your Achilles tendon and heel bone are). I've had a few say that the Solutions tend to pop out of their feet when they're heeling because their heel doesn't fill the ball-cup correctly. A blessing and a curse, fits like a charm for some, while a nuisance for others. They also aren't very friendly for those with very wide feet. If you have a narrow or flat heel, you may want to look at Five Ten shoes instead.

And the last point isn't really a flaw per se, since these shoes are designed to be aggressive bouldering shoes. Because of the aggressive position that these shoes put your feet into, I personally can't wear these shoes for more than 30 minutes before I have to take them off, so don't plan to wear these for multi-pitch climbs. They still do very well on sport routes however, and slabs too (some may disagree, but I've put away V5/6 slabs with these shoes)!

CONCLUSION
While not quite perfect, it's pretty damn close. After demo-ing over 20 pairs of shoes, the Solutions made me retire every pair of shoe I've ever owned, and I couldn't be happier. If La Sportiva continue to improve their rubber as well as fix the small issues on these shoes, they have a loyal customer for life.

Awesome looking shoe, awesome toe rubber, and love the color scheme. That being said, this shoe has much to be desired. Not to say that it isn't a decent shoe, it is, but when I decided to take these for a ride, I expected much more.

I had the FiveTen Jet7s before these and loved them, but the one thing that it lacked was decent toe rubber - on big toe hooks the Jet7s provided very little layering, so it sometimes hurt when you do hard toe hooks. I saw these and was impressed by the design, especially the ribbed toe, and decided to give these a try.

Rubber - The rubber feels like plastic. Despite Mad Rock giving you a sample grit paper to test out how sticky their Science Friction is, it wasn't all that sticky.

Heel - Because the same rubber is applied to the heel, I had a hard time sticking small heel hooks. Even juggy heel hooks feel very insecure. It could be because these shoes have a wider than usual heel compared to my Jet7s, and I have a narrow heel, but I didn't trust my heel hooks to hold at all and in fact slip off quite often. The tread design is a nice concept, but without a soft enough rubber, the treads won't flex and grab right.

Toe - The one thing that shined on these shoes. The ribbed design and rubber covering your little piggies is awesome in every right. No exaggeration here, it felt like I could overhanging toe small jibs with these, and it definitely provided enough thickness to not scream in pain when you're toeing hard.

I'll be going back to my Jet7s in the meantime.

For a while I've been using the Five Ten Dragons. Love them, never fails to grab the tiniest crevices or most awkward toe/heel hooks. They hurt like hell tho', and the laces are a hassle to take on and off. I decided to transition to velcro strap shoes and found these babies. These things are pretty much Dragons, same awesome rubber, same awesome stickiness, but much better. 1. The low position of the velcro strap allows your ankle to flex without being restricted like with laces, making hard toe betas easier. 2. The shoe is very easy to throw on and off due to the single velcro strap design and large tongue and 3. the padded tongue is very comfortable. Summarized: it's like dipping your feet in liquid rubber that you can peel away at whim. Try these, you won't be disappointed.

Awesome climbing shoes. First time I used them I was amazed on how well they performed compared to my cheap beat-ups. These things will smear and hold like a champ and make the toughest hooks feel unreal. The only thing I have to complain about is the size guessing I had to go through with backcountry.com to get the right fit. It was hard to guess which size fit the best. I ended up getting these 2 sizes above my street shoe after 4 returns. The only thing that would make this shoe even better would be to make a velcro version - laces gets tiring to put on/off and these shoes hurt after wearing them for a while. Great shoe, I'll be sticking with these for a while, no pun intended.