New Balance's Chunkiest-Ever Running Shoe Goes Full HOKA
New Balance's 1080 running shoes have been getting great as of late. So great, in fact, that you might mistake them for HOKA.
Now, that's high praise — hardly anyone is doing chunkily excellent comfy running shoes like HOKA and to step into its arena with a solid lookalike is no small feat.
New Balance's 1080 v15 apparently does just that and does it, frankly, quite well.
The beauty of it all, really, is that you just can't have too many quietly stylish running sneakers.
Revealed by a sneaker sample collector in July, the New Balance 1080 v15 doesn't have a release date or even a final form: the sleek, unbranded style seen above may not be the shoe's completed design.
But it sure looks good logo-free, placing the emphasis on the shoe's urbane, understated makeup.
Supposedly, it releases in 2025, plenty of time to add a big ol' N to the side. But wouldn't it be nice without?
Even still, this new 1080 doesn't much look like the recent 1080 Fresh Foam sneakers that New Balance has rolled out over the past few months in impressively sleek style, from the genuinely excellent Fresh Foam Arishi to the streamlined Grey Day colorway that made the most of the running shoe's aerodynamic form.
But adding in a little bit of HOKA isn't a bad thing, by any means, especially when the resulting product is this tasteful.
