La Sportiva Miura VS Review

Performance Comparison

Climbing in the specialized La Sportiva Miura VS.

Photo: Lyra Pierotti

Edging

The Miura VS is a function-specific shoe that does a few things incredibly well, such as edging. The supportive P3 midsole lets you power down through your toes on the tiniest of features. It edges well on all sides of the toe, allowing you to utilize the outside edge and turn your hips into the wall to increase your reach when necessary. The downturned toe sucks the foot into the rock and works well even when the moves stretch you out. Few shoes even come close to the edging ability of the VS, leaving it in a category to a large extent by itself. This model is one of the stiffest shoes we've ever worn that's not board-lasted.

Crack Climbing

You can get away with climbing a few cracks in this shoe, but it won't be very comfortable. This shoe is not designed or intended for use in cracks, as the triple buckle system gets in the way and will suffer some wear and tear if jammed frequently into hand cracks. The toe is low volume and pointy, though, and can gain modest purchase in thin cracks and pods. In other words, it's not bad for trad cragging; it's just not our first choice for long days on the big stone.

The Evolv Shaman is a similar concept to the Miura VS, but much more comfortable.

Steep Terrain

This shoe is meant to do a couple of things well, and steep terrain is one of them. The edging power and low-volume toe make great use of pockets of all sizes. The steeper, the better. The downturned shape hooks into pockets with an ease that belies the discomfort of wearing them. Only a couple of shoes can rival it on pockets, and they all have pointier and even more painful toe profiles. For more general overhanging terrain, the Miura VS does pretty well. The heel is a little less sensitive than we would like, and it lacks an extended rand for extra toe hooking grip.

Sensitivity

You can't paste your toes and smear the rock very well in this shoe, but you can stand on invisible micro features and crank. The Miura VS makes up for feeling a little like a brick on your foot by being an edging machine. After some breaking in, they start to feel more sensitive than they do out of the box. There are times when you'll miss being able to feel the rock, but this is still an incredibly adept climbing shoe.

Comfort

If you size these shoes tight, they're gonna hurt, and there's no getting around that. Our lead tester went up a half size from his normal La Sportiva sizing before he could comfortably climb a full pitch in these shoes. The low volume toe that fits nicely in thin cracks presses down hard on the top of the big toe and may hurt if you size down too small. The buckle can also be an issue if the shoe isn't sized just right. One of our testers felt the buckle pushing hard on the top of his foot whenever he flexed his foot into a smearing position.

The flatter fit of the original Miura (left) makes them a better all-arounder and generally more comfortable than the Miura VS (right).

Value

This shoe does as advertised and climbs hard. Its value is in how you use it. If you want a shoe that will let you climb at your limit, then the Miura VS is an excellent option. It is durable, but it loses some of its phenomenal edging ability after it's worn in.

Conclusion