Did The Fastest Tennis Shoe Just Get Faster? Asics Solution Speed Review

hey I've been play testing the brand new as6 solution speed f3s and in today's video I'm going to give you a detailed tour of the new shoes I'm going to go through a few comparisons with its predecessor and most importantly I'm going to show you some of the play testing that I did along with sharing my first impressions but first I'd be doing you a disservice if I didn't show you the unboxing experience as to be honest it's probably the coolest one I've done yet so for some of the liest is shoes in the game this box is pretty heavy um but yeah you'll see it's also pretty cool if you've ever unboxed an Apple product you want know how this feels from unsure to Unstoppable isn't that just the coolest thing you got some of the technical sketches from when the shoe was being built and on this side you've got a picture of Alex deor who is going to be wearing these for the 20 24 season obviously one of the quickest players on the tour and he's on a bit of a hot streak right now so um yeah he's a he's a good Ambassador for this shoe now what makes this unboxing even more cool than just this Majestic opening is there's actually a hidden compartment underneath the shoes and as you can see here I've got myself a full A6 kit also worn by Alex deor now I'll be honest orange or any bright colors aren't my thing but it's a pretty cool t-shirt you would have seen Alex rocking this in Melbourne and a nice plain black pair of shorts which are much more up my street unfortunately when you buy these shoes you won't get this really cool unboxing experience that's just one of the perks of spending hours upon hours of filming and editing um but yeah life of a YouTuber so let's take a look at the shoe first up the colorway now as you can see this color pops it's a very deep orange color with navy blue I do know that in the men's version it does come in a white color way and there are a couple of nice colors in the women's versions as well as you can see the silhouette of this shoe is very very minimal it's very streamlined which of course being called the solution speed this is all about speed the key components of a speed shoe are that it's lightweight flexible and that it's snug to your foot so that it keeps your foot contained when you're moving around the court quickly and changing direction so when talking through some of the key points of this shoe it makes sense for me to compare them to the predecessor the solution speed ff2 now this shoe is one of the most popular shoes on the market and although i' never tried the ff1 I heard that this was revolutionary and A6 had made huge improvements since the first model and so moving on to the ff3 it wasn't going to be easy to make improvements but they definitely have first and foremost the weight of the shoe now this shoe was already very light at 3 29 G and in the same shoe size this one weighs in at 3133 G and although it doesn't sound like much you can actually feel it when you're holding it here and the two ways that as6 have managed to do this are looking at the upper and the out soole now the upper of both shoes if you look at the ff2 you'll see that there's a lot of rubber wrapping all the way around the upper whereas the ff3 has a lot less in fact most of the upper is covered in this meshlike material which as well as being lighter than the rubber it's going to be much better for breathability now there is still some rubber in the shoe primarily for durability so you'll see in some of these tougher wearing areas here and Here There is extra rubber for protection now as I mentioned although the silhouett of the shoes are pretty similar there is one key difference which is going to help this new shoe to be faster if you take a look at the ff2 and and the way that the out soole finishes at the back it's quite flat to the ground however if you take a look at the ff3 you'll see that at the back of the out soole and the midsole is this rocker like feature that you see on running shoes you see it from this side as well it creates this curved shape to the shoe allowing that heel toe movement to feel more natural and to allow for better speed I'll tell you how that felt in the play testing later what I will say is as6 are taking what is working really well in their high performance running shoes and adding this into the tennis shoe without losing the key features that make a tennis shoe a tennis shoe but it's the outsole that brings the most Innovation to this shoe A6 used AI technology to map out where the rubber is most needed for durability playability and traction but to minimize it in the areas where it's not needed if you compare it to its predecessor you'll see the amount of rubber difference between the two this one has far more outsole rubber all the way through however the new outsole has these spaces here which not only help the outsole to be lighter but also add to flexibility and allow for those players that like to slide on hard quarts not only that but you can see this space at the bottom of the hill here adds to its breathability what you'll also notice when you see the bottom of these two shoes is this plastic shank that runs through in between the out soole and the mids soole the predecessor the ff2 this used to be called The Twist trust and this technology was a fantastic revolution in this shoe however as6 have improved it with what they now call the speed trust this goes through more of the shoe and creates even more spring back and stability through the base of the shoe so hopefully you've seen enough of the shoe itself now let me talk to you about how my play testing went now you guys know that usually I play on Clay courts here in the UK well well actually artificial clay but I headed over to my local indoor Center as I wanted to really test these shoes out on a hardcore as I wanted to see how the outsole performed when I was changing direction quickly and one of the best drills for this is the spider drill so my first test of these shoes I'm going to be doing the spider drill which is very simple you need a tennis court five tennis balls and a tennis racket and your aim is to pick up all five tennis balls one at a time as quickly as you can now the great thing about this exercise is it's very specific to tennis as you're moving as quickly as you can in all directions and having to decelerate as well and what's great about this exercise is the pros do this one a lot so you can compare your score against theirs generally speaking some of the best athletes in the world get around 14 to 15 seconds on this exercise so let's see how I get on now the funny thing about filming this spider drill was I've actually got a camera that tracks your movements so that you don't need a cameraman with you as you guys know I film everything on my own but when I set this tracking camera up I actually ran too fast for it and it couldn't keep up with me okay let's do it now I'm not sure that the shoes can take credit I'm obviously such an athlete that the camera couldn't keep up with me although clearly not as I did the spider drill five times and I was absolutely dead afterwards but I managed to get a time of 16.45 seconds which I was quite happy with to be honest with you let me know in the comments below if you've ever done the spider drill and if so what your time was but yeah my experience doing the spider drill in the solution speed FF 3s was excellent although I don't tend to wear a speed shoe normally normally I actually wear the gel resolution 9s which are more of a stability shoe in fact I mentioned the weight of these two shoes this one weighing in at 313 G this one in at 329 G the gel resolutions are actually a 430 G so the shoe that I'm used to is much much heavier than this and I could really feel it now although I don't know if this will make a huge difference to my actual speed when I'm covering big distances it definitely felt like it made a difference to my small adjustment steps I felt much lighter on my feet and making those small adjustment steps I felt really Nimble I would say that when I put these shoes on compared to my usual gel resolution lines they did feel slightly narrower but I was pleasantly surprised as the reason I generally don't go for Speed shoes is they do tend to be narrower than durability or stability shoes however these ones weren't too narrow they actually fit me quite well what I also felt wearing these as opposed to the shoes that I usually wear was I felt a lot closer to the ground and actually really liked this rocker shape of the outsole having this slightly arked shape helped me to feel like I was more on my toes and ready to pounce the traction of these shoes is incredible and although I don't like to slide up hard courts I know people that do some of my friends that do that have tried this have said that it's really good for sliding on hard courts as well so overall I absolutely loved play testing these they're very different to the shoe that I'm used to to be honest it's going to be tough to pull me away from the gel resolution knives however I'm definitely going to put these to the test in a competitive situation as I loved how lightweight and flexible they felt and if I wasn't a dirty Baseline grinder and I was more of an a cour player then I definitely think these shoes would suit me better so for you if you're already a fan of the solution speed ff2 or even ff1 this is a no-brainer but if you're like me and you're used to something a little bit heavier it might be something worth considering as the weight of this shoe really surprised me thanks as always for watching this video if you found it useful in any way hit that like button and consider subscribing to the channel if you haven't done so already I look forward to seeing you in the next one take care