 All right guys so today we're doing a first impressions video about the Ultra Duo. The reason I'm making a first impressions video rather than a full review is because when I bought these shoes a few months back I tried them on for a couple of runs and they didn't quite fit my feet very well so I'm gonna sell them but I still got to run a couple of runs in them and I did like the shoe it was just that it didn't fit me personally so I thought today I'll just give you guys a few thoughts regarding the shoe right out of the box literally. So first of all this shoe is a maximal shoe maximal cushioning and without getting into the long debate about maximal versus minimal etc suffice to say there are pros and cons to both types of shoes and I wanted try a more maximal shoe. So far all of my shoes essentially are Ultra shoes the Ultra brand I really really like their shoes mostly because they have a wide toe box which gives you a lot of room for your toes to splay out and naturally and they also have a zero drop type of shoe which means that there's no elevated heel so that's why I like the Ultra brand and so far I've run in a few of the sort of minimally cushioned shoes but now that I'm moving up towards I'm training for a road half marathon I'm gonna do a fair bit of volume on the roads I wanted a little bit more cushioning while I'm out on the hard pavement so I thought I'd give these shoes a try and initially you know when I headed out the door started running with these shoes a couple months ago I noticed that oh yeah that was nice it was really really nice to have that soft cushioning feel really because if you think about it if you head out on the trails it's going to be soft you know your shoes or even if you run barefoot you're going to be able to sort of feel that soft ground which helps with the suspension a little bit and doesn't really impact your your your feet and your your bones and your joints as much as when you're heading out on the pavement so really what you're doing here is just simulating a softer type of ground that's the way I like to look at it anyway back to the shoe felt really good it was soft and cushioned yet it was very responsive like initially when I first saw the shoe before I picked it up I was thinking wow that is a big shoe like it's just big it's got to be heavy and probably not very good for for for fast running I was thinking I might run a lot of my training runs in this shoe but I'm definitely not going to run the actual half marathon in it after one run though or immediately when I started running in them I noticed that first of all there are super light I don't know exactly the weight and I'll put it in the description some specs but it is super light it's one of the lightest shoes that I've ever had really which is French because it's one of the biggest too in terms of the cushioning and everything so it's really light the sole is made of EVA and rubber and then there's a synthetic leather here so it's a vegan shoe and as I headed out it was just light on my feet and the cushioning although was very comfortable and cushioned it was still responsive it was it was I didn't feel like I was just like you know like just running in mud or something like that I felt like I was really you know it was firm but soft at the same time strange but but true the toe box is a little bit wider than some of the other ultra models like in the very front here my problem was that I was you know it wasn't actually wide enough for me here on the midfoot it was very wide on the front but not the midfoot and that's where my foot is the widest so it didn't really work well for me the laces are of a different type than a lot of the other ultra shoes but they were great they were fine they were maybe a little bit long but yeah no problem the upper material is um it's not the most comfortable I mean it's it's kind of like I don't know how to describe it it's not like super soft it's not like a knit upper or anything like that like at you know the ultra escalante has a knit upper and it's very you know everyone's it's really in vogue right now to have knit uppers and they are really comfortable this one is not like that but I didn't notice any problems though but it was just it's it's very I don't know I don't know what word I'm going to use to describe it but it's just you can sort of hear how it's how it is it does contribute to keeping it very light though because it is very minimal you can really see through it here so it's definitely not a shoe that you would run on the trails with right about it just you know you'll easily rip into it with a root or a rock or something like that so this is a road shoe this is a hardcore road shoe really maybe you can go on the gravel roads a little bit of course but you don't want to go on true trails the bottom here of course to save weight they have all these little holes here which works well fine but the problem is that it catches rocks as you can see here there's some rocks in there gravel definitely not ideal pretty annoying to be honest anyway I don't think there's much more to say really it is a very lightweight quite responsive heavily cushioned shoe from ultra the ultra duo it is probably comfortable as I said it wasn't comfortable for me because of my wide mid-foot but maybe it's going to be comfortable for you I think it looks pretty awesome kind of looks like the hook up shoes a little bit which I always think look really cool and yeah that's all I really have to say about these shoes unfortunately I'm going to have to sell them but that's okay I've got a bunch of other shoes I can run in anyway if you're interested to buy the shoes I'll put an affiliate link in the description where you can click and buy the shoes it's you know I bought these shoes with my own mind so I'm not sponsored to make this review or anything like that and if you do click the affiliate link I will get paid if you choose to buy but the price will remain the same for you anyway so feel free to click those links if you're interested in buying let me know what you think in the comments have you tried these shoes have you have you tried any of the other ultra shoes which ones would you recommend and you have wide feet like me right now I'm trying the ultra timp shoes and they're pretty wide and nice so far so good um yeah that's all for today hope your day is going well thanks for watching bye now