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Hi everybody, Sam from Road Trail Run. Today Michael Ellenberger, a 221 marathoner and
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one of our wonderful contributors, is going to give you his take on the Brooks Hyperion
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Elite 4. It gains 5 millimeters in stack height while dropping quite significantly 0.9 ounces
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in weight. So why is Michael on the channel? Well, we have 30 wonderful contributors who
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participate in our written reviews, so why not hear from them? I'm currently in Park
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City. I'm rehabbing from a broken kneecap in November. I'm actually running, so you'll
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be seeing me soon too here. So let's hear from Michael. I'm going to make what I hope is a short video about this. This is Brooks' newest, latest
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and greatest racing shoe, the marathon racing shoe. This is the Hyperion Elite 4. As you
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can see here, I hope the camera picks this up, a major change here is this upper. So
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this is a shoe that has a really, really light, thin upper. You can see there's significant
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ventilation holes. I've run it outside and inside. I'm not going to lie, outside it is
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cold, it is a little bit wet. It's winter, obviously, here in the Midwestern United States
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and I've run this on some icy, slick days. It wasn't that pleasant of an experience
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On the treadmill, it does breathe really well, and I was overall quite happy with it in that
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scenario. I think it'll probably be a great summer running shoe. The outsole, some of
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us noticed on the outsole that there was some wear to the front of the shoe here. Again
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I've run a lot of miles on the treadmill in this shoe, and you tend to wear the front of the shoe on the treadmill just because of hitting that, or at least I do hit that
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plastic cover where the belt connects. So that might be a little bit premature, but
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in general, I think a lot of us picked up on some wear on that toe, maybe the rubber is a little bit thin. In general, I think a lot of us are very happy with the depth
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of the rubber here by racing shoe standards. There's some real depth there if you want
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to think about a tire. There's some rubber there to keep you off that foam, and I think
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that that'll lead to some durability and certainly some traction. Flipping this around, you can see that it says the word Speed Vault. So what they've
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actually done here is put in a plate manufactured by a company called AORUS. I didn't know
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about AORUS, and actually, I say plate, but it's almost like a web or a net. It's
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a carbon fiber system that runs throughout the midfoot of the shoe and the entire length
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of the shoe, and it looks different. It's not like the metatarsal flanges that we see
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from Adidas. It's not like a traditional flip-flop plate that Nike started off with
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It's this whole other thing. It's environmentally friendly, which is obviously great, but what
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it matters to is running fast. It's also a really fast-feeling mechanism
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And then the foam, of course. So it says back here, DNA Flash, nitrogen-infused. This is
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Brooks's top-end material, and it's a really sharp foam. So it's firm. It's not
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quite Endorphin Pro firm, and we're going to have more about the new Endorphin Pro coming
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out really soon, but it is firmer. It's not as squishy as what you might get on something
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like the AlphaFly or VaporFly, although the shoe is more traditional in profile, akin
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to a VaporFly as compared to an AlphaFly. In fact, to kind of close this out, it's
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that traditional profile that I really like in this shoe. Just looking at it, it almost
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looks like a shoe you might pick up in 2012, 2014. And that's not to say it's a bad thing
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by any means. It's just sort of plain, and I kind of appreciate the simplicity of it
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It's a really fast shoe. I did 15 miles on the treadmill, a workout just the other day
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Came away really impressed with it. I've run probably 50 or 60 miles on this shoe in total
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now. The upper is a little bit more narrow as I've come to run in it than I had anticipated
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early, so I think that this sort of reinforcement here does give some pressure to that lateral
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side of my foot. But in general, I don't have a lot of complaints with the shoe. I don't
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know that I'm comfortable saying it's as fast as the new AlphaFly 3, but it is a shoe that
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I'm just really happy with, and if you're a Brooks devotee or otherwise someone who's
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just interested in changing up from the traditional Nike and Adidas profile, I would give this
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a serious look. I really like the Brooks Hyperion Elite 4. It's definitely my favorite racing
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shoe ever from Brooks, and overall it's just a shoe that I'm really impressed with. It's
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a bigger surprise in how much it's improved than I would have expected. It really is a
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sharp shoe, and I made this video just to kind of reflect that I think it's worth your
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time and consideration. Thanks for watching. Please check out also our full multi-tester
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written review at www.roadtrailrun.com. Have a great run
