Under Armour has launched three new pairs of its connected shoes, as it doubles down on quantified running and its smart coaching platform.
It’s announced the HOVR Machina, HOVR Infinite 3 and HOVR Sonic 4, all of which will connect up with MapMyRun, which UA bought back in 2015.
Once connected, they will track cadence, stride length, foot strike angle and ground contact time – in addition to distance, pace and time even away from a tracked smartwatch. What’s more, they don’t need charging.
We reviewed the first Under Armour Speedform Gemini 2 connected shoe back in 2016, which didn’t do much except estimate distance when you were out for a run without your smartphone.
But fast forward to 2021, and we’ve seen increasingly advanced connected footwear, with 2019’s HOVR Infinite adding cadence and stride length tracking, helping you decide the ultimate form to hit your running goals.
Back in 2018, Under Armour said that it was looking to connect the entire athlete head-to-toe. While that hasn't exactly come to fruition yet, UA has hugely upgraded its platform to include real time coaching, so you could get feedback on your form while you run.
Sadly, there’s little in the way of new connected features with these new 2021 trainers – but they are lighter and better ventilated than the last generation.
More interestingly, we’re actually impressed by the numbers of users that Under Armour has managed to entice into using its connected platform.
The company says a million pairs have been paired to MapMyRun and a study of 87,000 anonymous users found that those using the coaching platform were 7% faster than those who didn’t.
We’re looking forward to taking these new Under Armour connected shoes for a spin and seeing how the real-time coaching works.
The HOVR connected shoes are priced at:
- HOVR Sonic 4 –
- HOVR Infinite 3 –
- HOVR Machina 2 –
How we test
James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.