La Sportiva Finale Climbing Shoes Review

When you are new to rock climbing, it’s a given that you find it challenging to choose the very first pair of rock climbing shoes.

As you keep looking, you can find a wide range of climbing footwear designed for beginners, intermediates, and experts specifically. Since you are a novice climber, the obvious choice is the pair of beginner climbing shoes.

When we talk about beginners climbing shoes, we should not forget about the La Sportiva Finale Climbing Shoes. Designed from the Italian brand, La Sportiva, the Finale is a shoe that fulfills its promise.

The promise we are talking about is comfort and all-round use for entry-level climbers. Besides, this footwear is known for its great design, comfort, grip, and durability. And what more, it will be worth your investment.

Now let’s learn further about the product based on its design, features, and few pros and cons.

La Sportiva Finale Climbing Shoes – The Overview

La Sportiva Finale is a beginners’ climbing shoe designed with the sturdy leather and microfiber upper. This pair of climbing footwear dedicates its focus on comfort over performance; hence, it is an optimal choice for novice climbers.

The primary reason why this pair of climbing shoes entice the beginners is that it integrates some of the best features, helping the starters to get used to the climbing routes. This pair of climbing shoes can easily outnumber most of the footwear on the market when it comes to comfort and convenience.

Available at an affordable price, this product is designed to perform for long hour climbs, whether on the climbing routes or in the gym.

Pros & Cons

Feature Highlights

• Features leather upper for a soft and comfortable fit
• Includes tensioned heel rand for high-end performance
• Includes 5mm XS Edge Rubber outsole offering a solid grip
• Features the Powerhinge to support the underfoot
• Shoes can be resoled once damaged
• Features a slip-lasted design
• Features moderately downturned toe

Product Details

• Dimensions: 13 x 6 x 5 inches
• Weight: 1 pound
• Material: Leather
• Closure: Laces
• Downturn: Neutral
• Lining: Unlined
• Fit: Low Asymmetry
• For: Men and Women
• Designed to Serve: Beginners
• Sizes: 30 options (Men), 21 options (Women)
• Colors: Brown/Orange and Orange (Men), Grey/Coral and Green (Women)

Here is a basic sizing chart for your convenience while choosing:

The following is the detailed breakdown of La Sportiva Finale’s performance and build:

Comfort

As we have mentioned before, this pair of climbing shoes focuses on climber’s comfort since it’s for the beginners. With its solid reputation, the Final doesn’t come off your foot for the entire climbing session.

The lace-up design helps to get rid of any dead spots. Accordingly, the shoes do fit better on a narrower foot. The blend of some extra features like tensioned heel rand and Powerhinge ensure your utmost comfort. Besides, the moderate to neutral profile makes this footwear comfortable for walking around.

Edging

Though this pair of climbing shoes is not stiff at all, it offers excellent edging. It holds on its own on small edges and holds. The Finale features a tensioned heel rand and a Powerhinge that offers support underfoot, thus improving your edging performance.

Ease of Use

Featuring lace-up design, this climbing shoe scores high points in terms of ease of use. The laces are swift and easy to undo, and they won’t get stuck in the leather eyelets.

Another great attribute of the Finale climbing shoes is that the footwear is very straightforward to loosen. You can loosen the laces down to the toe box., which makes the product adjustable and very convenient to get on and off.

Extra Features

Here are some of the peculiar features of this climbing footwear:

Toe Box

With a relatively asymmetrical toe box, this pair of climbing shoes doesn’t shine at pockets or overhangs. But at the same time, it doesn’t cram your piggies together. The front third of the footwear is flat with no downturn. Though it’s okay for toe-hooks, you can take this as a precision tool for toeing.

The toe box shape also makes the footwear less ideal for steep pitches. Nevertheless, this feature helps the shoe with smearing and sticking it into cracks. Hence, this is not a bad former when it comes to crag climbing.

Heel

The tensioned heel rand and the solid heel cup of this climbing shoe provide excellent support to the novice climbers. While the support delivers some performance, the tension is rather very light. The light tension with the unaggressive shoe profile means the heel is made for comfort.

The shoe includes a decent amount of rubber around the heel that offers a great grip for heel hooking. Although the heel rand isn’t much inspired in terms of grip, it does a good job for an all-round shoe. The Finale will back you if you want to throw your foot around the ridge while rope climbing or placing weight on your heel on a bouldering problem.

Rubber

The 5mm Vibram rubber of this climbing footwear is known for its durability. However, it doesn’t provide great sensitivity to the shoes. Though the lack of sensitivity makes the product less responsive to the wall, the grippy rubber is the strong point of this shoe.

Thanks to its gripping feature, the shoe edges perfectly, clinging well to the tiny holds. The sticky rubber rarely fails for smearing. This footwear inspires confidence when using friction for slab climbing or stemming.

The thinner, 1.1mm thick rubber aids the midsole flex of this shoe.

Unlined Leather Upper

This rock climbing shoe features an unlined leather upper. The upper, designed with leather material, offers you more durability than the one made with synthetic. Moreover, the leather upper also ensures your comfort and fit.

Powerhinge

With the help of a Powerhinge, the shoe only stretches in the back half when it is weighted, effectively leaving the toes in place on the surface of the rock. As a result, you can comfortably feel the climbing route and get the most out of your climb.

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Other Options Worth Exploring

Five Ten Hiangle Climbing Shoe

• Designed with 100% split grain leather
• Includes single-strand velcro closure system
• Comes with Stealth C4 4.2 mm rubber outsole
• Features stiff thermoplastic midsole
• Features unlined leather upper with half size-stretch
• Features aggressive downturned toe

La Sportiva Katana Lace Climbing Shoes

• Engineered with synthetic material
• Features slip-lasted design
• Comes with highly breathable tongue and lining for moisture management
• Features slightly downturned toe and subtle asymmetry
• Includes P3 midsole and Vibram XS Edge rubber for incredible edging
• Features Lorica synthetic leather toe box for optimizing edging power
• Features medium-asymmetrical toe box for exceptional precision and sensitivity

Evolv Defy Climbing Shoes

• Designed with synthetic material
• Features Teardrop MX-P 1mm half-length midsoles that add edging power without sacrificing flexibility and sensitivity
• Includes high-performance 4.2mm TRAX high-friction rubber soles
• Comes with hook-and-loop straps for easy on and off
• Includes new antimicrobial mesh to eliminate odor
• Features flexible and durable synthetic suede uppers to resist stretching
• Features an asymmetrical toe profile for comfort and sensitivity
• Comes with a slip-lasted design
• Includes dual heel loops to ease entry

Meta Desc:

It’s a challenge as a beginner to look for a pair of climbing shoes. We bring you our review of the La Sportiva Finale Climbing Shoes and its performance.