Garmont Syncro Plus GTX

This shoe is one of the best shoes I ever had. Great for hiking mostly off-trail. Very good for holding the ankle and supporting the heavy weights during long treks. Pretty heavy shoe, but worth it.

Fit: The shoe supported my ankle while carrying heavy weights and mainly during hard treks.

The shoe doesn't come with the best foothold for long treks, but it is easy to change it.

The shoe is very strong, works good against snow and has a good water resistance. I tried it on many kinds of surfaces mainly dry, but during rain it worked great. I've used this shoe for more than two years and it's already the longest time I used the same shoe.

Most of the uses I did with the shoe were in Israel in the Judean Desert and the Negev, which are both very good places to make a long trekking.

This is only one of two boots I have ever given a 5 out of 5 to. The other was a pair of Asolos that I bought about 15 years ago.

I wear hiking boots every day at home and work as a computer professional working at multiple facilities, up and down stairs carrying large monitors or PCs and most of the time 2 stairs at a time.

Here is what I love about the Garmonts: they fit like a boot should, no heel slip, great ankle support, great arch support and flex in exactly the right places. I wear them through a lot of crap weather and conditions. For a medium duty boot, they are extremely quiet which helps greatly when I am going up and down stairs that may be next to patient rooms.

In short, I have beat the crap out of these for about 6 months and they look and feel brand new yet and there was no break in period. Now I'm looking for a couple of pairs that I can put away so I don't find the model discontinued when I need to replace these in 4 or 5 years.

While I rate the boot very highly, I was disappointed that, on putting them on the morning of the second day of the tramp I noticed that one eye had broken.

The performance of the boot was great. Very comfortable and was easy to break in before the first tramp. The supplier was very apologetic and has offered to repair under the warranty.

Needless to say that, after spending so much money on what was reputed to an excellent tramping boot, I was rather disappointed. It would however, not put me off recommending this boot to others.

These boots are great for single day hikes or just one night over-nighters. They don't take long to break in but they don't pack out or loose padding very fast. Completely waterproof mid range warmth, but with good wool socks are plenty warm for hiking in snow at around 20-30 degrees. Overall excellent traction and good tread life.