Back in 2020 Asics came up with one of its best running shoes for ordinary runners to date, the Novablast. Well, the ‘blast family just got a lot bigger, with the new Asics Megablast and Sonicblast.
But let’s dig beyond the marketing names.
The Megablast is Asics’s latest daily trainer, but it’s a fairly low-weight design, at 230g in a men’s size nine.
Its midsole uses FF Turbo Squared foam, which is 32.5% “bouncier” than the FF Turbo seen in the original Asics Superblast — according to the Asics stats.
We get a great big 45mm stack height, a good 5mm more than the super-popular Asics Novablast 5.
So while the Asics Megablast won’t pass muster with the professional athletics associations — they’re just too foam-packed — the Megablast should hopefully prove brilliantly comfortable for longer runs.
Early reports suggest they are bouncy and responsive, but the Megablast aren’t necessarily for chasing those 5K and 10K PBs. These aren’t carbon-plated shoes, which may make some of you wince at the $225 price. They’ll be available in white and purple-ish finishes from September 1st.
If you do want a pair with that faster feel, you’ll want the Asics Sonicblast instead. They have an Astroplate sandwiched between midsole layers of both FF Blast Squared and the even softer FF Blast Max — which we’ve seen previously in the Novablast 5 and Glideride Max.
It’s a hefty 46mm stack shoe, one intended to “bring out the fun in those shorter, faster runs” according to Asics.
At $180, the Sonicblast are significantly cheaper than the Megablast. But it’s not quite a plated shoe in the same vein as the fantastic top-tier Metaspeed Sky Paris.
Where those world-beater Asics shoes use a carbon plate, the Sonicblast has a Pebax one. This is an elastomer that can be foamy-soft or relatively rigid. But the aim here is clearly to make it significantly less soft than the surrounding layers of foam.
It “provides a pop of forward momentum without the harshness that runners may feel with a carbon plate,” says Asics.
The Asics Sonicblast will also be out on September 1st, and sit above the Novablast 5 in what’s becoming an increasingly crowded family.
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