Truly eye-opening gadgets do not come around all that often. This stuff needs to sell in big numbers, not to lose companies colossal amounts of money, squeezing the truly mad ideas out. But the Hypershell X Ultra represents one of those mad ideas made real.
It’s a powered exoskeleton that kinda walks for you. Sort of. Or as my mum summed it up after I tried to explain exactly why I was heading all the way to Berlin just to try a piece of tech, it’s “like an electric bike for your legs.”
The Hypershell X Ultra is not a con or a piece of vaporware. It works, and has hidden depths you wouldn’t guess. But it also comes with a warning from me: only one piece of tech made me feel this level of self-consciousness or attracted this much attention from strangers, and that was when I wore a Google Glass headset out in a rural English village, more than a decade ago.
How does it work? The Hypershell X Ultra clips in around your waist, like one of those hiking bags with a midriff strap, and a further two bits hug your legs, just above your knees.
A two-second press of the power button on the side later, when you start to walk and you’ll feel the Hypershell X Ultra seem to pull your legs upwards at each step. It's like a marionette being tugged by its strings. And that is sort of what’s happening.
See that round part by the hip? There’s one on either side of the Hypershell X Ultra, and each houses a motor that does part of the work of walking for you.
That “part” bit is important. The brains (and battery) of the Hypershell X Ultra sit in the rear housing, and work out when you’re walking, running, cycling and so on, intelligently providing a helping hand rather than just forcing your legs to move like a dumb piece of machinery.
One of the first things that comes to mind with something like the Hypershell X Ultra is the safety stuff. Is this thing going to snap my legs off or dislocate my knees somehow? But when you put the apparatus on, it all suddenly makes sense. It’s augmenting the walking you’re already doing, not forcing it.
That said, my first few (hundred) steps with the Hypershell X Ultra attached looked a bit like one of those videos where someone puts some socks on a dog. I was walking like I had freshly sprouted legs.
But this was only because the thing had fired up on its super-powered Hyper mode. And here’s where we get to the “Ultra” part of the name.
Hypershell released three exoskeletons before the Hypershell X Ultra, following a round of Indiegogo crowdfunding back in 2023. This latest model is the flagship.
It uses lighter (and more expensive) materials, like titanium and carbon fibre, to offset the heavier, more powerful motors, which supply up to a combined 1000W of power. And, sure, you do have to pay for them.
The Hypershell X Ultra costs £1999, direct from the company. But I was a little surprised to see the base version is available for £899 at the time of writing, which is not that far off the cost of the Garmin Forerunner 970 I used while testing this strange get-up.
I walked from the base of Berlin’s beautiful Müggelberg — a man-made mini mountain — with the X Ultra attached. It’s hardly Everest, but it does have some steep bits. And in sections I might expect my heart rate to reach the 130-140bpm zone, I wasn’t even cracking 110bpm.
And that sense of having forgotten how to walk, or walking like you desperately need the toilet? That subsides in minutes. And instead, your legs feel like lead as soon as you turn on the “transparent” mode that switches off the Hypershell X Ultra’s motors.
Some of you, like some of the Uber-cool and characteristically blunt Berliners I met while schlepping up a hill, might ask “why?” This thing isn’t making people who can’t walk, walk, after all.
I asked Hypershell's Head of Brand, Jiaxin Wu, what his own take was.
“We are moving towards the direction of encouraging people to push their own boundaries. So if anybody is challenging a 20-mile hike, sure, go for it. Somebody is challenging a mountain that they used not to be able to conquer. No problem. Go for it,” he said.
“We don't really want to like touch like soccer, basketball, track and field. No. Marathon? No.”
A Hypershell exoskeleton is about helping people enjoy themselves, not changing the world in a bigger way. It's quite refreshing in an era where we constantly hear about AI companies making humongous promises with basically nothing substantive to back it up.
“Pushing the boundary will be the point, and elegantly enjoying the beautiful world is also be another point,” says Jiaxin Wu.
All of this is reminding me of the electric bike, which some of the lycra-clad crowd look down on, but my own parents — who I mentioned earlier — lean on the assistance of electric bikes during cycling holidays that let them see all sorts of stuff they otherwise wouldn’t. Maybe these exoskeletons will play a similar role, if they catch on.
But let's get back to the tech. The Hypershell X Ultra has a few different modes, and when connected (over Bluetooth) to the Hypershell phone app, you get fine-grain control over the power level, from 0-100. And can switch between the Eco mode, which is what most people should use (and offers up to 30km/7.5 hours range), and the Hyper one.
Hyper turns the exoskeleton into a drill instructor, delivering the motor assistance with a lot more aggression. It will help you up the pace.
The part that really connected with me, though, was the more experimental modes. The Hypershell X Ultra has a Training setting that applies additional resistance to every move your legs make, an interesting alternative to walking with weights that likely works your muscles in a different way.
Hypershell also has a brilliant ISO mode that makes it feel like there’s an invisible resistance band attached when you move your knee up or your leg back. These modes make the Hypershell X Ultra a potentially fantastic way to rehab running injuries and to increase your muscle workload in a way that doesn’t incur extra strain on your joints.
I run quite a lot these days. And while I didn’t find the Hypershell X Ultra an ideal running partner — I tried briefly and it felt a bit weird — I do absolutely think this kind of wearable could massively help cut down on injuries by working as a strength and conditioning aid.
And while, sure, there needs to be a bit of shift of the cultural zeitgeist before you stop feeling — and looking — like a total oddball when wearing a Hypershell X Ultra, that should be less of a problem if you go out walking in the wilderness.
What else do you need to know? The X Ultra has an easy swap battery, so you can carry a spare. Two batteries are included as standard. And while the IP54 water resistance isn't terrific, it does mean you don't have to run for shelter as soon as it starts raining.
The Hypershell X Ultra is available to order directly from Hypershell, as are the Go X, Pro X and Carbon X if the £1999 cost is a little too steep for your budget.
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