- Weight: 170g (Men’s and women’s)
- Heel/toe drop: 4mm
- Type: road
- Price: £100
‘A back-to-basics lightweight racer, perfect for tough workouts and PB hunting.’
What everyone's reading
- Impressively lightweight and responsive
- Eye-catching colourway will turn heads
- Sticks with the Type A winning formula – no major updates
- Too minimalist for longer distances or heavier runners
The Type A9 is Saucony’s out-and-about racing flat. It builds on the considerable success of the Type A8, keeping all that is good about the shoe, with a few extra touches. In an era when most companies are adding foam – or even carbon fibre plates – to their footwear, the Type A9 remains refreshingly stripped-back. The big pluses here are the weight (a mere 170g), the responsiveness and the simplicity. It’s a shoe designed with only one thing in mind: speed.
PWRTRAC Outsole
This is made from something called PWRTRAC. In layman’s terms, that means it’s firm, responsive and grippy – even in wet conditions.
EVA midsole
The EVA midsole provides a firm and responsive feel. It’s a low-profile shoe with a 4mm heel-to-toe drop (the heel is 17mm off the floor, the forefoot 13mm). There’s no fat on the Type A9, and the compromise is comfort: with little separating your foot from the ground, it’s a fairly firm ride. One tester said found the shoe ‘very good short distances (5 to 6 miles) and excellent for shorter sprints around the track.’ However, there were some concerns about running in the Type A9 over distances in excess of 10 miles, due to the lack of cushioning.
A snug, hotspot-free upper
The eye-catching colourway means you’ll be hard to miss wearing the Type A9. One tester was commented on the shoe’s impressive breathability. The lacing system, too, has been upgraded and provides a snug, hotspot-free experience. A quick word on the sizing: most of our testers agreed, it was worth going up half a size on what you normally wear. So if you tend to be a size 9, you’ll be a 9.5 in the Type A9.
With racing flats becoming ever more complicated, the Type A9 bucks the trend by keeping things as simple as possible. Fans of the previous Type A will also love the latest version, as all updates are minimal. The out-there colourway is likely to divide the crowd, but our testers were largely in favour of it, and the new lacing system is a definite improvement upon what came before. However, there is a sense that racing flats, such as the Nike Zoom Vaporfly 4%, have stolen a march on the Type A9 by being able to offer both cushioning and responsiveness in a lightweight package. With the Type A, you’re choosing speed over cushioning, and as such it’s mostly suited to distances of 10K and below.
