Nimbl Ultimate Glide review: Stunning craftsmanship and performance with an equally stunning price to match

The Ultimate Glide are the Italian brand's most expensive offering and among the priciest road shoes you can buy. They feature many of the elements you'd expect from the best road shoes offering - stiff carbon soles, hand-made upper, Boa Li2 dials - but how did they fare out on the road?

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Construction

The Nimbl Ultimate Glide shoes build upon the same carbon fibre sole platform that all of Nimbl’s road shoes use. This has been updated to a new monocoque chassis which aims to improve the power transfer and stiffness while maintaining the low stack height and fit geometry of the previous generation.

A stack height of less than 2mm is still claimed, however this new sole is not compatible with 4-bolt Speedplay mounting, something now limited to the standard Nimbl Ultimate as used by the Visma Lease-a-Bike team. That does mean the lowest pedal platform stack height combination is not available with these shoes at present.

A 3-bolt cleat attachment is still used with generous fore and aft adjustment potential, while there is both a toe tread and replaceable heel tread.

An interesting thing about the carbon sole is that it wraps up around the foot, mostly at the heel, and partially across the whole length of the sole. This is to give a 'tub like' structure to hold the foot well in place.

The largest update compared to the Ultimate is to be found in the upper. It’s a microfibre design which promises to be easy to clean while being stiff yet pliable. Whereas the Ultimate uses a classic shoe tongue design, the Glide is more akin to the Shimano S-Phyre range having the two sides wrap over each other to remove the tongue and with it the additional weight. The upper also features many small perforations to assist in temperature regulation.

Retention of the shoes is done using the latest Boa Li2 dials, which offer micro-adjustments for both tightening and loosening, with a pull to release for easy removal of your foot from the shoe. They feature a textured metal dial which is easy to grip and rotate with relatively strong amounts of force. This tightens the non-stretch laces which have one pivot point on the upper to adjust the opening size, and three pivot points on the lower section to adjust the volume of the shoe.

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Claimed weight is 190g for a size 43 shoe, while the 45s on test actually came in lighter at 185g for one shoe and 368g for both, including insoles.

Sizes available are 39 to 47, with half sizes all the way across this range. Colour options are black, or white with silver dials and white with gold dials and details.

The ride

I appreciate that Nimbl has taken quite a progressive view on cleat mounting as there is a lot of fore and aft adjustment available; it’s possible to fit the cleats more towards the rear than on many shoes.

Something I’ve come to enjoy about Nimbl shoes is that they have a particularly low opening for the foot that does not extend far up the ankle. This means that getting them on is incredibly easy. Not really a performance gain outside of triathlon, but it’s nice not to need to un-lace them too much or get a shoe horn involved.

Once on, there is a slight element of unforgivingness in the stiffness of the upper, however this disappeared after about three hours of total riding time and did not reappear.

Even with such a low and open foot opening, the shoes grip on to the heel impressively well. There are no silicone dots or other gripping devices at the heel to keep it in place, rather the upper dial pulls the opening closed a touch. I found that I tended to tighten the upper dial far more than the lower one, which gave a secure fit but not a constrictive one.

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Nimbl does use a wider last than many shoe offerings, but this suits me very well. The sole of the shoe extends up and wraps around the foot. This is most pronounced on the heel, while at the front it is far less. I’m a big fan of this design element as I used to use Bont shoes, but the sole extended further up the front and led to toe rub on my little toe. Nimbl use an upper that has some pliability meaning this was not an issue here.

A major benefit of this carbon sole is found in the performance. It’s incredibly light, stiff, and has a very low stack height. Low stack height has been quoted as resulting in a figure of 1% performance gain for every 1mm of stack height lost due to closer interaction between the foot and the pedal. These are very small margins, smaller than the margin of error for most testing, so I can’t confirm that. What I can confirm is that these shoes are brilliantly stiff.

Tightening the lower dial down to the max, the shoe does become a bit constrictive, but for sprinting it’s an absolute dream. Mashing the pedals in big gears at low cadences or attacking at high cadence ragged sprints, the shoes felt wonderfully connected to the bike transferring every ounce of energy to the pedals.

This sensation carried over to more prolonged efforts either seated or out of the saddle. There was no give in the shoes at any point and they always felt ready to attack. This is also likely helped by the low weight given that the feet rotate and rotational mass requires a decent amount of force to move. Spinning at a light cadence felt easy, and high capacity efforts at above 105 rpm felt almost effortless. They’re not quite as featherweight as the lace up counterpart, but they beat most of the competition when it comes to dual-Boa equipped shoes.

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Initially I was cautious about the white colour of the shoes. However, the upper is very easy to wipe clean, with only the fabric inserts around the Boa laces being susceptible to lingering dirt; the black option removes this potential issue further. I also appreciate the practical aspects of toe and replaceable heel guard. It makes walking in the shoes easier and boosts longevity, especially important in a shoe that costs this much.

The shoes do lack ventilation. There are zero vent holes on the sole of the shoe, while perforations on the upper don’t do much to let cool air in. Rather, these allow some excess heat to escape, but it is a touch limited. With the wraparound design of the shoe as well, there is an overlap of fabric which can get toasty. It’s still preferable to a traditional tongue design personally, but for properly hot weather having more mesh is essential for comfort.

As with the Ultimate Air shoes I previously reviewed, I also had to change the insole out straight away. The provided one is lightweight, but offers very little support. Having a higher arch in my foot I used custom insoles, and this changed the platform stiffness and comfort massively for me.

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Value

These are far away from being a value set of cycling shoes; the Nimbl Ultimate Glide are firmly in the halo category along with the likes of the Q36.5 Unique Pro and Specialized S-Works Torch Remco which both sit at the same price point. What that means is that these shoes are among the lightest, stiffest, and highest performance of cycling shoes. However, as with many items, the return on investment becomes smaller the higher you go.

In the same way that mid-range groupsets have more performance than lower end ones, they are often very close in performance terms to the top-end offerings even though the price increase is the same, or larger from the low to mid-range. That fact applies with these shoes as well, they are, objectively, a better performance road shoe than something that sits in the £300 price range.

However, the performance gap between a £200 shoe and a £300 shoe is possibly larger than the gap between a £300-350 and a £550 shoe. But that performance gap is still there. For the majority of people, a more high-end shoe, even if not halo, will offer them enough performance for most situations.

However, if you're in search of the extra percentages the Nimbl Ultimate Glide shoes are up there with the best shoes that I have had the privilege to use. Would I buy them myself? I would consider it if I was still racing at the level I once was and I had the money. But in my position now, I would likely opt for a 'cheaper' shoe that offers 95% of the performance but saves you £200. If you have the cash to splash though, you will not be disappointed with these shoes.