Nike Vapor Cage 4 Review
The Nike Vapor Cage 4 marked a pretty serious over haul of the Cage line. Gone was the TPU cage in the forefoot, the namesake of the line, and in were new technologies adapter from the Vapor X. Sort of…
When the shoe first leaked, I have pretty big expectations. I thought we’d get a Vapor X Dynamic Fit system, extra cushioning like the Zoom Zero, while maintain the durability and stability of the Cage like. Sadly, it didn’t really work that way.
The Dynamic Fit system is not the element that was taken from the Vapor X. Instead, it’s the TPU frame that wraps around the midsole and up the foot. The frame has three large spikes that protrude up the outside of the shoe to hold you foot from falling off of the midsole. Perhaps its just a fit issue for me, but the widest part of my foot hit right in between that two largest spikes. This led to me rolling an ankle on more than one occasion. Rather than Dynamic Fit, Nike went with this bizarre half-booty tongue construction. The eyelets on the medial side of the shoe are awful. They are stiff, making it challenging to get a secure fit. The inside eyelets are just nylon bands. While the bands did not rip apart on me, I can see them ripping apart for player who need a very secure fit. For some reason, Nike did not extend any part of the lacing system to the midsole, in a similar fashion to how Dynamic Fit or Flywire may work, which is a huge design flaw in my opinion. It is very challenging to get a secure fit in this shoe.
Part of the reason I struggled is that this shoe is definitely not designed for me. It fits wider than other NikeCourt options, so I really had to experiment with double socking, double insoling and just cranking the laces as hard as possible. I can definitely see this working better for someone with a wider foot, but if you have a narrow foot, avoid this shoe like the plague.
The cushioning was improved from the previous version. The Cage 4 features Zoom Air in the toe and a simple foam heel. The foam is clearly much softer on foot than the Zoom. Hard impacts are easily absorbed by the thick stack of foam, but the transition from heel to toe is awkward, as you can clearly feel a disconnect from the foam to the Zoom unit. I would have preferred a lower ride, as I often felt like I was on top of the shoe, rather than inside the shoe.
Durability was hit and miss. The upper is not adequately protected from toe dragging. I wore through the TPU protection near the ankle, around the big toe and on the front side of the shoe with ease. The outsole, on the other hand, is very durable. The rubber is thick, giving you lots of tread, and hard, meaning it will resist gritty hard courts well.
Unfortunately, the hard rubber gave me traction issues. This issue was exacerbated by the rounded outsole design. When recovering out of the corners of the court, I lean in towards the court, relying on the inside of the ball of my foot to deliver the power to the ground. The rounded sole made the contact patch between the rubber and court quite small. I slipped a lot because of this.
Overall, I feel like this shoe was not designed by a tennis player. There seems to be a misunderstanding of what our needs are on court. Nike could solve this issue by working more closely with pros. Sure, we saw Rafa practicing with them around 6 months before release, and Edmund and Khachanov wore them during the indoor season, but the playtest did not seem anywhere near as extensive as the R&D that went into the Zoom Zero of Zoom Turbo GP.
On the bright side, they look pretty cool.
