These are my first walking poles, as I wanted something more symmetrical than my hiking staff. It took a bit to initially get these assembled. For some reason, the pop-out button that holds these in the extended position would not reveal itself, so I thought the inner cord was too long – once I figured that out, though, it was all logical and I can now assemble and put these back in their bag in seconds. There are no instructions or documentation included.
There are two main caveats that people should consider. First, the minimum height of these is 46 inches or 115 cm. Per the height chart included in the listing, the shortest person these would be suitable for is someone who is at least 5’6” tall. I am 5’6” tall, and I can attest, I would actually prefer these to be able to go an inch shorter, but they cannot. The “one size fits all” claim of the listing is simply untrue.
Second, the sections all spin. While the little pop-out that locks these into place keeps this stable from top to bottom, the individual sections that make up the bottom half of the poles spin freely. There is nothing in the design which would lock them into place. This will be a moot point with the perfectly round feet, but this does make the walking feet (Boot Tips) unusable, as the boots don’t stay facing forward, but just fall off to the side because the bottom sections of the poles can spin freely. I’ll probably just keep these in my trunk, fully put together, with duct tape or something between the sections to prevent this, because I wanted these for the boot foot and pavement walking. Otherwise, the other feet work fine, as it doesn’t matter if a round foot spins.
I studied other poles on Amazon and many of them have a locking lever for each and every section, which would prevent such spinning, but these have no such locking feature – it is a significant design flaw, but it is a flaw that will only matter if you want to use the boot tips. Some people might lower the rating significantly because of this – do consider your use case. For me, I’m fine with these being always fully extended in my trunk, taped together, so for me, it’s not a huge deal.
Steepedbystories –
Lis Thompson –
Island V –
Travis Crites –
Josh –
D Smith –
John Wikman –
Review –