HOKA Challenger 8 Review

The HOKA Challenger 8 is for you if...

You want a trail shoe with a higher-than-normal stack 

You have a wider foot shape 

You usually stick to trails made up of fire roads or fine gravel

What is the HOKA Challenger 8 made for?

Since 2015, the HOKA Challenger series has been HOKA’s core road-to-trail offering. Dubbed “the Clifton of the trails,” it has always boasted a healthy amount of cushioning, enough to protect your feet from the elements, but the shoes have made a conscious effort to remain lightweight and accessible despite this vertically positive design. With the Challenger 8, we see a recommitment to high stack heights and a sticky tacky outsole that wants to keep your foot glued to the trail.

The result of this effort was a mixed bag for our reviewers. While we all found the shoes to be true to the spec sheet, we had differing opinions on whether these design choices meshed with the Challenger’s road-to-trail positioning.

Comfort

Let's start with the thing we agreed upon—as is tradition, HOKA has delivered another plush, comfortable ride. When standing in the shoes, you feel cushioned. Walking feels like you’re walking on clouds, and running makes you feel like you’re not actually running. From the incredibly soft underfoot compression-molded EVA foam to the plush, cushioned upper and tongue, the Challenger 8 surrounds your foot with pillowy goodness. It’s a thick shoe, which might begin to feel a bit stuffy in extreme heat, but it successfully protected our feet from rock bruises and avoided any hot spots or blisters.

Performance

Alright. Let's get into the controversy now. While we all agreed that the Challenger 8 was a comfortable shoe, mileage varied significantly on how well the shoe performed for us. 

Two of our reviewers were able to get a good, consistent lockdown in the shoe, and found that the shoe performed well as a cruiser. Multidimensional lugs provided them with an adaptable grip on various surfaces. The Challenger 8 allowed them to tackle long uphill climbs and steep descents with comfortable confidence, noting that the shoe tested best on mild to moderate terrain.

For our other two reviewers, there were issues aplenty, largely stemming from the shoe's loose, spacious fit and its inflated stack height. Reviewers who couldn’t get a good lockdown in the shoe felt disconnected from the shoe, stating that, due to the extra width, if the shoe went left, then their foot went right. “Slippage time” had to be accounted for in order to prevent these reviewers from toppling over on the trail. The Challenger’s increased cushioning created a top-heavy sensation and limited the shoe’s confidence range to primarily fire trails and smooth roads. Despite the lugs and grippy rubber providing decent traction underfoot, the instability created by the midfoot made our trail experiences feel treacherous.

Fit

As alluded to in the Performance section, the width of the Challenger 8 created an abundance of problems for us. While previous versions fit us well and have acted as some of our familiar go-to daily trainers, the new proportions introduced in the Challenger 8 created such an imbalance as to undercut half of the appeal of the shoe. Having a road-to-trail shoe that we only trusted on roads was not ideal. 

But, also as noted in the Performance section, some of our reviewers did achieve that magical lockdown you strive for. And for them, once the shoe was secured, it performed well. 

Our recommendation seems to boil down to this: If you have a wider foot, and can get a secure wrap from the shoe, then the grippy rubber and cushiony midsole will seize their chances to shine, and you may end up loving the Challenger 8. But, if you have a slimmer foot, or if you try the Challengers on and find you can’t get a good initial lockdown, then you might want to test your luck elsewhere.