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Welcome to Velo’s Sea Otter Classic coverage, where we share our favorite things we’ve seen at the 2025 show. Bikes, components, everything racing, and more: if we think it’s cool, you’ll see it. See the rest of our Sea Otter coverage here.
Sea Otter isn’t only a show for consumers. It’s also an opportunity for brands to hold meetings with prospective retailers. That means that sometimes, if you look closely, you can catch something not meant for display. The Q36.5 Unique Pro shoe is one such thing.
The Q36.5 Unique Pro shoe is only a prototype right now. The samples have small mistakes and unfinished details but clearly the design is in the home stretch. I’m told we can expect them to hit retail in the next 1-2 months but things can always shift at this point in the process.
What we have now is only sparse info. The design comes as an evolution of the existing Q36.5 Unique shoe with a greater focus on stability while continuing to use the sock like design in both the Unique shoe as well as the Q36.5 Dottore Clima Road Shoes.
As with the recently released Specialized S-Works Ares 2 road shoes the point of this new shoe is to keep your foot locked into the base without any movement. This, of course, represents a challenge for making a comfortable shoe and that’s where the no-tongue fabric interior comes to the rescue. It’s not the first time the brand is using similar techniques but this time there’s an eye towards pro focused improvements.
First up, the Q36.5 Unique Pro Shoes shrink stack height to 4.4mm. To get there the brand is using a “patent-pending carbon fiber layup developed by Q36.5 in Montebelluna, Italy” to bring the outer sole down to only 2mm thick. Q36.5 goes on to say that this is the “lowest stack height on the market.”
There’s also claims to go along with that. The brand references “recent studies showing every millimeter of reduction in stack height amounts to a 1% increase in power thanks to improved rotation and aerodynamics.” The new “cupped heel wall” in the rear of the shoe, which is designed to add stability, should help with that potential increase in power.
More concrete in nature is the updated shape. The trend in modern road shoes, and tires, is to go wider. Q36.5 is doing the same with a larger toe box and increased width across the metatarsal area. If other recent shoe releases are any indication, expect real gains in comfort from this change.
If you’re interested in what else Q36.5 is up to check the Q36.5 website. You can also expect a review on these as soon the finished product lands in the US.
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