Description
FEATURES
- 3.5 mm RS (front) and 4.2 mm RH (rear) split rubber sole
- VD molded toe rubber
- Midsole stiffness: Hard
- Lined synthetic upper
- Vegan
DATA
- Approx. weight: 474 g (per pair)
- Size: US 4-14 / EU 35.5-48.5
- Fit: Aggressive downturn
COMPOSITION
- Upper: Micro Synthetic
- Insole: Micro Synthetic
- Tongue: Elastic
- Strap: Synthetic Leather + Webbing
- Rubber: RS rubber/RH rubber
CLOSURE
- Single Velcro strap
UP RH / REAL HONOR
| SHORE A | 76-80 |
| [HARDNESS] | |
| RESILIENCE | 13% |
| (REBOUND) | |
| DIN ABRASION | 290 |
| TOLERANCE | +/- 5% |
| COMPOUND MIXING | CA, USA |
| CALENDAR/SHEET | USA |
| PRESSED OUTSOLE | ASIA |
UP RS / REAL SUPREME
| SHORE A | 65-70 |
| [HARDNESS] | |
| RESILIENCE | 11% |
| (REBOUND) | |
| DIN ABRASION | 285 |
| TOLERANCE | +/- 5% |
| COMPOUND MIXING | CA, USA |
| CALENDAR ROLL | USA |
SUPERIOR FRICTION, IT CONFORMS TO THE MICRO EDGES AND CRYSTALS.
mike (verified owner) –
Cool new addition – toebox is stiff and sticky, heel fit is suctioned in. Comfortable out of the box and more high-volume than the TN Pro/Regulus, with a unique colorway and silhouette.
TG (verified owner) –
Have had this shoe for a little while now and all I can say is this is REALLY good shoe. First shoe I’ve had in years that I feel like can do everything. The rubber is sticky, the shoe feels precise and accurate, and most of all it’s comfortable, even when sized correctly. Rubber is not too soft and not too stiff, it’s just right for the balance they were advertising this shoe to have. The toe hook rubber is pretty thick but soft, feels really solid when hooking. The heel is solid, does everything a heel should and does it very well. The heel has plenty of tension so that it won’t just slide off your foot on a really hard heel hook. Overall it just does everything right, I can’t find any cons. This is THE shoe for everything.
Went with my street shoe for sizing and they fit perfect. Toe box feels pretty high volume while the heel feels tight, with no dead space. They broke in about 2 – 3 decently long sessions.
Mickey Esparza –
If you’ve worn teal Hiangles or the Regulus, I would suggest going down a half size from what you wear in those. The reason for this is the midsole fit baggy on me and the heel felt loose after the shoe was fully warm. The toes and overall performance are still great, however.
clarksafely –
First off, I really wanted to like this shoe. The newtro laces and the Vegas have been some of my favorite shoes, but dear god what were you guys thinking with this heel… it manages to be soft and floppy while also being hard and insensitive. The toe box is okay, I personally favor the Vega toe, but I understand how this toe works. It edges pretty well and is great for smeary volumes. Not to bad on the steep stuff either. But the heel is so bad that I cannot instill any confidence in any heel hooks. Totally ruins the shoe for steep sport climbing and bouldering. Try it on to see if it works for you, but if you like the newtro/Vega/Sirius heel, chances are this isn’t a shoe you’d like. Sized the same as the Vegas (1.5 down from SS)
mcdoodledeedo (verified owner) –
I have been climbing in these shoes for about 3 month now and they’re performing quite well for edging and toe hooking. However, the durability of the shoe so far is alright? My left shoe stitching is good as new but stitching on my right shoe is falling apart. I don’t know if it’s normal but the seams on the elastic around the shoe opening are separating from the upper. I climb about two times (2hours) a week and wear the shoe at SS (comfort fit). I can easily slip the shoe on and off without any effort. I don’t know if it’s normal wear and tear for the elastic band to separate from the upper.
Alek (verified owner) –
Awesome shoe! Bought these when they came out back in February and have climbed a great deal in them both outside and inside. The Flagship is currently my go-to shoe for almost everything in the gym, and functions as my go-to soft shoe for outdoor climbing (the Regulus LV is currently my favorite edging shoe). I particularly like them on rounded sandstone features.
Structure and Function:
Overall, I would describe the shoe as very soft, except for beneath the forefoot and behind the heel. You can fold the shoe up and put it in your pocket but at the same time the sole of the shoe does not bulge outward if you squeeze the shoe widthwise. I personally think this design is excellent, because it allows for full foot dexterity while still creating an excellent edging platform. The soft VD toehooking rubber stretches around your foot and provides excellent padding and grip for toehooks. The heel is similar to the Up Mocc, but with a great deal more tension. If you fit the shoe tight enough, then the tensioned slingshot rand will be fully engaged and the heel will not be baggy. The stiffer RH heel rubber allows you to crank on small features as well as smeary heelhooks. This is rarely a problem for me, but due to the flexibility of the split sole, the heel can roll off of holds if you are pressing off a heelhook with the outside of your foot. The moderately soft RS sole rubber provides excellent grip, and when combined with the stiff midsole (aka the stiff material between the rubber and the upper) it also allows for reasonably good edging.
Fit:
I would say that the Flagship caters to a narrower, higher volume foot with a high arch. This is peculiar because I happen to have a wider, lower volume foot. I feel like I still fit well in the shoe because the soft upper stretches around my foot nicely. My feet bulge past the edge of the sole rubber, but this personally does not bother me (in fact I prefer it). The higher volume toebox also allows for me to get my toes very curled without having too much pressure over top of them. I have a relatively low volume heel (though that might be changing due to cramming my feet in climbing shoes for so long now) and I still seem to fill out the entire heel cup. My high arch and low-volume mid-foot means I have to crank down the strap to pull the upper around my mid-foot. I ended up cutting the strap shorter because of this.
Sizing:
I wear a 7 USM street shoe, a 7 USM in the Sirius LV (6.5 USM for a tight fit), 6 USM in the Regulus LV for a tight fit, and a 5 USM in the Up Mocc for a tight fit. In the Flagship I wear a 5.5 USM. Held up to my foot, the Flagships end at about the base of my big toe (~1 inch shorter than my foot). They are very tight but not uncomfortable. I can wear them for about 20-30 minutes before my feet are pretty much numb. I assume this sizing and type of fit best suites the design of the shoe.
Stretch:
These have stretched probably about a quarter size. The main differences post break-in are that the upper softens up significantly, and the heel tensioning becomes more supple and flexible. When I first got them, I needed to put a plastic bag over my entire foot to get them on, now I don’t need a bag whatsoever because the heel has loosened up nicely.
Quality:
So far these have had the least issues of any pair of UPs I have owned. Pull tabs are currently in good condition, and overall, the shoe has only a few minor areas of delamination around the heel rubber and toe area. The stitching attaching the elastic to the synthetic upper is coming undone but this is not a huge performance problem.
At the moment, these are my favorite shoes on the softer end of the climbing shoe spectrum! Thanks UP!
Kenji Kozuka –
This is a really good shoe, that was made for people like me.
Before purchasing, I had read a lot that many people felt they fit well and many other people felt they fit badly. This really seems to come down to the shape of the individual’s feet, and after trying out a pair, I can confirm that this shoe is not for everyone.
Notable features include, a pretty deep heel, a very hard toe for precision, a wide range of motion, and an overall tight fit for the sizing (it is not easy to put them on nor take them off).
How do they feel? Honestly, pretty amazing. The shoe is quite sensitive for how hard it is. Toeing down on a small foot chip might as well feel like clipping a metal hook onto a carabiner. Insanely solid and for the first time ever, my hands felt like they were the limiting factor on a crimpy boulder. (I’m about a V9 boulderer for reference) This shoe is definitely quite advanced though. I would not recommend it to a beginner. It crushes my feet virtually into tight fists, is abrasive on my joints, and is overall uncomfortable enough that I could call them painful.
Full disclosure, this is my first pair of Unparallel shoes and so it’s fully possible much of my experience with the shoes is just the brand being the brand. That said, I personally love them and would call them “the type of shoe you want when you want no excuses to send a project”. This is a hyper aggressive and mean pair of shoes.They hurt, they’re hard as nails, and they are exactly what I wanted.
Pete Grasso (verified owner) –
I have been climbing in these for about 3 months now, and all I can say is that this is an excellent shoe. From the moment I put it on the first time it was so comfortable that I couldn’t tell if they were too big (turns out they were just slightly too big) or just comfortable. The lining is by far the most supple, soft, and comfortable material I have ever had in a climbing shoe. The rubber is what you would expect from the team that originally developed stealth rubber, it is the stickiest but somehow durable rubber I have ever had, they just stick. The split design of the sole is absolutely genius, at first it felt super weird, but now that I’m used to it, I get it. The toe box is nice and stiff, so you can stand on the smallest holds with confidence, but the midsole is so soft that it maintains so much sensitivity that you know exactly when you have your foot in the right spot on the hold. Toe hooks are as simple as positioning and engaging your foot, the rubber toe cap is so thick that the most painful toe hooks are comfortable and again they just stick. The heel is fantastic as well, really holds well considering that I got my shoes about a half size too big. The craziest thing with these shoes is that even though they are too big, I can still climb at my limit without my foot sliding around inside, or pulling my heel out on hard heel hooks. My only “complaint” about them is that I do wish that the shape of the shoe was just slightly wider and a slightly sharper toe, this is really more due to my foot shape though, I have short toes, wide forefoot with a high arch, so the more asymmetrical and sharp the toe is the better the fit for me. However, this shoe is so high volume that it doesn’t matter, it just conforms to the shape of your foot.
Ultimately, my experience with this shoe is that it is one of the best shoes on the market. It can smear with the absolute best and still stand on a dime edge, grab on a roof, and heel and toe hooks are more secure than I have ever felt. If you have wider high volume feet, look no further. As for the fit, I went a half size below street shoe, I think I would have been better off with a full size or potentially even 1.5 down, or a split size. Break in was not bad at all, definitely a little hard to get on at first, but after 2 or 3 sessions the upper softens up and they get way easier to put on. I would say for them to fully break in it took about a month, do expect them to stretch slightly, absolute max a half size.
John (verified owner) –
Not a perfect fit to my foot, but Rubber is sticky I would recommend true to size when getting this shoe I usually size down 2 sizes but do not, and about the air pockets size 7 or size 8 I still had air pockets on the midsole or heel and I’m size 9, but this doesn’t mean any thing with performance. Heel is super good and haven’t toe hooked anything yet but I know it’d do justice. I also have the women’s LV and they fit perfect, as in for the men’s flagship it’s definitely all around shoe and super aggressive, good balance of not to stiff and not to soft. I would recommend, but I will say it doesn’t fit my foot perfectly. It’s a narrow shoe, I have narrow feet.
ID –
Honestly, its an okay shoe. Sizing wise they fit a lot different than other Unparallel shoes, and they have a higher volume shape which I don’t enjoy as I have a narrow lv foot shape. They fit baggy on the top of my foot, even though they are a snug fit on my toes and heel. My street shoe is 10.5/11M and I got 9.5M in these. I also wear 9.5 in other Unparallel models, and the older Five ten hiangles/team 5.10s. If I would get these again I would get the LV model as a size 10M/11.5W. For reference I sized my Regulus LVs at 9.5M/11W.
Lenore Sparks –
The Flagships are a masterpiece for the Venturi Effect, Hulk, Eastern Sierra. Since I am lazy and don’t want to haul up tons of shoes on a three hour approach, I leaned into the Flagship for my high Sierra alpine climbing this year. Last year I was climbing with the UP Lace LV downsized, but I switched to the Flagships for the Hulk and alpine because I needed very precise edging ability and velcro to take off my shoes more easily at belay stations. The Flagship toes also are completely encapsulated in rubber, making them excellent for crack climbing (when not aggressively downsized). Basically, they are superior shoes for difficult climbing on diverse rock. Maybe offwidth climbing isn’t the Flagship’s forte, but I HAVE managed just fine haha. I also took them as my only climbing shoe when we climbed the Nose on El Cap, mainly free. Here is the breakdown for using them for difficult (5.12 and harder) multipitch:
Sizing: my street shoe is Men’s 6. I bought these in Men’s 7.0 (39.5). Heel and toe were hugged, not compressed.
Break-in period: Out of the box climb-able and comfortable. The shoes were very stiff (I like) for a few months, and as the rubber on the toes wore down, the shoes became increasingly more soft. The softer, more worn version were easier to stuff into finger cracks, but less comfortable on tiny edges. They smeared better with time. The rubber lasts three times longer than Stealth, and it is far stickier.
Resole: I finally wore through the toe rubber and had them factory resoled at UP. I am thrilled with the result. I had them put the thickest rubber possible in order to regain stiffness. I have had shoes resoled for over 20 years and this so far is the best resole I’ve ever seen. My shoes literally came back cleaner! HOW?? The resoles are clean, durable, and very stiff. Awesome!
Summary: Buy this shoe and get it resoled at UP. You won’t be disappointed. I climbed the Nose with them and TN wore them bouldering in the Olympics. Case in Point.
dustinap (verified owner) –
Until recently, I hadn’t bought a pair of climbing shoes until 2015. Five Ten stopped making the models that I used for years, and I was forced to branch out and try La Sportiva, Scarpa, and Evolv. Sure they’re good shoes, but they don’t fit me properly. Finally, I tried Unparalleled and I wish I hadn’t wasted my time or money on other brands. I bought the Flagship, TN Pro, and Sirius. I wear a 8.5 street shoe, and I purchased a size 8 in all 3 models. I wouldn’t be able to get a smaller size on my foot, but they are also comfortable enough that I can break them in without my toes going numb. The rubber is great. The shipping was fast, I am so glad I found my new brand.