New Balance Fresh Foam 860v14 Review: Soaring Stability Plane

What You Need To Know

Introduction to the New Balance Fresh Foam 860v14

SAM: Life is full of surprises. It’s common for the mundane to present something you’re not expecting so long as you’re open to the world around you. Take going for a walk as an example. Going for a walk is such a simple act and one as runners that I think we too often overlook. You don’t need fancy water bottles and accessories, expensive running clothes, or even expensive running shoes. You just need to take it slow and appreciate the world around you.

If you do that, as philosophers like Emerson have found, you’ll see beauty in the world around you. This is the thought I kept coming back to while reviewing the New Balance Fresh Foam 860v14. It’s a shoe that feels very overlooked as New Balance’s mid-level stability trainer. Does it have FuelCell foam? No. A carbon plate? No. Fancy materials and max cushioning? Nope.

It’s a simple shoe, and I found beauty in that. Let’s get into why.

What we like about the New Balance Fresh Foam 860v14

SAM: First of all, I want to tip my hat to New Balance for the striking Cobalt colorway they sent me. Until this, every blue stability shoe I’ve reviewed has never caught the attention of those around me. I would have to bring them up in conversation in order to talk about the shoes to people. But not this shoe. It just looks good, and it earned me some compliments as I made the rounds in it.

Now, let’s talk about the shoe. The New Balance Fresh Foam 860v14 is a stability shoe weighing in around 10.8 oz, with a stack height starting at 38 mm and ending at 30 mm for an 8 mm drop. It features New Balance’s Fresh Foam X midsole along with a Stability Plane (more on these in a second), a simple engineered mesh upper, and a blown rubber outsole. That’s it. Besides the midsole there is nothing I would consider special about this shoe, and I ended up loving that.

I want to start with the key feature of this shoe: stability. Despite my research (5 minutes of googling), I couldn’t figure out exactly what the Stability Plane is. What I’ve surmised is that it is just a very dense layer of midsole foam that sits between the upper midsole and lower midsole, similar to what Mizuno does in its stability shoes.

They don’t advertise it, but I suspect that New Balance uses two different densities of midsole foam here. The upper layer is softer, and the layer underneath the stability plane is firmer. Along with the geometry of the midsole design, these aspects combine to subtly and effectively guide your foot in its path away from pronation. Some people have complained about removing the plastic piece on the instep, but I believe that subtle stability like New Balance does here is the best way.

Outside of the stability, there’s not much else to discuss about the New Balance 860v14 because of its simplicity. The upper is comfortable without being cumbersome. The lacing and gusseted tongue do just enough to lock down your foot, and along with the outsole, made for a ride that I did not have to think about once I started running in the shoe. Funnily enough, when comparing this to its more expensive counterpart, the Vongo v6, I found that the 860v14 has around 3 mm more foam in the heel. So despite being $25 cheaper, the 860v14 has more midsole to it, and less of a rockered ride (my personal preference). Just some food for thought.

What we don’t like about the New Balance Fresh Foam 860v14

SAM: The only real con with the New Balance 860v14 is that it is not the fastest shoe ever created. It has a good ground feel and some firmness, but outside of your daily run being “slightly faster than expected,” this is never going to be a shoe that you can get excited about using for a workout or a race. It is passable for strides after your run, but anything that requires fast running for an extended time period just will not work. Of course, I understand that having a shoe rotation is not something everyone is financially capable of, so if you are looking for a “workhorse” shoe instead of an “everyday” shoe, the 860v14 might not be for you.

Final thoughts on the New Balance Fresh Foam 860v14

SAM: New Balance, thank you for surprising me with the Fresh Foam 860v14. Did it knock my socks off? No. But this shoe is a perfectly good go-to shoe. It does what you want without doing too much or getting in the way. You’ll get solid comfort without being overbearing, and it is just firm enough to be passable for some up-tempo work or strides after your run. I can’t say workhorse because this isn’t a fast shoe, but it also will not slow you down. Short runs, long runs, everyday runs, faster-than-expected runs, and even grocery store runs. But nothing speedy. And you know what, that is just fine by me. Welcome to the club 860v14, it is good to have you.

You can pick up the New Balance Fresh Foam 860v14 for $140 from New Balance by using the buttons below.