The Hoka Zinal 3 is a Modern Trail Shoe from Another Era

Introduction to the Hoka Zinal 3

MICHAEL: Through the years that I’ve been reviewing trail running shoes, it seems to me that brands are slowing down release cycles and turning out fewer new SKUs each year. However, as data-backed as this “leaner” approach is, it is certainly perceived by yours truly, and while I think it’s easy to look at the market today and notice there are more brands for a trail runner to choose from, there seem to be fewer options to choose from within large brands. Case in point: whereas Saucony used to feature the Endorphin Edge, Endorphin Rift (A shoe of the year winner), and multiple other models in its sprawling lineup, the Endorphin Trail line is just gone.

While I’m sure many of the reasons behind these changes stem from less-than-ideal circumstances for the industry (marked reductions in outdoor leisure spending post-COVID, for instance), I’d like to view this in a net-positive light. Not only do longer release cycles result in an inherently more environmentally friendly approach (something brands like NNormal have touted from the outset), but they also tend to yield shoes that are less gimmicky and, hopefully, better for runners. Even as a nerd, it’s nearly impossible to distinguish what has changed between the Altra Lone Peak 7 and Lone Peak 8. Instead, Altra should release one model initially and update the colorway a year later.

Additionally, the increase in the number of brands making shoes rather than the number of shoes per brand indicates that the sport seems to be sort of democratizing in a way that road running hasn’t for much of its existence — and I love it. Instead of some monster brand like Nike being the sole controller of all things performance trail running, I appreciate that niche brands like Norda, Mount to Coast, and even Topo Athletic or Merrell offer consumers a means of expressing themselves, much in the same way bespoke bicycles are a sort of canvas upon which to paint one’s individuality with different parts, unique components, and bar tape.

While shoes are, of course, not nearly as customizable or individualistic as bikes, I think this shift could be part of what marks a healthy culture of trail-running footwear, even in all its vain consumerist glory.

This sort of brings me to the shoe in question today, the Hoka Zinal 3, which happens to be the first update of its model in over three years, a timeline that I feel was previously unthinkable for large brands in the early aughts. While much of the shoe’s character has remained unchanged as a lightweight, low-to-the-ground shoe meant for fast, technical terrain, there are many changes to version 2 that warrant plenty of discussion and thought.

And if, by some miracle, you’ve made it this far and are questioning whether you want to hear me blabber on, please consider what my friend Sam has to say about the shoe. He probably won’t write a 500-plus word intro… probably.

SAM: One day, Michael is going to egg me on like this, and I’m going to type out some runaway Kerouacian screed. It’ll go for pages. We’ll have to throw in pictures of Taylor because we won’t have enough shoe pictures to break up the text. No one will be able to find anything remotely resembling a show review in it, but it will be long and, damn it, there will be rambling. Just wait, one day it’ll happen.

But this is not that day. No, today we get to talk about a new Hoka Zinal. As Michael said, it’s been three long (so, so, so long) years since the last Zinal, a shoe the two of us really loved. It was also a shoe that I compared to a pair of Toms Cordones (remember those?) in a good way, which was one of the more doubtful intros I’ve done here for BITR. I’m still kind of embarrassed by it.

But I guess I’m not embarrassed enough to run it back and make another wholly lame Toms-to-trail-running comparison, because when I first put on the Hoka Zinal 3, my first thought — and I am not kidding you in the least — was “huh, these feel like a pair of original Toms.” That’s a super lame thing to think about most anything other than casual slip-ons, and sure makes it sound like the Zinal 3 is likewise super lame. It’s not. It’s a great shoe.

It’s totally different from the last one and still somehow exactly the same, which I think is what we love to see in a new model. We’re going to have a lot to say about it, and it should make for an entertaining review. I just can’t get there without indulging this awful comparison, and I’m going to drag you, dear reader, right along with me.

Light up a clove cigarette, spin up that Broken Bells album, and pull out your deep V-neck tee and aviator shades, because we’re going to talk about the Hoka Zinal 3 by way of a trip to the early 2010s. Because we’re talking Tom’s and we’re talking trail running. On most days we make good choices, but not today, not on Zinal 3 day.

REESE: My role in this review is the tl;dr person. Both Sam and Michael have said plenty, and I fear that I’ll just take this review into some esoteric direction that no one asked for or wanted. The headline for this shoe, for me anyway, is “A low stack Hoka for a lower price.” That statement feels like fake news, but it isn’t. This is a super low stack shoe (for Hoka, anyway), and it’s $10 cheaper than its predecessor. Finally, something good is happening in 2026.

What we like about the Hoka Zinal 3

MICHAEL: As Sam alluded to earlier, version three of the Zinal is markedly different from version two. It would take some time to explain in words what can be visually communicated in a few photos. In summary, the ankle gaiter is gone, and the shoe has adopted a more traditional tongue instead of the sewn-in bootie style. Perhaps the most noteworthy change, as Reese mentioned, is that it actually went down by $10 from 3 years ago.

There are no free lunches, so why the decrease in price, eh? Does that mean the shoe performs worse? These are fair questions, but I’m happy to report that, according to my super scientific calculations, the Zinal 3’s performance remains around 85% that of the Zinal 2. Allow me to explain. You see, just as the Zinal 2 was a slim-fitting ballet slipper for prancing around technical terrain, so too is the Zinal 3.

This shoe is meant for precision, so you won’t find a voluminous fit. Instead, the lightweight monomesh material feels close to the skin. For certain applications, I absolutely love this approach to footwear. I detest the feeling of my foot sliding around in a shoe and not feeling locked in, and the Zinal 3 is the exact opposite.

Further down, the Zinal 3 gets a slight increase in stack height and cushioning over its 3-year-old predecessor. In some ways, the new design closely resembles the OG Zinal, albeit with a much-improved midsole material that provides a nice blend of softness and bounce, paired with a more aggressive outsole setup. About that outsole — I found this one to be on the higher-performing end of generic outsoles, comparable in performance to much-praised outsoles like Brooks TrailTack or Saucony PWRTRAC, though it doesn’t come with any cheeky naming conventions.

Perhaps the most important trait of the Zinal 2 that was preserved in version 3 is its low weight, which is pretty self-explanatory. This shoe disappears on the foot, making running up hills way more fun than it should be.

SAM: Who am I kidding? I can’t smoke cloves since I threw one up in the back of a friend’s car in college. I had to look up what music was popular in 2010, because I can’t remember what was going on then. Honestly, my life at that time was a heady mix of meeting the person who would become my wife (good, amazing, awesome) and trying to find any kind of reasonable work in the early days of the recession, armed with only a Sociology degree (bad, stupid, do not recommend).

But Toms, I always had a pair of Toms. They were a big deal, and the fit was a solid mix of generous comfort from the canvas as they broke in, and a sleek closeness from how slim they were cut. Sure, a pair would only last about 8 months, but they were cheap and exactly what those of us treading water, full of neo-bohemian aspirations, wanted.

The Hoka Zinal 3 has that same fit, and it frankly rules. The shoe is cut very slim, and the midsole and outsole sit directly under the foot. However, the engineered mesh is really soft out of the box, unlike the crinkly upper in the Zinal 2. There’s a little extra padding around the heel, and a soft, stretchy elastic panel at the base of the lacing chain, right over your toes, that makes the toebox feel soft and accommodating. It’s because of this that the Zinal 3 maintains the same great slipper-with-teeth feel that made the Zinal 2 such an underdog winner for us, and I’m happy with the shoe just for that.

The Zinal 3 does feel lower to the ground than its previous iteration, perhaps because of the softness of either the upper or the midsole, or a combination of the two. That midsole feels barely there on the run. It’s soft and thin, but it maintains enough protection that I never felt like I was getting punched with rocks. This foam has a peppy, fun feel, especially given how much there is.

I’m pretty happy with this proprietary rubber that Hoka swapped in for the Vibram that was glued onto the Zinal 2. I know we’d usually whine and moan about losing Vibram, but this rubber is super sticky, and I really didn’t have any traction issues in any conditions.

REESE: I should start by saying I never tested the previous Zinal iterations, so I’m a newbie to this shoe. But obviously, I’m loving that this is a cheaper version. It seems you can’t buy a pair of shoes for under $200 today. And normally, we’re getting a high-stack shoe, because there are rarely any other options, so I figure I need to add on at least three copays to my podiatrist’s office when I rip a tendon in my ankle. So realistically, shoes cost (up front and later on) about $350. Not with the Zinal 3.

And while this shoe is minimal in the cushion for the pushin’, I didn’t find it to be aggressively uncomfortable. Yes, there is a lot more ground feel. But I was never hurting or wishing I had 20 mm more midsole foam. It lacks the rebound and responsiveness of other shoes, but for shorter, more technical runs, this is the shoe to reach for.

The thing I love about the midsole, even though it is technically a pretty straightforward EVA construction, is that it’s not massive. I’m so glad this isn’t a 40 mm stack. Running Warehouse lists the Zinal at 31 mm in the heel — it’s low, and I love it. I wouldn’t bring it to your next 50-mile, but for 30k and under (might be a stretch), the Zinal 3 would be fine, especially if you race on technical terrain or have ankle instability.

The grip wasn’t on par with Vibram MegaGrip, but it was reliable and durable for what they call “Hoka proprietary sticky rubber.” I only ran into slipping issues on dusty slickrock. And again, for $150, I’m not comparing this to the materials of a $320-plus shoe (hello, Norda 005). And to that end, I felt like the materials in the upper were robust and durable, but breathable.

What we don’t like about the Hoka Zinal 3

MICHAEL: Honestly, I don’t have much negative to say, other than that I do miss the uniqueness of the Zinal 2 when it was released with its weird gaiter and all that jazz, which brings me to my main “critique.”

It’s great that a specialized shoe like the Zinal took a decrease in cost, but it wasn’t without compromise. I could speculate that many people seeking out an uberlight, speedy shoe like the Zinal were probably willing to pay the extra $10 for the Vibram upgrade and wacky design ethos. What would be really awesome in my mind, however, would be if the next iteration of Hoka’s budget-oriented shoe, the Torrent, follows suit and drops or maintains its price. If this happens, we’ll know Hoka has affordability in mind for good, rather than just taking a shoe at the pointy end of its lineup and making it a slightly more normal-looking and feeling.

SAM: The outsole on the Hoka Zinal 3 might be sticky, but durability is suspect. I had wear on the lugs after one run. But, on a shoe like this, what is durability? This is a lean, stripped-down ripper that lost $10 on its price. I’m impressed that it has grip at all. I’m just going to be using the shoe on short, technical trails anyway.

My bigger complaint here is that the Zinal 3 feels slightly more run-of-the-mill than the Zinal 2. It has a traditional engineered single-layer mesh, no incorporated gaiter, no Vibram, and the midsole feels more muted. But hey, we lost $10 on the price and not that much performance, so this feels like a moot point.

REESE: I feel like I’m going a little easy on this shoe because of the price. $150 is nothing to sneeze at, but I do tend to look at very expensive gear and shoes with a microscope, because at higher price points, I expect nothing but perfection and for the gear to outlast mid- to lower-tier products.

The fit of the shoe was okay, but not great. It felt much longer in length than other Hokas of the same size. I typically size down a half size in Hoka from my normal size, and I did for the Zinal 3, but it was just a touch longer than I wanted. The heel cup was better than most Hokas, as it wasn’t crazy padded, but I still had some issues with locking my heel down. I felt like I needed to cinch down my laces to a point where it hurt the front of my ankle.

Final thoughts on the Hoka Zinal 3

MICHAEL: I’ll preface the helpful ruminations of my fellow reviewers below by revisiting my critiques and appreciating that Hoka took a hyper-specialized shoe and made it more palatable for the broader audience. While I will miss the uniqueness of the Zinal 2 specifically, I find shoes of its kind extremely fun to race and run in for short, technical courses and joyful forest romps, respectively.

With version three, Hoka extends that invitation to more runners, and I can certainly see how more people might reach for this shoe over version two to complement other daily trainers in their rotation. Like parking a shiny new Miata convertible in your garage next to your old Honda Accord — if you run most of your miles on a Mafate or Speedgoat, the Zinal 3 is perfectly positioned (and hopefully priced) to be your “fun” shoe.

SAM: Another review, another terrible comparison from me. But in this case, we got a major update (that’s also a bit of a downgrade in terms of materials) that retains most of the performance of the previous model for a much lower price. Maybe this is the entry model for Hoka’s trail lineup now, but it rips on short, technical trails. I’m a big fan of the slim fit and low profile. Sure, the Zinal 2 will always hold a place in my heart and in my closet, but this third edition is worth the time, especially for the price.

REESE: This is just a good shoe. It’s not a blow-your-socks-off super shoe; it’s not full of amazing, fun, lightweight materials, but if you need a low-stack trail shoe at a reasonable price, it’s hard to beat the Zinal 3. The low to mid-tier shoes have actually been some of my favorites this year (most notably the Scott Kinabalu Trail). I feel like I can just wear the hell out of them and not “save” them. I bought a few pairs of The North Face Summit Vectiv Sky 2 because I’m obsessed with them, but they’re pricey, so I only wear them when racing.

But the Zinal 3 feels like a shoe that I can just throw on, not worry about where I take it and how often I run in it, just wear it down. And the fact that it’s not wildly unstable is such a relief. I am gravitating toward low-stack shoes to save my ankle and sanity. This is likely to make it into my weekly rotation, if only to put miles on it and save some of my other shoes, with the added benefit of protecting my ankles.

You can pick up the Hoka Zinal 3 for $150 from Hoka by using the buttons below.