X-Bionic TerraSkin X00/C Review: Two-Faced Trailhawk

Introduction to the X-Bionic TerraSkin X00/C

SAM: There are many places to begin with the X-Bionic TerraSkin X00/C. That name, for instance. It is familiar in that those are recognizable letters and fragments of words, but together, like that? They could mean anything. Did Elon Musk come for trail shoes? Are we encountering this shoe on an unexplored exoplanet in a science fiction novel?

And the name is just the beginning. There’s the eye-assaulting asymmetric colorway and design that looks like H.R. Giger curated a late predilection for neon, the sock like upper explicitly made to be used with an exclusive paired sock, the carbon fiber plate shot into a dual density EVA midsole, the extremely minimal and unique Vibram Megagrip outsole, or the $300 price tag. This is truly just a lot of shoe. I promise we’ll get to all of these things in the sections below, but one thing is immediately clear about the X-Bionic Terraskin X00/C…

This is the wildest trail shoe released this year.

What we like about the X-Bionic TerraSkin X00/C

SAM: We aren’t going to get anywhere without first digging into the visuals of the X-Bionic TerraSkin X00/C. I mentioned H.R. Giger above, the visual artist behind sets and some design in Ridley Scott’s Alien and Joel Schumaker’s Batman Forever, and the TerraSkin X00/C really does look like a Xenomorph got lost in a neon dye factory.

Since release, they’ve unified the colorways and added a more natural version, but my review pair is fully asymmetric — one shoe is black with white and pink accents, and the other is white with black and pink accents. This asymmetry goes all the way down to the Vibram outsole rubber and is mirrored in the paired socks. And sure, it’s louder than a two-year-old in a fancy restaurant, but I think it really works. X-Bionic is making choices, and it’s a little puff of fresh air in a market full of more or less similar shoes. It’s going to turn just about every head out there, though. This is a shoe for sucking in attention.

Speaking of the paired socks, the Terraskin socks are just as wild as the shoes. They have elastic heel and ankle support, raised ridges on top of the foot to enhance airflow, built-in Achilles tendon protection, and specially made grippy yarn on the foot for enhanced traction between the shoe and sock. These are good socks. They’re comfortable and fit great, and make running in the Terraskin shoe a markedly better experience. I did several runs in the shoe with and without the socks, and I will certainly never take the shoe out without them again. That’s how much of a difference the socks make.

Part of that is how they enhance breathability in the sock-like upper. The elastic polyester and TPU reinforced upper is already plenty breathable, and the socks only highlight that. The laces tighten in a structure that connects to the ripstop TPU overlays that run the lower third of the upper. These overlays go all the way to the bottom of the shoe between the inner foam of the midsole and the outer carrier foam. This whole system creates a very secure and rock-solid lockdown that makes the midsole feel like an extension of your foot.

The dual-density EVA midsole is a unique construction I haven’t seen many analogues to. It consists of a softer interior foam and a decently stiff “cage” of carrier foam with a wishbone-shaped carbon fiber plate sandwiched in between. Now, carrier foams aren’t unusual, but the shape and density of this one are what make it unique. The cage of carrier foam rises above the footbed around the shoe’s perimeter and serves two purposes: support and stability for your foot above the midsole, and acts as a second half of the outsole. This structure works great around the heel of your foot for stability and security, and as for the outsole, read on.

We’re all decently familiar with Vibram MegaGrip at this point. It is the proper industry standard, and we’ve seen it deployed successfully on shoe after shoe. I didn’t think there was much more to do with it until the TerraSkin X00/C arrived. The Vibram outsole on this shoe, besides being asymmetrically colored, is a waffle-like pattern of square blocks with large divots of exposed EVA carrier foam in between.

I was initially skeptical but intrigued, and after a very muddy run, I think this may be one of the best Vibram configurations I’ve seen. The lugs are only 3.7 mm, but with those huge divots between them, they sink way down into slop and get some pretty outrageous traction without carrying globs of mud with them. It’s just an absolute winner here.

What we don’t like about the X-Bionic TerraSkin X00/C

SAM: First off, the Terraskin X00/C runs a half size small. My test pair was a US M10.5 and worked just fine for my normal size 10 foot. It’s a narrow fit, too, so you’ll want to size up at least a half size, maybe more.

As much as I love the concept of a fully asymmetric colorway, I think the more recently released uniform colors are less in your face. To each their own, of course, but the shoe looks good enough without the jarring discrepancy of one foot being mostly black and the other mostly white.

Earlier, I briefly touched on a puzzling aspect of this shoe: namely, that, without the special X-Bionic socks, this is just a far more unpleasant shoe to run in. I never would have guessed socks would make such a difference, but my runs in just a plain old pair of Smartwool midweight crew socks were unpleasant. My foot moved around much more inside the shoe, and I couldn’t find any kind of comfortable lacing solution.

Even with the socks, the lockdown structure can be slightly painful if not tightened down exactly the right way, and if it’s not tight enough, you spend a lot of time with your toes jamming into the “cage” of carrier foam. That frame of foam around the toes and midfoot of the shoe is generally not super comfortable, and I found that it does a fair bit of twisting and directing your foot in weird ways on uneven terrain. The structure around the heel? Two thumbs up. Around the midfoot and toes? I’m not a fan.

Underfoot, the supposedly softer inner EVA foam is very firm and lacks character. There are tons of protections there, but between the firmness of the two foams and the plate, underfoot, there is not much flex. The plate feels like little more than a fancy rock plate, so there’s no pop or spring out of this shoe, which is what carbon fiber plates are often used to achieve.

Final thoughts on the X-Bionic TerraSkin X00/C

SAM: You have to respect a shoe that swings for the fences and then some. While there are a few aspects of the X-Bionic Terraskin X00/C that need attention, namely the underfoot feel and the structure of the outer EVA frame, some things are truly great, like the look of the shoe and the grip underfoot.

I’m also intrigued by the potential of a shoe-specific sock for performance enhancement. If this shoe can improve so much based on what’s sitting between it and the skin of your feet, what could a pair of special socks do for a shoe that’s pretty great with normal socks?

The Terraskin X00/C is a shoe that can serve technical and non-technical trails at basically any distance, but it’s really defined by its wild appearance and technology. This could be for you if you want to make a splash at your local trail meetup or if you like to pretend to be a Xenomorph going clubbing.

You can pick up the X-Bionic TerraSkin X00/C for $300 from X-Bionic using the buttons below.