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February 27, 2008
It’s no secret that we lust after handsome, well-designed stuff, but the often astronomical price tags make us wonder: Is the old adage you get what you pay for an essential truth? We decided to test it by pitting four posh and pricey products against their budget-friendly counterparts, comparing aesthetics and performance. No battle was without its hardships: razor burn, bossy robots, and sore feet among them. But we emerged appreciably wiser—and even maybe a bit richer—for them.
 Nike Zoom Kobe III ($130) v. Stephon Marbury Starbury II ($15) If sneakers are any reflection of the superstars who endorse them, both the Kobe III and Starbury II promise a world of trouble for your feet. Fortunately for Nike and Steve & Barry’s, the respective manufacturers, these kicks behave far better than their namesakes. We handed off a pair of each to our tester, a 6'2", 190-pound architect with size 10 feet, who evaluated the sneaks for two weeks on a schoolyard basketball court in Brooklyn, just a few miles from where Knicks guard Stephon Marbury learned to shoot hoops. The fancy frontrunner was Lakers star Kobe Bryant’s signature Nike Zoom Kobe IIIs, released in February. The shoes cradle the foot in a web of black rubber, leather, and mesh. They’re likely meant to resemble a basketball net, but to us, they looked more like Spidey socks. The soles, our tester reported, were soft, and the leather uppers quickly molded to his feet for instant comfort. But that nice feeling didn’t hold up on the court, where his preteen sons consistently outjuked him. For one thing, the heels were too soft. They pitched him backwards, the way Birkenstocks do. And there was minimal arch support, so it felt as if the shoes were digging into the soles of his feet. Judged by looks alone, the Starbury, Stephon Marbury’s $15 socially conscious basketball shoe, fared little better. Its all-white upper, made of synthetic microfibers, tapers to a rounded toe, and a swath of blue and orange rubber cups the heel, giving the appearance of a nurse’s shoe gone bad. (A first impression from the 3-year-old niece of our tester summed it up best: “There’s something on your feet!”) The Starburys also lacked initial comfort. The soles at first felt like wooden planks, and the pleathery material pinched in some places and bowed out in others; flexing forward, for instance, made the material buckle at the toe joint and push downward, which caused our tester some pain. But that changed over time. Eventually the sneakers softened and conformed, though not as well as the Kobes. Michiel Roesdi, creative director of Steve & Barry’s, credits the microfibers for that. As for ankle support, the Starburys were rock solid, thanks to the heel cup, or “shank stabilizer,” as Roesdi calls it. The shoes even feature molded inner midsoles for better impact absorption and arch support. All things considered, the economics of this shoe are hard to ignore: You could buy a new pair of Starburys eight times a year for the price of a single pair of Kobe IIIs. Not that you’d need to, since the Starbury is made surprisingly well. Advantage: Starbury. Braun Pulsonic v. Gillette Fusion Power |
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