Lowa Innovo Mid GTX hiking boots review: A gorgeous 3-season park-to-peak pair of hiking hooves

First impressions

Lowa are alpine footwear specialists with a long and illustrious heritage forged in the high hills of Europe. Famous for producing some of the best hiking boots on the market, the brand, now based in Italy but founded in Germany in 1923, recently celebrated its 100th birthday. The majority of Lowa’s top-end boots are still made in Europe, something that’s incredibly rare in an age of budget-cutting, off-shoring and mass production.

The benefit of this is the attention to detail, from design through to packaging, and a level of quality control that ensures each pair of hiking boots are pretty much perfect when they come out the box. All this is immediately evident in the Innovo, even though these are one of the more laid-back boots in the brand’s mountain-ready footlocker.

Of course, someone has to pay for such a process, so steeped in precision and prestige, and that someone is… you. Lowa don’t make cheap hiking boots, but if you’re looking for top-quality, comfortable outdoor footwear that’s going to last a decade or more, and perform precisely how is has promised to, then it’s worth the investment.

The Innovos are not as lightweight as many other brands’ offerings in the fast and breezy boot category, but they instantly feel more protective and capable than most, while being at least as comfortable straight out the box. And if you’re going to bother putting boots on – as opposed to simply hitting the trails in a pair of good hiking shoes – then you may as well get the benefit that the more extensive form of footwear offers: namely stability, support and security.

The Innovos looked great and felt good on my feet right from the outset, and I was looking forward to trail testing them.

Design & Materials

The Innovos have a chassis made from a mixture of soft suede and breathable synthetic material, backed by an Gore-Tex ePE waterproof breathable membrane. The boot is a Mid cut, as the name specifies, but some supposedly ‘Mid’ height boots have a collar that barely covers your ankle – not the Innovos. These bad boys extend well up and over the ankle, reaching to just below the bottom of your calf muscle, suppling proper levels of support to the lower leg.

They have a fully integrated tongue, and the lace system features three speed hooks that extent right up the collar. The combined result of this is that the boot offers a high level of waterproof protection up to and beyond the bottom of your hiking trousers or rain pants.

The Innovos are mid-width, and there is plenty of room in the toe box. Around the heel, Lowa's designers have added a lightweight 'monowrap support frame', which works as a 3D cradle to supply support to that crucial area. Extending right around the boot, this also operates as a rand, supplying protection for the side of the foot from shark sticks and stones. In addition, there’s a small toe cap to shield the wearer from toe stubs and bumps.

The considerable cushioning in the midsole comes thanks to DynaPU+, a kind of foam that supplies some degree of rebound with each foot placement. The suspension is enhanced by several extra layers of PU-foam padding. The boot is fairly flexible, and has been designed to roll with the foot during each stride.

The rubber outsole, made in house by Lowa from optimised rubber compound (rather than being brought in from a third party like Vibram), bristles with 5mm lugs, angled to provide grip and traction at the front, and braking control at the back. The chunky outsole is slightly higher at the rear too, but overall the bottom profile of the boot has a rocker shape (promoting a rolling cadence).

On the trails

Over the last four months I have been wearing the Innovo Mid GTX boots while hiking trails and scaling peaks in the Wicklow Mountains in Ireland, and also during slightly more mundane walking outings on my doorstep, taking the dog for strolls along my local stretch of the South West Coast Path. And herein lies the beauty of these boots: they’re basically good for everything from easy ambles through to more challenging escapades to the summit of (modest) mountain ranges.

Don’t get me wrong, you shouldn’t attempt to wear them to the top of technical peaks in the middle of winter – they’re not designed for that sort of high-end caper – but for the kind of hill hiking and coast-and-countryside walks the vast majority of us do most times we head out of the door, they’re absolutely perfect. And beyond day walks, they’re also ideal for overnight or multiday backpacking escapades, and hut hiking.

A swathe of lightweight boots have been released in recent years, by brands like Inov8 and Salomon, which are a bit like trail running shoes with a mid-height collar and are perfect for fastpacking. The Innovos are much more substantial than these, offering considerably more support and protection, and therefore they’re a bit heavier.

These boots are definitely designed for hiking, rather than trotting, but they’re still more nimble than a traditional hiking boot. The collar is exactly the right height to supply support when you are carrying a pack on a multiday adventure, or tackling technical low alpine terrain, and the cradle on the heel provides extra confidence too.

Ireland experienced a rare heatwave while I was in the Wicklow Mountains, so I was able to test the claims of breathability that Lowa make about the Innovo, and I can confirm that the combination of suede and a lighter, thinner synthetic in the chassis does make these boots reasonable cool to hike in. Gore-Tex membranes only really work (in terms of moisture control) when humidity is low, and that wasn’t the case in Wicklow in June, so there was a limit to how much my feet could breathe, but they would work better in the European Alps and other areas where the alpine air is drier.

Inevitably, I encountered plenty of jacket-drenching wet weather and boggy ground in the Irish Highlands too, especially on the top of Lugnaquilla, the highest peak in the Wicklow Mountains, which was entirely enveloped in cloud the entire time I was up there, ruining my chance to enjoy the apparently cracking views over Dublin Bay, but giving me a ample chance to test the waterproofing on these boots, which is very good. There were several stream crossings on the approach to this and other peaks, and I can attest that the integrated tongue and proper mid-height cut of the collar on the Innovo means you can wade through ankle-deep water without getting wet socks.

The outsole proved very grippy on rocky terrain, even in the wet, but I did find that the closely arranged lugs accumulated mud when I was hiking through boggy parts of the routes I was tackling.

Overall, however, the Innovo GTX Mids from Lowa are versatile, comfortable and highly capable boots, with excellent ankle and heel support, and top levels of lower foot and toe protection. They’re as breathable as you can reasonably expect any Gore-Tex membrane-lined boot to be, and the waterproofing is very good.

• There’s no point wearing great boots if you don’t pair them with good hiking socks
• In summer, wearing the best hiking shorts feels fantastic

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