You’d think with its BMX shoe styling, the Leatt 2.0 Flat Pedal Shoe would be super-comfortable and, while it does get a big padded tongue, the heel cup has quite a hard ridge on the inside. This is actually deliberate and is Leatt’s “Anti-heel lift grip design”. You can feel this ridge when you pull the shoe on, but it’s only when pushing up a steep incline or walking a lot that it can cause problems – rubbing slightly on the Achilles area. We’ve tried to soften this area, and it’s helped, but it seems this solution has created its own set of problems.

As with the majority of the best mountain bike shoes, the upper is a synthetic suede, but it has a glossy finish, so is pretty good at repelling water and has good breathability. The shoe feels supportive, but there’s also a good amount of flex in the forefoot for pushing up banks.

The sole is Leatt’s RideGrip design, which features a triangulated tread pattern combined with a soft Leatt Lab compound rubber, and apparently some extra mud channels on the heel and toe. We did notice the shoe has deeper lugs at these points, but they are not any more effective than any of the other shoes on test.

The in-house rubber is also not that tacky; we measured it at around 75a. And although the waffle- style tread does allow the pedal pins to lock in, when our weight came forward on a descent, or we went light during a rough section, the pins tended to unseat. You can mitigate this to an extent with good technique, but the Leatt 2.0 Flat Pedal shoe’s rubber compound is just not as grippy as Ride Concepts’s or Five Ten’s.