You love plush, comfortable uppers
You're seeking an exceptionally protective underfoot experience
You want a shoe for standard daily mileage, not necessarily long runs
What is the Brooks Glycerin Max 2 made for?The Brooks Glycerin Max made a big splash when it hit the max-stack scene. Piled with soft, bouncy, protective foam and a clean aesthetic look, this shoe made for a fun ride on daily training runs, and it kept people talking.
Now, the Glycerin Max 2 returns as Brooks’ latest max-cushioned daily trainer offering. It pushes stack heights and weight up from the previous model, but in exchange, it seeks to offer a premium experience with enhanced bounce and plushness to show for the additions. With a boundary-pushing amount of DNA Tuned midsole foam and a continuation of their dual-cell technology (featuring larger cells in the heel for softer landings and smaller cells in the forefoot for springier toe-offs), the Glycerin Max 2 spares nothing.
But if that seemed to be the intent, then how was the execution?
We found that the shoe had a great, premium feeling upper, and that it felt well-tuned for certain paces. It offered that protective, comfortable ride that Brooks was targeting, but its lack of versatility and a firm midsole foam limited some of our love for the shoe. Let's dive into the details.
ComfortStarting with the underfoot experience—there's no mistaking these for anything other than a max-cushion shoe. With one of the largest, heiest stack heights on the market, the Glycerin Max 2 fully commits to its "Max" branding, but we found the result to be a bit firmer than we expected. A comfortable, positive initial step-in experience didn’t carry over to the later stages of our runs, and the toe rocker was aggressive enough that the shoe felt unstable beneath some of our testers’ feet when walking or when picking up the pace too fast. There is an ideal pace and range for these shoes where they feel great, but issues arose quickly when we strayed past the wrong ends of that range.
The upper, on the other hand, gets nothing but glowing remarks. A soft, wide tongue and stretchy upper cradle the foot nicely, while a roomy toe box ensures a comfortable fit all around. The heel collar feels non-invasive when standing and doesn’t irritate the back of the heel when striding.
PerformanceThe Glycerin Max 2 is a wonderful shoe for easy/standard daily training runs. The GlideRoll rocker kept our easy mileage pace comfortable, and the shoe’s dimensions felt perfectly catered to keeping us rolling.
However, we found that the shoes became less forgiving on longer or faster runs when we wanted a bit of extra energy return. We found our legs wore down quickly when tired, and the combination of the weight and tall stack height caused us to scuff the ground repeatedly when tiring. We didn’t feel like we were going to trip over ourselves, but the shoe was noticeably more cumbersome than competitor models later in our runs.
There was some conflict between the aggressive toe rocker, which seemed to encourage us to pick up the pace on our runs, and the lower energy return foams/hey weight of the shoe. Despite the propulsive geometries, we had a hard time running farther or faster in these shoes.
FitThe fit is the classic, amazing Brooks fit. We had no issues and no hot spots. The upper feels premium, and the lockdown is great, while the toe box allows room for our toes to spread out. Length and width were true to size, and the heel fit was not too deep or overly tight.