About

Nike Air VaporMax

The journey that began in 1987 with a small window in the heel of the Air Max 1 ends here. The 2017 VaporMax has no midsole at all: the foot sits directly on the air chambers, and what sits under the shoe is a row of separate, transparent bubbles with small rubber nubs on the bottom. There’s no foam left to cut away. The air is the sole.

Look under the shoe

On all three generations reviewed the underside tells the same story: separate transparent chambers, formed per zone, with rubber only at the contact points. Between the chambers is air, literally: you can see straight through. That makes the sole light and springy, and it also explains the typical ride, which bounces rather than rolls. Anyone used to a regular foam sole will need a day to adjust.

Everything goes above the sole

Because the sole defines the model, the upper was left free. The earliest generations featured a knitted sock, the Plus variant puts the Air Max Plus’s plastic rib cage on the air bubbles, and the subsequent years alternated between straps, foils and solid fabric. The years in the names, 2019 through 2023, denote generations not editions: each year got its own upper on the same sole principle.

What the name promises and what it costs

The promise is maximum cushioning without an intermediate layer, and it comes at two costs. The individual chambers wear down — apart from the contact nubs — and those who do a lot of walking on rough ground will see the edges of the chambers become dull. And the bouncy feel is pronounced: once you like it you want nothing else; if you don’t, you won’t get used to it. That makes the VaporMax the most polarizing in the family.

The place in the family

The full overview is on Nike Air Max; the 97 was the first with air along the full length and the VaporMax is the first without anything other than air. That completes the circle: from a window in the foam to a shoe where the foam has disappeared. The monster has devoured its cage.

On this page you can see which versions of the Nike Air VaporMax are currently hottest according to the Hypescore, the starting prices, and how many shops have them in stock.