About

New Balance Fresh Foam

When New Balance released the first Fresh Foam shoe in 2014, the brand wasn’t selling foam but data. The midsole was designed based on pressure measurements from runners, translated into a landscape of hexagonal cells in the sidewall. That hexagon pattern has since been the line’s fingerprint: hollow hexagons where the sole should give, raised ones where it should stay firm. What began as a single model grew into the brand’s largest cushioning family, recognizable by the Fresh Foam script embossed on the midsole itself.

The family is now a complete running range. The New Balance Fresh Foam X 1080 is the flagship for long distances, the New Balance Fresh Foam More stacks the foam the highest, and the New Balance Fresh Foam X 860 serves as the stability shoe for overpronators. For unpaved trails there is the New Balance Fresh Foam Hierro, and those who step in without racing ambitions often end up with the New Balance Fresh Foam Arishi.

Since 2020 the addition of X marks the newest generation of the foam, softer and more responsive than the original. On the more recent models you can also see how the cell pattern of the sole continues into the knit upper’s print, as if the data from the sole were spread across the whole shoe. The 1080 also features a distinctive flared heel fin that guides entry.

Notable is how far the foam traveled beyond running. The Roav brought Fresh Foam to the street as a lifestyle sneaker, the Tempo serves the fast long run, and with the Fresh Foam BB there is even a basketball model on the same foam. In this way one cushioning concept became the common link between very different sports.

On this page you can see which versions of the New Balance Fresh Foam are currently hottest according to the Hypescore, from which price they can be found and in how many shops they are in stock.