Salomon FSK CrossMax inline skate review

Salomon have brought out a new range of inline skate for 2002, the FreeSkater Urban utility skates. These are aimed at the skater who likes to take part in a wide range of skating activities such as cruising the streets, riding stairs, and other tricks. Of course there's nothing to stop you doing this kind of skating in the other Salomon ranges, but they aren't likely to be as effective because they're made for different purposes. The other two ranges for 2002 are the Trainer (and X-Trainer), being effective fitness skates, or the Street range, which are the real hard core aggressive skates.

The FSK range, however, is better optimized than many recreational skates for the type of urban skating that is becoming increasingly popular today. The skates have many features that are pulled from recreational skates, aggressive skates, and hockey skates, and in my opinion take some of the best features of each to give a well-rounded skate that is manoeuvrable, fast, and capable of taking some punishment.

Another feature of the FSK range is that they are designed to be customizable. You can change quite a few components on the skate:

Update

The FreeSkater range is due for release at the beginning of March 2002. I've had a lot of emails from people wanting to buy a pair of these skates, and wondering why they aren't available in the shops yet. :)

May 2002: The FSK seems to have become about the most popular 2002 skate in Hyde Park. Salomon have obviously found the right mixture and have caught the interest of many skaters. Check out some of the photos from the London Skate on May 8th, which was combined with the Salomon launch of the FSK here in London, UK.

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Boot

This is another quality Salomon soft-boot skate. As you can see from the photos, the cuff is a little larger and stronger than most recreational skates generally have, and the boot has a dual resistance shock absorber mounted below the heel to help deal with jumps and pavement vibration. The boots have big white anti-wear bumpers on the outside of each foot near and extending back from the little toe. The boot is firm and needs to be pulled onto the foot, showing how supportive and firm the fit of the boot is.

Many people will be pleased to find out that Salomon have an elastic strip joining each side of the boot just above the lace tie point, and Velcro attaching the elastic strip to the tongue of the boot. No more moving tongue problem where the tongue slips down to one side of the boot! Admittedly I've never experienced this problem with either my TR9s or my TR Vitesse, but I know of two people that have experienced it, and it did get a mention on rec.sport.skating.inline once in a while. Kudos for Salomon for listening to their customers.

Next thing that I really like is the power strap that goes around the ankle to help hold your heel in the heel pocket. The previous Salomon skates I've owned were never really loose in this area, but the power strap does add a little firmness to the hold on your ankle.

Salomon CrossMax Ankle Support

The big cuff gives plenty of ankle support, leaving the skate in between the more flexible TR9 and an aggressive skate. There's plenty of support here, but the skates thankfully aren't caskets yet. The cuff does flex forwards and backwards, but it is fixed at the rear bottom to keep things more stable and firm. You don't have the option of taking a bolt out to loosen it as with other skates in the Salomon range as it is permanently fastened, but I don't think that matters. It's better to have the extra stability for the kind of skating this skate is aimed at, and there's still enough fore-aft flex to easily get down low.

The laces are thicker laces with the friction lock system similar to the one that Salomon used on the 2001 Screamer skate. They're very easy to tie and won't slip, but I do find myself preferring the speed lace system as found on the TR Vitesse. One problem I've noticed is that the laces, cuff buckle, and power strap all cross in a really small area, and this results in both the laces and the power strap getting tangled in the cuff buckle. It's not a major problem, and a little practice will soon minimize this, but it is slightly annoying.

Another minor issue is the metal on the buckle lever - it's already showing some scratch marks, so I'd have preferred this to be made out of a different material that doesn't mark as quickly. To be fair, the buckle lever is in a place that is bound to get scratched a lot, and these skates are likely to take a beating anyway given the kind of skating they are aimed at.

CrossMax Heat molding

As with all the top of range Salomon models, this has the 3D Custom Fit system with a quality foot bed. This is a good foot bed, but not quite as nice as that of my Nike Ignite 1 ice skates. The foot bed is still extremely comfortable, and the entire boot fits very well, so this isn't a point of criticism for the Salomon skates.

I've not heat molded these skates, and actually they fit my foot pretty well straight out of the box, but I found it's been well worth doing this for the other skates I've owned.

Salomon FSK Frame

The frame is based on the Universal Frame System (UFS) developed jointly by Salomon, USD Psirus, Rollerblade, Fifty/50, Senate, Razor, Kizer, and others, and means that you can change the frame for other UFS frames should you so choose. Salomon will have a range of different chassis available for people to customize their pair of skates with.

This frame is thick and strong, almost as much as the chassis on my Bauer Vapor 8 inline hockey skates.

Apparently some 2001 model Salomon skates had an issue where the frame bolt retainer in the boot could pop up and spin round when loosening to adjust or change the frame. That's still possible on this skate, and you need to be careful not to push the bolt too hard, as the retainer will otherwise lift out of the socket. All that's holding it down is the pressure from the shock absorber, liner and foot bed components. It's a minor issue, and the retainer isn't that easy to shift. Even if it does pop out, all you need to do is remove the liner.

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FSK Wheels, Axles, and Bearings

The wheels are a banana Hi-Lo setup where the front wheel is lifted slightly to give a three back wheels down, one front wheel up setup. You get the slight effective rockering from the banana setup and the stability / manoeuvrability combination supplied by the Hi-Lo chassis.

80mm back wheels and 76 mm front wheels are supplied, and that's what the chassis is set up for, so it's not particularly radical. Most hockey skates with Hi-Lo are set up with 80mm back and 72mm front wheels, but that would probably be slightly too maneuverable for this skate, and perhaps slow it down too much.

The wheels are Salomon (probably rebranded wheels?) and have a hardness of 83A. "What?", you might ask! That's pretty hard for a recreational skate, but the wheels do still grip well and are pretty comfortable. Harder wheels do tend to be quite a bit faster, but a disadvantage is that they will also let a little more vibration through than a softer wheel would. That's mitigated nicely by the heel shock absorber here.

Bearings are the now Salomon standard Twincam ABEC5s. As this is a customizable skate, you get the option of buying FSK wheels with micro bearing hubs for extra lightness. You may want to stick to standard 608 bearings if you're doing a lot of jumping, though, as it is likely that micro bearings won't stand up to the shock loading as well.

FSK Crossmax - Overall Conclusion

This is a great skate, well made for the varied demands of urban environment skating. You'd have no worries about damaging these if skating down stairs or jumping , and it looks like these skates will stand up to a lot of punishment. Not only that, but the skates are surprisingly quick and won't cost you a lot of energy over longer distances (unlike aggressive or quad skates :). Thanks to the shorter wheelbase and the Hi-Lo chassis, they are pretty maneuverable as well.

The skates are an average weight at 3.3kg for the pair (at a UK size 9), so Salomon must have done quite a good job at keeping the weight down while adding the new features. This seems to be a pretty standard weight for soft boot skates.

I didn't pay much attention to the looks and styling of the skate at first, but my wife was taken with them, and now I've had a week with the skates, I also really like the looks. The quasi army/camo styling fits in well with the rest of the Salomon FSK range.

More Salomon Reviews

Disclaimer

As usual, this review is only my opinion about these skates, and your mileage may vary. You should always carefully judge whether the skates you intend buying are best suited for you and for the purpose you intend using. Remember that fit and comfort are extremely important, and you may wish to read the inline skating buying guide here on this site.

Salomon FSK CrossMax 2002

Inline Skate Review

August 2001