Salming Viper Pro Review

Salming sent me the Salming Viper Pro to review. I put together this video in 2025 with my thoughts:

And here’s my review from a year ago of the original Salming Viper Pro cosmetics:

I really liked this shoe and wore it extensively last season and plan to again this season. It’s a light shoe, which I prefer personally. They don’t have tons of padding, but in exchange they feel fast around the court.

2025 Cosmetics

2024 Cosmetics

Here are the original cosmetics (the ones in my video review):

Here are some nice close-up images from Holabird Sports:

2025 Video Transcript

Salming Viper Pro 2025 models. This costs $160 and it came out originally last year 2024 and Salming has put together these new cosmetics for 2025.

We’ve got the gray and white model. We’ve got the black and white model. And we have this green and blue colorway as well. And you can also still get the yellow guy. There are a few sizes still left of this from the 2024 models.

What you’re getting for your money with this shoe is a rather light shoe. It’s 360 grams on my scale. It is a speed oriented shoe. It it has cushioning, but it is more oriented towards fast movements. So, that’s why I particularly love to use this on the squash courts. You’re getting excellent traction from this um sole on indoor courts. High quality construction that I’ll take you through in a second. And in my opinion, lovely cosmetics.

As I mentioned, 360 g is on the lighter side for um for squash shoes. They come with a reasonable amount of cushioning. Obviously, the more cushioning you have, the heavier the shoes feel. So, to me, this is the kind of shoe that I like. Uh, one that’s a little lighter and in turn, possibly a little less cushioning, but you still still feel really fast around the court.

The soles really required no break-in at all for me. I played with these um just recently and found them to be quite grippy.

The upper part of these shoes just has nice construction. You’ve got um kind of a bit of harder plastic around the toe and around the um inside of the foot here. No visible stitching. So, this will have good durability over time. And I’m going to show you the pair that I used for the last 2 years um right after this so you can see the wear and tear. But high quality construction um up top.

Reasonably breathable. This part here is breathable.

The fit is kind of spot-on for my regular size. It is not as narrow as some other brands like Asics, which can be a little tight in the toe box. This feel feels quite comfortable, but not too wide. It’s just kind of a perfect width in my opinion for for my foot anyway.

It has removable insoles if you want to put in some orthotics or air out your shoes.

I’ll tell you a little bit about the durability of these shoes because I used this pair for a good year and a half, maybe two years. You can see it is still in really good shape. You can see the sweat marks kind of. They really held up well. The only real problem I had on these was the lace hole here broke through. This was very recently this happened, like in the last couple of weeks. It’s actually one of the nice things about this shoe is that it feels like you can adjust the lacing at a more granular level than some other shoes. Like I guess it just extends further out um up the foot. And so you just don’t um you just want to be careful when you’re lacing them to kind of do it gradually and not be lazy like I did and just yank the um yank the laces and end up putting too much pressure on that last eyehole there. You can see the soles held up really well. They’re starting to wear along the edges after many months of play.

Appreciate Salming for sending me these shoes and they’ve sent me a pair in my size uh to keep. So, I will be using the these for the 2025 and 2026 season as well.

One thing I really appreciate is that Salmon kept the design the same. There’s only one tiny tiny little difference in the heel here. They got rid of whatever this Run Lite is, but you can see that it’s the same exact shoe all around. They did not change the design at all. And I appreciate you for that. You’re a real one for that Salming. I appreciate you.

That’s it for today. I’m going to be doing more shoe roundups. So, if you want to hear more about squash shoes and court shoes, hit subscribe. Okay. Thanks. Bye.

2024 Video Transcript

Salming Viper Pro. The Salming Viper Pro is I think a new model in the last year from Salming. It replaces the original Salming Viper. This pair right here um Salming North America sent me to test out along with some other shoes and I got to admit I really liked them and in fact I have made these my go-to day-to-day shoe and I’m going to tell you why. First of all I like the cosmetics even though this is fairly plain but I like the kind of offwhite or white and gold style on this baby. They’re very light 355 grams so that’s uh that’s one of the latest shoes that I’ve ever used. The grip on these is really good I had no problems maybe one on kind of like one of the early test sessions I had kind of one slide that I wasn’t expecting um partly cuz that court was a little bit dusty from construction. Haven’t had any issues like that since. I’ve played with these in league matches uh and training a bunch of times I like the stability of these you can kind of see how there is some angle to the side here that helps you with side to side push offs the movement of these going forward is really nice they’re quite low to the ground which I like in a squash shoe Some people prefer a shoe that has more padding you know for your knees or if you’re on court a lot I really need something that feels fast and lightweight and so this really fits the bill these are

$150 and if you’re interested in these you should probably go out and get them I don’t know how much stock they have of this particular model especially if you know with the US election there’s a lot of talk of adding tariffs and other things to come out of uh for for products coming out of China that’s a general piece of advice if you have a pair of shoes that you like buy another pair now before it becomes more difficult to get and more expensive the stitching on these is really nice there really isn’t you can see the design of these is quite uh seamless and that means that they should hold up pretty well uh wear and tear wise and not come apart at the seams here they also have this thicker bit of plastic all around the toe drag area and moving into the inside of the foot which is where I tend to drag my feet usually it’s my left foot that does that so uh so so this part is well protected they’re reasonably breathable this area here is kind of a um a breathable mesh they have removable insoles if you want to put in a different insole just a standard decent insole comes with it terms of criticisms really um the only thing I would say is you can see that there is a fair amount of material in the shoe as I sort of twist and torque and maybe it’s like a little bunchy here I mentioned this pair was given to me my Salming but since I want to recommend these shoes as one of my best squash shoes for this year for this season I put my money where my mouth is and I went out and bought a pair with my own money as well uh partly to like I said put my money where in my mouth is but also because remember always buy a second pair if you have a pair that you like cuz you never know when they’re going to go out of print so let’s see there is one other style for these shoes and I’m going to reveal it right here in this little unboxing oh look at that yellow okay this is the pair that I got myself I love this so much and I can’t wait to wear these on court exact same design as the other shoe just a different color way they’re like a banana for your feet but without the slipping I love it see you in the next video.