I loved the boots, they fit well, protect the toes, are functional, non slip (even pretty good on MN ice), and look nice. My only complaint is with the quality and the breathe-ablity; these boots do no breathe at all. Your feet are going to sweat, but with the side zipper it's manageable. I wear my boots about 12 hours a day 6 days a week; about half the day is sitting at a desk the other half is construction or technician type work, they don't slip to bad on oil spills and I've been able to use them as a hammer when needed (or at least kick some 2by4s into place). The outside of the boots have held up reasonably well, the front where I used the toe as a drywall jack are a bit torn but haven't gotten through to the composite toe, just slight cosmetic. The problem is the left boot's zipper and ankle. The zipper seemed stiff when I first got it and over time has degraded, the only way I can get it to zip is used two hands, one to pull back the inner rubber of the boot lining and other to pull up the zipper, it looks like the rubber was mis-cut and is getting ripped and shredded by the zipper. I can live with this, but it is annoying to spend 5 minutes getting the zipper up on my boot. The biggest issues which is new (and the reason for this review) is the back ankle. The back of my heal rubs against the back and in just a few months it's ripped away the padding. It's still attached above the heel so I can lift it up and out, and back in, but now my heel rubs and is bleeding by the end of the week. This is only on the left boot however, which makes me think maybe it's a quality control issue as my right boot (which I am admittedly harder on) is fine. Other minor problems is the back of both boots have a slight foam type coating around them which is starting to peel off, mostly from me kicking my boots off instead of totally unlacing them and pulling them off with my hands, hard to fault them to heavily for that. The shoe laces also suck. First one snapped after 3 months, next one lasted about 6 total; I replaced with some Kevlar shoe laces which have held up on the right perfectly, but again on the left is fraying, I found the left eyelet had a sharp edge that was cutting it, I filed it down with a drill bit and hammer chisel and I haven't seen the fraying continue since. For perspective, I expect my boots to last at LEAST 2+ years, I wore desert storm combat boots (the original, not the new zipper ones) for 7 years before finally retiring them for these when they literally fell apart on me (back ankle broke through, bottom of the right boot came off multiple times, and my heels had worn through to the plastic bottom of the boot, no padding left at all, as well as 2 pairs of para cord shoe laces). I am not particularly gentle on my boots, but I expected about 2 years from these, probably have to replace yearly if you use them regularly, which the price is a bit steep for that. My recommendation after reading other reviews would be if there is anything wrong with either boot, return it immediately and get a new pair, seems the zipper problem is somewhat common of a quality control issue, had I known I would have returned them the day I got them for a pair that didn't have any issues to start with, then maybe I'd get 18 months out of them.
