Is the new Rollerblade Estilo durable? Well let’s just say that the skate is basically a tank!!! The entire skate is made of very hard plastics, especially the souls and frames, which make it pretty much indestructible. The entire boot stands up well to any form of abrasion and impact. The liners have barely shown any wear, there are no rips or tears of any kind which makes me think they would easily last a few years. The souls and frames have taken a beating, and the grooves are cut deeply into both, but they still provide a great lock and fast slide. I managed to grind down the frames to the bolts and grind basically right through one of my soul plates, but they are still sliding just as good as when I took them out of the box. The velcro strap has stood up well against abrasion and with it’s positioning on the skate it didn’t have to deal with much anyway. The skate is a solid tank, with amazingly durable parts and materials and great engineering to keep all the parts protected, but like everything else it does have its Achilles heal. The buckle!
The buckle on the Estilo is the only part of the skate that I managed to totally destroy in a fairly short amount of time. The placement of the buckle is the main part of its downfall. It is placed on the area of the skate which sees the most abuse from missed grinds and pretty much any type of fall. I managed to break one of my buckles almost completely off. Rollerblade put a lot of thought into ways of saving the buckle, such as putting a hard plastic deflector in front of the buckle, but it doesn’t seem to work very well. They also engineered an amazing system where the buckle moves to absorb impacts. Earlier I mentioned how the buckle has a metal lip that slides into the boot to help hold it in place. This also helps protect the buckle, because when you hit it the buckle is able to move and absorb the impact. This however results in the buckle coming out of the slip, so you have to un-screw it, slide it back in, and tighten it up again. This can get annoying, but it’s better then a broken buckle. However once when I was tightening up the screw that holds the buckle on, I over tightened it and snapped the head right off the screw. Maybe I just don’t know my own strength, but I thought it was worth mentioning. So the boys at Rollerblade put great thought in ways to protect the buckle from breaking, but at the end of the day it just isn’t enough to save your buckles.
Overall the skate is amazingly durable. The parts and materials chosen hold up well against the punishment that is skating. The Estilo is truly a tank, a tank with only one true weakness, the buckle placement. If the buckle was moved to a, “safer” area of the skate then it would make the skate undeniably the most indestructible skate on the market today.
-roger wilkinson
