Lake MX333 cycling shoe review: Incredibly hard wearing, extremely comfortable, but quite heavy

I am cursed with wide feet. I like to pretend it’s some sort of additional power platform, but a childhood in Cornwall barely wearing shoes all summer every summer, plus some unfortunate genetics (thanks, Dad) means I am confined to wide cycling shoes. It does mean that I am perfectly placed to curate a guide to the best cycling shoes for wide feet, though, and it also means I’m perfectly placed to review Lake’s MX333 off-road shoes. 

I’ve been using the pair of MX333s for over a year now, almost exclusively for large amounts of time, and in comparison to other shoes too, though wide gravel shoes are harder to come by than their road counterparts. 

Overall I’m very impressed. I’ve put them through the absolute wringer, with protracted hike-a-bikes, shin-deep winter mud, and the joyful, dusty summer epics we all live for. All in all, they're easily some of the very best gravel shoes on the market right now. 

While they are an expensive pair of cycling shoes, with an RRP of £395.00/$479.99, the comfort and quality of construction I think go a long way to justify such a price. I have wrecked cheaper shoes in less time than I have spent with these. 

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Design and Aesthetics 

Lake’s off-road shoes, on the whole, have quite a chunky aesthetic. These aren’t your S-Works Recon svelte slippers; there’s just more shoe. The sole, a carbon fibre affair as you’d expect at this price point, is covered for almost its entire surface area by large polyurethane lugs, save for a few strips along the midfoot, the cleat plate, and a pair of cutouts near the sockets into which toe spikes can be screwed (big plus points here for still catering to cyclocross riders). 

The uppers differ in material depending on which colour you choose. There’s a lovely mid-blue and white, perfect for people blessed with dry gravel conditions, and black options for… well, the UK and anywhere where ‘gravel’ means frequent mud. The blue version is a synthetic microtex, while the black version I’ve been testing is constructed from a really unique leather from German leather producer Helcor. 

It’s so unique that for a very long time, I assumed it was a synthetic material. It’s absurdly hardwearing, with a surface texture that resembles fine-grit sandpaper but is soft to the touch and doesn’t retain water in the same way as any leather shoes I’ve used so far. I’ll go into this later. 

There are, on the black pair, a set of reflective heel panels, while the blue pair gets white flashes. Personally, I only like reflective details if they are large, and these are, and they’re in a great spot to bring attention to yourself. 

The heel cup is heat-mouldable carbon, in much the same way as the entirety of Bont’s soles are. I tweaked mine a little, but I didn’t really feel the need to beyond curiosity, and it didn’t seem to have a great impact. In any case, the mid-foot retention was sufficient.

For closure, the Lake MX333 uses twin BOA dials, both drawing a one-sided tongue over the whole of the midfoot and forefoot. It’s the same mechanism as on the brand’s CX333 road shoes that I’ve also been using, and it’s certainly secure. The internals on the off-road version are more padded though, with the whole rear half of the shoe and the underside of the tongue having a couple of millimetres of foam inside the lining. 

The instep has a strip of flexible carbon fibre ‘Carbitex’ weave, which I presume is to reduce stretch when clamping the BOA dials down. Synthetic materials, be they microfibre or this Carbitex, are inherently less stretchy than leather. Skin, tanned or otherwise, is ultimately elastic. 

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Performance 

I think the Lake MX333 shoes are excellent, I really do. They don’t feel as racy, or ‘locked in’ as their road counterparts, but unless you’re engaging in gravel racing I don’t actually think that matters too much. They are fabulously comfortable, more so than the CX333, and for those of you looking for all-day, adventure ready comfort rather than high octane redline racing then I think they’re hard to beat. 

For general gravel duties, especially in the UK, I’ve been amazed at how well they’ve held up. The leather uppers do hold onto mud and are a bit of a nightmare to keep clean as they are matte, but they have been soaked, submerged, caked in mud, asked to scramble over rocks, left wet by the door for days on end, forced dry in a hurry by my boot dryers under the false impression that they were synthetic, baked in the sun and all without a crack, loose stitch, or anything to suggest over a year of use besides a few baked-on mud splatters. It’s remarkable. 

The soles have held up pretty well too. If you like your cleats really far back then you might not like these. I have them slammed about as far back as they’ll go and that was perfectly fine for me, but this is often a criticism levelled at Lake shoes, though recent models are an improvement on older ones.

The closure system is very effective, with the upper BOA dial causing the tongue to wrap the foot rather than just clamping down from above. I tend to leave the lowers a little looser to allow my little piggies to roam freely, but you can jack up the forefoot tension too if you so wish. I never had any hotspots. I think the padding helps compared to the CX333 to be honest, but they’re different shoes for different things. Max effort sprints with them tightened up are great, with no heel lift but none of the vice-like grip you get with some dedicated race shoes. 

The soles aren’t abominably stiff like the likes of Bont are, so I could quite happily walk around, up steep gulleys and the like in them without too much concern. They aren’t as easy-walking as the Rapha Explore shoes with their rocker sole, but the strong midfoot retention helps stop any heel lift. 

For the UK the uppers were breathable enough. I’d wear them through the winter with waterproof socks, and in high summer they were bearable. They aren’t made of mesh, but realistically I’d rather have warm feet in the summer and stay warmer in the winter than have cooler feet in summer and have to buy a second set of shoes for winter use. 

They are quite heavy though. With a set of cleats installed (plus the odd lump of mud I couldn’t clean off) they weigh 940g/2lbs, which is about 300g heavier than the Specialized S-Works Recon. For general riding this isn’t something that’d trouble me off road, but for racing 300g is not an insignificant amount. If it’s wet they will also retain water more than a less padded, synthetic shoe, exacerbating this disparity further still. 

Ultimately they are also a gravel/MTB shoe that caters to wide feet. Lake has recently updated its width naming, and while I was a ‘wide’ in the older versions I am now a ‘regular’ in these. There’s a ‘narrow’ below me for what are probably normal-width feet, and a ‘wide’ for people cursed with flippers even greater than mine, which is really great to see. Options are still limited in this space and while they are improving Lake has always been a safe haven. 

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Value 

Gravel shoes are probably the most abused bit of bike tech out there, unless you count consumables like tyres which have a set wear life. Yes, the Lake MX333 are an expensive pair of shoes, but considering how badly I’ve treated them, and how well they are holding up I think it’s money well spent. 

The old ‘buy cheap buy twice’ adage is great, and while I do appreciate that it doesn’t at all account for the fact that some people can only afford to buy cheap, the extra dollars you spend here if you invest should pay dividends down the line and net you a pair of shoes that’ll keep on trucking for miles and miles and miles. 

Verdict 

The Lake MX333 is a wonderful gravel shoe (or MTB shoe, whatever your poison). They are hardwearing, extremely comfortable, and cater for wide feet beautifully. They are rather chunky, both visually and on the scales, and so maybe aren’t the ideal choice for racers, but for all-day and even multi-day comfort in all conditions I can’t think of a shoe that has stood up to more abuse. 

For now, these are the shoes against which I will compare everything else.