With a downturned, asymmetric last and light-on-the-feet feel, the Blackwing is the ideal shoe for plastic, hard boulders, and the steep feature climbing climbers find in Kalymnos, Greece or Rodellar, Spain. The shoes are soft enough to easily fold in half yet supportive enough for long, sustained pumpfests. With the most rand, heel, and toe rubber, the Blackwing is the best hooker in the review (one of Boulder’s pro climbers recently stuck the slick and infamous heel hook move on Trice [V13] at Flagstaff Mountain sporting the Blackwing). For a shoe with an extremely narrow last, they fit wide feet quite well. Though wide footed testers struggled to stay in them for the first couple of bouldering sessions but after a few days they fit like a glove. Two Velcro straps seal the deal, but make sure the toe box has a vacuum fit. Beware the sizing on these kicks: a US 10 Blackwing is smaller than a US 8.5 Anasazi VCS. Even wearing them skin-tight (which is how they should be sized), some testers needed a full 1.5 size bump from FiveTen’s other models.

Edging
The Blackwing isn’t quite stiff enough to truly “edge,” but they stick it anyway. They’re great at “smeadging,” which is what our testers did most of the time on the steeps. 

Smearing
These shoes do well padding up on smears between actual footholds on overhangs. But they’re not designed for smearing in the no-holds, totally insecure, slabby kind of way.

Sensitivity
One of the highlights of this shoe is how well you can grab holds, even on roofs. And when you do find yourself on vertical walls, you can feel your way up small holds even without the benefit of a stiff sole.

Cracks
The Blackwing last is too aggressive for most cracks. Like other face shoes in this review, they can do well on cracks too thin to jam, where climbers’ feet are smearing or edging.

Rubber 
Five Ten’s new Stealth HF rubber feels extra sticky. 

Value
At the high end of the price range the Blackwings are worth every penny. They last far longer than most other climbing shoes.