KEEN Shoes Review – Are they the best shoes for travel?

Before embarking on our 465-day trip around the world, we were delighted to receive several pairs of KEEN shoes to wear on our journey.

We were particularly interested in these shoes because they were clearly designed by people who had our kind of journey in mind.

Suitable for city walking, rugged for hiking and waterproof, they really are the perfect footwear for an adventurous trip like ours.

But did they live up to the hype?

After a 15-month journey that took us to 38 countries on 5 continents, it’s safe to say that we put them to the ultimate test to find the answers.

Is KEEN footwear the best choice for travel?

When we say we put our shoes to the test well, we mean it. Our waterproof shoes have undergone some incredible feats (pun intended).

From trekking to Everest Base Camp, climbing snow-capped mountains in Switzerland, hiking in Patagonia, trekking through the deserts of Oman, hunting in Africa, to trekking for miles in the cities of Europe without them seeing the elements.

But we have to be honest, putting these shoes through all of that wasn’t our original choice.

We had planned to pick up a few pairs of shoes on our trip that were more suited to our individual tasks. Cost and logistical planning stopped us before we could do that – and we’re really glad we didn’t.

For example, if we had purchased new hiking boots in Kathmandu for our Everest Base Camp trek, we would have been extremely miserable during the 11-day trip because the shoes would not have worn out from the trek. By wearing our old shoes (just five months old in Europe), we avoided countless blisters while hiking in our new boots, and it turns out we didn’t even need KEEN boots with ankles for full support – regular waterproofs were perfect!

Having encountered more situations like this throughout our trip, you can imagine why we can only say positive things about the shoes, as we did put them through every conceivable situation.

The only situation where these shoes won’t hold up is around the beach, mainly because the waterproof nature of the shoe means that once the sand gets in, it never comes out unless you take it off and shake it.

Thankfully, we have a pair of KEEN water shoes, the Newport H2s, which cover all the other situations where we need a more open sandal. They’re also very sturdy and we sometimes hike in them, but it’s worth remembering that because they open up so much, they can find their way to your feet if any debris (such as thorny branches or plants) is found on the hike.

This has never stopped us, but it’s definitely worth considering that feature.

How do our KEEN sneakers stand up to the test?

Usually the average lifespan of my shoes is about a year. Extend that by another five months (considering the months we wear them before we leave and the months we wear them when we get home) and considering the crazy conditions we put them through, it’s easy to say they stood up pretty well.

That was before I realized that under normal circumstances I was really struggling!

I never untie my shoes, which usually wears out the ankle support pretty quickly. You can easily see this in my KEEN, as the padding around the ankle starts to disappear at the 9 month mark and gets worse by the end. Nonetheless, other than looking bad, they’re doing pretty well.

Angie’s shoes began to show similar wear, but to a lesser degree because she actually unlaced them like a responsible person.

Aside from these two obvious differences, a pair of broken laces at the end of our trip, and the general layer of dirt that builds up on the outside of the shoe after extended wear, we don’t have any wear-reducing properties we can point to.

One feature we’d like to know more about before publishing this review is: are our shoes still waterproof? The fact that they survived everything they went through on the trip gives us a thumbs up and makes us want to buy another set immediately, but how waterproof are they?

For that, we need to test.

However, for this test, we performed a long immersion to look for any leaks.

The results were very surprising. After 15 months on the road and through every condition imaginable, our shoes were still mostly waterproof! We definitely noticed a small leak here or there (each in our right shoe), but for those of you who only crossed the stream for a second, as we usually do, we’d call this still mostly waterproof for its intended use.

For this reason, we have to say that our KEEN shoes are fantastic. The perfect shoe for a trip like ours!

To purchase your own pair of KEEN for world travel, please click here to purchase directly or on Amazon.

We would like to thank KEEN Footwear for providing us with shoes for our extended travels. All opinions expressed in this review are our own.

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