The 2023 Running Gear Awards: Winners and Runners-Up Across Shoes, Watches, and Headphones

Introduction

This year’s picks come from a team-wide vote covering every running watch, headphone, and shoe tested through the year, with a top pick and a runner-up chosen in each category. It was a slightly quieter year overall than some recent editions, with fewer breakout releases and no new offerings from a couple of brands that usually dominate. What stood out most was the strength of the super trainer category, the continued rise of a few brands that finally nailed their carbon racing shoes, and one hugely popular max-cushion trainer that won over the audience by a landslide.

Best Running Watch

The Garmin Forerunner 965 took the win almost unanimously. It is Garmin’s top feature-packed running watch, and the move to a bright AMOLED display makes everything from mapping to everyday data feel noticeably more premium. Battery life was the big question mark ahead of launch, and it delivered, holding up across multi-day use and staying competitive even when tested against premium smartwatches. The one caveat: it lacks the reinforced screen found on Garmin’s tougher lines, and one tester managed to scratch the display in normal use.

If you want a top-end Garmin running watch with an AMOLED display, this is the one that earns its price. It was the watch testers kept coming back to even while juggling other review units.

Runner-Up: Coros Pace 3

The Coros Pace 3 is exceptional value. It brings dual-frequency GPS and an upgraded heart rate sensor to Coros’ cheapest watch, with the strong battery life the brand is known for, and its multiband GPS proved genuinely accurate, matching far more expensive watches across a multi-day effort. It is also light and compact, which suits runners with leaner wrists. If the 965 is the premium pick, the Pace 3 is the value pick that holds its own against much pricier rivals.

Best Running Headphones

The Jabra Elite 8 Active wins as a genuinely complete package. The in-ear fit with a shake grip holds tight for most people, the buds and case are compact and well built, and durability has been upgraded including the case. Audio is rich and nuanced and customizable, and battery life sits at around 8 hours with ANC on, up to 14 with it off, and a total of 56 hours including the case. Features like ANC, HearThrough, spatial sound, and dual simultaneous connection round it out, and sneaking in just under 200 in the UK makes it strong value.

Runner-Up: Shokz OpenFit

The Shokz OpenFit is the more controversial pick. It is part of the year’s biggest headphone trend: open-ear designs that are not bone conduction, hooking over the top of the ear with a small speaker resting nearby. The sound is impressively better than bone conduction while keeping some situational awareness, and for one tester the fit was secure and comfortable for hours. The catch is that fit varied a lot across the team, with some testers finding it loose or uncomfortable, so these are worth trying before you buy. A charging quirk also affected one unit, though not the majority.

Favorite Trail Shoe

Trail is the category with the most untested releases each year, so this award goes to a favorite rather than a definitive best, leaning toward versatile road-to-trail options. The Hoka Tecton X 2 takes it as a fast, nimble off-roader with balanced cushioning, enough stability and support to feel generous, and the protection to handle ultra-distance days on your feet. It is essentially a built-up, comfortable, durable evolution of a classic speedgoat formula, and it landed well on almost anything while keeping a smooth, enjoyable ride.

Not much changed from the first version, and the midsole does not deliver a huge amount of pop, but the reliability factor is exactly why it earned votes, especially next to more radical super trail designs.

Runner-Up: Nike Ultrafly

The Nike Ultrafly was pitched as Nike’s Vaporfly for the trails, with ZoomX foam wrapped for stability, a carbon plate, and a big, wide, planted base. It is heavy and expensive, and it is not a zingy racing shoe for shorter distances. What it is instead is an extremely approachable, accommodating cruiser: one tester ran a first-ever 50k in it out of the box and finished an 80k ultra in it, loving the comfort over long, slow mileage. Go in expecting a stable, protective comfort shoe rather than a bouncy ZoomX ride, and the high price is the main thing to weigh up.

Best Daily Trainer

This has become one of the trickiest categories because the daily shoe spectrum now stretches from simple comfortable trainers to daily super shoes. The Asics Superblast came out on top despite initial skepticism. On paper it looks like a max-cushion shoe, but the FF Turbo foam borrowed from the Metaspeed racing line, a 45.5mm stack at just 250g in a UK 9, and a hint of stiffness mean it can genuinely go fast, even on the track. It is a shoe you can do a bit of everything in, which softens the very high price when it starts replacing two shoes in a rotation.

Runner-Up: On Cloudsurfer 7

The On Cloudsurfer 7 is one of the most surprising shoes of the year, a complete overhaul that swaps On’s usual Helion foam for the considerably softer CloudTec Phase. The result is a completely different ride from any other On shoe: light, fun, easy to cruise in, and capable of some quicker running even if it is not the most responsive. It has been called one of the best rides of the year for easy miles, including the giddy comeback-from-injury kind of running. One quirk: it squeaks audibly, enough that a group of runners in them became a collective squeak parade, and long-term durability is still unproven with lower mileages logged so far.

Best Cushioned Shoe

The Saucony Triumph 21 wins a category with plenty of split votes. The changes this year are mostly in the upper, but the feel, the PWRRUN+ style foam, the sink-in sockliner, and a pleasant rocker ride give it more versatility than most cushioned shoes here. It does more than just easy miles, which is exactly why some testers even voted it as a daily trainer, and it is a shoe you can happily soak up long stretches of time in.

If you want one cushioned shoe that handles more than one job, this is a very worthy winner.

Runner-Up: Asics Gel-Nimbus 25

The Gel-Nimbus 25 is a massively changed shoe built entirely around comfort. It is very plush, the upper redesigns all serve that goal, and it excels at long, slow, easy runs. It was slightly underwhelming at first given the enormous hype around it, but extended testing showed a genuinely resilient foam that feels just as good at the end of a long run as at the start, rather than going soft and saggy after a few miles. The high price is the main objection, and worth noting most cushioned shoes this year now sit within about 20 of the Superblast.

Best Race Shoe

It has been an interesting year for race shoes, with some brands skipping updates entirely and some dramatic new prototypes not yet widely available. The Nike Vaporfly 3 takes the win for being essentially a refined version of an already beloved racer: lighter, slightly more cushioned, though with a less durable outsole that one tester destroyed in a 10k. It is superbly light, lets your feet turn over quickly, handled short hard races and a full marathon alike, and feels superb deep into a race. Some testers still prefer the firmer, more direct Vaporfly 2 for all-out racing, and at around 100 less the older shoe remains a smart buy if you can find it.

For pure racing at any distance, though, the Vaporfly 3 is hard to beat.

Runner-Up: Hoka Rocket X 2

The Hoka Rocket X 2 is Hoka’s best carbon race shoe yet and a sign the brand finally has a winner. It is well balanced, agile, and light with a springy, lively feel, and it is impressively versatile, coping with a range of paces and distances and even bleeding into training runs more gracefully than most carbon racers. It shines at all-out racing up to the half marathon, and it is stable enough to attack corners and offered genuinely good grip on a wet track. The soft foam can compress a little on longer efforts, and the outsole durability is not perfect, but it is a beautiful, well-thought-out super shoe.

Brand of the Year

The brand of the year is Asics. Rather than one headline shoe, the strength was across the entire range: FF Blast Plus foam went into loads of models, shoes got lighter, and nearly every release tested this year was consistently good. The Gel-Nimbus 25 and Gel-Kayano 30 are the most comfortable versions of those lines in years, the Magic Speed 3 is a genuinely fast budget carbon racing and training option, and the Fujispeed 2 was a favorite plated trail shoe. From cushion and stability to racing and trail, it is very easy to build a full rotation entirely from Asics right now.

The runner-up is Garmin, which put out a lot of strong watches. The standout move was the enormous Fenix 7 range expansion, though the gentle critique is that trimming the lineup down would make next year’s decision even easier.

Audience Award

The audience award, voted by readers across social channels with hundreds of entries, was won by a landslide: the Asics Superblast. People love that shoe despite the price and despite relatively little marketing push behind it, a genuine word-of-mouth sensation. Notably, it is a shoe released in 2022 rather than a 2023 launch, which only adds to the cult status.

The audience runner-up was the Adidas Boston 12, and it likely would have featured prominently in more categories had every tester had it in hand in time. Earlier Bostons were firm, tank-like, and durable but not much fun, while the 12 is genuinely enjoyable on the run while still working well for long efforts, with a Continental rubber outsole and a dual-density midsole. The upper is a touch racy for an everyday trainer, but it is a brilliant shoe.

Conclusion

The throughline of this year’s awards is practical excellence: a Garmin flagship that finally embraced AMOLED without losing battery life, a value monster in the Coros Pace 3, a do-everything Superblast that won both a category and the audience vote, and race shoes from Nike, Hoka, and Adidas that keep raising the floor for what a carbon plate can feel like. If any single pick matches your training and budget, it is a safe place to start building your rotation.