Good drying ability, but needs immediate re-activating for very wet shoes.
See review update below, here is my original review:
I'm sure that these can work well enough for shoes that are a little damp, but as a trail runner who of ... See More
Good drying ability, but needs immediate re-activating for very wet shoes.
See review update below, here is my original review:
I'm sure that these can work well enough for shoes that are a little damp, but as a trail runner who often runs through deep puddles and comes home with shoes that are totally soaked through these don't get my shoes dry again even over an entire day. Add to that the fact they don't extend right to the toe (yes I did buy the right size) so the toe area stays wetter far longer, and that they don't fit snuggly in the shoe i.e. pressing against all sides and I can only rate the performance as average. I would say absorbency is about the same as stuffing your shoe with newspaper, but as these don't touch all sides of the shoe you will actually get quite a bit better drying performance with tightly stuffed newspaper - but these are of course re-usable.
Update: Since posting this review I have tested the product with a larger size which extends further into the shoe (my shoe size is on the boundary between the 2 product sizes). I have also run a more critical test comparing the drying ability of the product against stuffing the shoe full of newspaper. I re-activated the product in the oven (being the most effective method) before the test, and then after a wet run with my shoes coming back equally soaked through I stuffed one shoe absolutely full with newspaper and put the drysure into the other shoe. I left the shoes for around 6 hours and then checked them. There was still a little damp in both shoes, but the drying ability of the drysure was actually very marginally better than the newspaper despite the shoe with the newspaper being absolutely stuffed full and the other shoe having the drysure just placed in (the toe area was dry in both). If left overnight, I would say that as long as the product has been freshly activated even very wet shoes would be dry.
Because of the results of this test I have upgraded my review from 3 to 4 stars. The reason for not giving 5 stars is as follows. Although the drying ability is good, if you are drying very wet shoes you will need to reactivate the product every time. One of the main reasons I chose the drysure over say a heated shoe dryer is because it doesn't require energy for drying - but if I have to re-activate them after every use, preferably for a couple of hours in the oven (and I need to dry my shoes several times a week) then I'm not sure there is much realistic saving in terms of energy usage - you are still using energy, just after shoe drying to reactivate the drysure rather than during.