For years, the buzz in running shoes has been about carbon-plated marathon super shoes and maximally stacked super trainers – both of which carry lofty price tags. But what happened to the extremely versatile do-it-all everyday trainers? They’re slowly on the way back, given that high-end midsole foams, advanced engineered uppers, and other high-quality features are trickling down the line. One of the best ones so far in 2025 is the Saucony Ride 18 ($140).
What’s to like about the Ride 18? Simple: It’s an enhanced everyday trainer that does almost everything really well without any major flaws. It’s light, comfortable, well-cushioned, agile, and surprisingly stable. You can run long in it, run relatively fast in it, and you can run every single day in it. On the face of it, the Ride 18 might come off as a rather basic shoe, but there’s enough refined goodness in this shoe to make it worthy of buying a couple of pairs to allay your trade war anxiety and the imminent surge of running shoe prices. Even if shoe prices don’t soar from the tariff situations, the Ride 18 still packs a lot of value and performance for the price.
The biggest updates to the new Ride 18 are the slightly reformulated PWRRUN+ midsole made from a durable and responsive beaded TPU material, and the revised engineered mesh up that is more padded than the previous version, but also more breathable and more stretchy, too. This shoe has a slightly wider footprint, more outsole rubber coverage, additional flex grooves, and more heel collar padding. All of that has resulted in a noticeable drop in weight, and we know that lighter is almost always better.
The Ride 18 fits true to size and has a narrow-medium interior volume with a roomier forefoot than most shoes in this category. The step-in feel is soft and comfortable, thanks in part to the PWRRUN+ sockliner just under your feet. It’s one of the best interior sensations among shoes in this mid-range training shoe category. The new upper and partially gusseted tongue both feature more interior padding and security, which makes this shoe more comfortable and reliably fitting than ever before. The ride is a blend of everything you want in a performance trainer: slightly soft, slightly bouncy, slightly firm, but very resilient, very stable, and very responsive.
If you could only choose one new training shoe in your quiver for the rest of the year – or longer – the Ride 18 would be a model to consider. It boasts a near-optimal blend of semi-soft yet stable midsole cushioning, really nice interior comfort, and above-average responsiveness, plus it’s flexible, nimble, and very breathable. If you were to pick those qualities from a menu of options in advance, it would be difficult to find a better or more complete shoe. I tried just about everything in this shoe, including a 2-hour long run, an uptempo series of mile repeats, and plenty of midweek 30- to 45-minute grinders, and for each one the Ride 18 passed with flying colors.
Price: $140
Approximate Weights: 9.2 oz. (women’s size 8), 11.5 oz. (men’s size 9)
Heel-Toe Offset: 8mm; 37mm (heel), 29mm (forefoot)
I personally love this shoe because it’s better than advertised. What does that mean? It mostly means that I give it pretty high ratings for midsole performance, durability, stability, and cushioning. The PWRRUN+ midsole foam, although not a top-of-the-line material, is a really good type of cushioning for this mid-range training shoe model. It’s not as bouncy and energetic as racing shoes and not as cushy as max-stacked super trainers, but it’s pretty darn good for a $140 training shoe.
Pro: The 8mm heel-toe offset and the lower-to-the-ground forefoot dimensions give this shoe great proprioceptive feel for the ground. That made me feel agile and in control of my stride, especially when I wanted to increase the pace a bit on a training run. There’s still plenty of cushy height for long-haul comfort on runs of 10 miles or longer, but it gives this shoe great pace variability.
Con: The XT-900 outsole rubber is thicker than it needs to be, so that adds some weight that could have been shaved. And while it offers good surface contact in dry conditions, it was a touch slippery on wet roads and concrete bike paths.
