Nike Blazer Mid 77 review

The Nike Blazer Mid 77 is a must if you're looking for:

• Sneakers that you can wear with oversized pants or skinny jeans (yep, those are still around).
• A shoe with a clean and minimalistic vibe that's suitable for many occasions.
• A flexible and durable sneaker with high-quality materials.
• A pair of Nikes that never go out of style.

The Blazer Mid 77 made us believe in love at first sight. It's clean, simple, fashionable, and minimalistic, which makes it incredibly versatile for multiple occasions. Nevertheless, it's a flat shoe; and trust us, it does feel flat! Consequently, we can't say it's the best pair to spend hours and hours walking around town. If you're looking for some foot companions to do exactly that, we believe you should have a look at our walking shoes catalog.

On the other hand, if you just want a new pair of Nike sneakers and you don't vibe with the walking shoes style, maybe the Nike P-6000 and its trendy look are a good option. It's a very comfortable shoe and it has a lightweight and breathable design! If you want something with a more playful touch, the Nike Air Max Excee might be your cup of tea. And it's also insanely comfy!

It's time to talk about the Blazer Mid 77's stack, so don't forget what we said: it's a flat shoe!

At 17.5 mm, our caliper indicated its heel stack is way lower than average. This translated into great ground feel, maybe even a little bit too much. Why? Well, because we could feel pretty much every rock when we walked around town with it.

The forefoot stack is also extremely low at only 11.5 mm.

If we could already feel every rock when we stepped on it with our heel, with our forefoot we could literally feel every pebble!

Once we had the heel and the forefoot stacks, we could calculate the drop, which is 6.0 mm.

Now that we have this clear view of the Blazer Mid 77 would be the perfect moment to talk about its midsole... if it had any.

That lack of cushioning is what makes this Nike pair not suitable for all-day wear. We tried to run errands with it, but it took us too long and our feet ended up in pain. We found it more suitable to go out for dinner with friends, just a couple of hours chilling, and then give our feet a break.

The Nike Blazer Mid 77 fits exactly as it looks - quite snug and close-fitting. Having retrieved the gel mold of its interiors, we were able to measure its dimensions more precisely.

In its widest part, the mold showed 88.8 mm, which is narrower than average but not critically. It is still in the medium-width range, but you should expect a one-to-one fit.

It is also proportionally narrower near the big toe where we recorded 66.8 mm.

Luckily, the Blazer's toebox is not too close to the toes with an ample height of 26.3 mm. Given that the shoe's leather upper has no stretch at all, that could've been an issue.

The minimal structure of the Blazer Mid 77 showed us great flexibility before, and we tried to make it bow all the way to 90 degrees, it happily agreed.

At 12.9N, this makes it remarkably flexible. Honestly, we expected something like this when we took it to our lab. After all, we've tried lots and lots of shoes on, and this Nike pair was nice and easy to walk in from minute one!

In other words, it didn't require a painful or complicated break-in period.

We didn't feel this shoe was super heavy, but it definitely wasn't what we expected. When we saw it for the first time, our brain assumed it would be light just because of its structure. Nevertheless, when we put it on our scale... it completely disagreed.

Like, what on Earth do you mean 14.7 oz/418g?! That's way more than average, and the Blazer Mid 77 doesn't look like a heavy shoe at all!

Well, let us tell you... there's more than meets the eye.

Even though, once again, these sneakers didn't feel like a ballast for our feet, it's definitely not a Nike lightweight model.

As soon as we saw the leather upper of this shoe, we guessed it wouldn't be the most breathable sneaker out there.

Even though our light could shine through the eyelets and those three ventilation holes near the sole, our feet didn't feel any kind of airflow during our wear tests.

Our smoke machine proved us right! Just look at the poor Blazer Mid 77 on the left, just choking up... and on the right, we've got the Nike P-6000 letting all the smoke out like a pro. That's why the latter has a perfect 5/5 on our breathability test, and Blazer Mid 77 a mere 1/5 on this same test.

Our microscope also gave us a hand to see what was up with the upper. As expected, the overall leather and the suede overlay didn't have any ventilation holes. In other words, it's impossible for the air to get through those materials!

The Blazer Mid 77 has a high collar that can be lazed up all the way to the top. Even if that's not your style, let's not forget this shoe used to be a hooper, which means its quality materials still offer some lateral support.

We actually can't complain about it, just don't expect some crazy structured upper to hold your ankles in place like some specific basketball shoes do!

Even though this shoe wrapped its collar nicely around our ankles, we wouldn't say its structure is designed to offer incredibly good containment or a fantastic lockdown feel.

As you can see, it bent alongside our fingers easily, so we decided to give it a 2/5 on our torsional rigidity test. This translated into easier and smoother walks around town.

We're talking about a casual type of shoe here, it's not a performance pair anymore! That's why we don't feel it needs to be more rigid than that.

The heel counter area follows the same logic. Despite its tall structure, it bent alongside our fingers easily. This translated into a soft structure that didn't hurt our feet at all.

Look at that! We really appreciated that pliability when we had to put the Blazer Mid 77 on, as its design already makes it quite challenging.

At 98.2 mm, our caliper reminded us this Nike pair has a streamlined silhouette.

Even though there's more space inside than what it looks like, it's definitely not a wide shoe.

And we can see that perfectly just by checking the midsole's width in the heel. Our caliper returned only 71.2 mm, which is a crazy 14% narrower than average!

Even though this model has a narrow outsole, we didn't feel unstable or anything like that during our wear tests.

To check if the leather of the Blazer Mid 77 is authentic, we use a butane torch to burn it up and a scratch awl to see if it gets sticky.

Even though there was a little bit of a flame in this white part, the material didn't end up all melted, which means it's authentic!

But the inner lining... started looking like a gone-for-good chewing gum when our torch started dancing around. Consequently, this material is synthetic.

Honestly, after the disappointing score in breathability of this shoe, we did expect it to do well against our Dremel. It's a tough fight, that's for sure, but we trusted the Blazer Mid 77 and its wonderful upper.

Not even after 5 seconds could the tool get through the suede overlay! Showing who's boss here, this shoe's toebox scored a solid 5/5 on our durability test.

Look at that, spotting the damage is even harder than finding Wally!

When we moved our tool all the way back to the heel, we were crossing our fingers for it to be just as durable. But... we knew it was a pipe dream.

Our Dremel attacked this shoe's heel padding mercilessly at 5K RPM and with 3.2N of force. It managed to break the leather overlay and get to the padding, so we decided to give it a 2/5 on our heel padding durability test.

Even though this didn't have a negative effect on the shoe's integrity, we can ignore the fact that the tool took a good bite of the fabric!

We flipped the Blazer Mid 77 upside down to check its outsole hardness.

At 84.0 HC, it's pretty much as hard as average. This means it offers a healthy mix of grip and durability, but there are two sections where we specifically talk about those features. Stay tuned and don't miss out!

Our Dremel's final battle was here, and the Blazer Mid 77's outsole was ready to take it on a fight!

At 10K RPM this time and during the eternal wait of 22 seconds, the tool drilled the rubber compound nonstop.

We measured the damage with our tread gauge and it returned 1.2 mm. It's definitely not the best score we've seen, but as long as you wear this shoe on urban surfaces to walk around town (yeah, don't try to hoop in it. Despite its basketball heritage, that won't go well...), it should stay by your side for a while.

To measure any shoe's outsole thickness, first we need to cut it in half. We know this makes it pretty much unwearable, but it must be done to give you the most accurate data.

At 5.8 mm, it's pretty much average, so there's nothing special about it. But before we move on, let us tell you one thing that you can probably guess just by looking at this picture: the Blazer Mid 77 feels flat!

A very thin insole is the only cushioning you will get from the Blazer Mid 77.

At only 3.9 mm, this simple piece didn't do much for our feet. That's exactly why we don't recommend wearing this shoe for hours on end!

This Nike pair features a removable insole, look!

That means you can easily use your own orthotics. Nevertheless, it's important to take into account that this shoe's streamlined structure might not be suitable for every insole!

We checked if the Blazer Mid 77 had any reflective elements in our lab.

As you can see, ironically thought, it doesn't have any!

The deconstructed tongue of this shoe might as well be the star of the show!

At 9.2 mm, its padding is standard, nothing otherworldly. But! Look at the inner yellowish foam, it looks like egg yolk, right? The key point of the Blazer Mid 77 is that this detail is deliciously exposed at the top of the tongue.

As many leather Nike casual sneakers, the Blazer Mid 77 features a heel tag with the brand's name instead of a heel tab.

We love this clean touch, as it adds extra style points to the minimalistic vibe of the shoe.