The Deshi DK3 Louie Zamora Review - 04/07/19

One thing I immediately noticed about this skate is the price. They are very very cheap, but still offer the high quality you would expect. The main difference between the older Louie Zamora-Deshi and the new one are the colours, they’ve been switched around which makes the skate, in my opinion, look better. There are more changes to the boot that you don’t see by just looking at it, the quality of the stitching has been improved and they used a reinforced plastic midsole between the soulplate and the boot.

The skate itself is very very light, the soul plates on the other end are heavy as hell (even though they are supposed to be “newly formed and made out of a new plastic polymer, lower, lighter and more comfortable”- I could not tell the difference…)which is not really a problem since the skate, as mentioned, doesn’t weigh shit. (If they are too heavy for you get a pair of USD soul plates, they are a lot lighter.) Another thing I liked about the soul plates a lot is that you don’t need any unnecessary bolts to hold them in place, the plate is held only by the bolts you need to hold the frame, which makes it easier and faster to change the soul plates, and the frames as well.

The liner seems to be good quality and features Outlast®, which is something like Gore-Tex. This offers extra strength to prevent tears, and climate control as well as Aegis™ Micro shield that is supposed to keep the liner odour free. So far I’m really satisfied with it. The insoles have an air-pillow on the heel that, under pressure, pumps the air through a “channel” forward where it comes out of holes in the toe area….pretty refreshing. The silicon shock absorber that comes with the skate is pretty small and thin which makes it fit into the skates very well, it also has a sticky surface on the bottom side so it won’t wander around in the boot. The shock absorbing did not really satisfy me, it is not bad at all, but I definitely had better ones.
The skates come with an extra power strap to hold the foot better in the skates, the problem I had with the extra strap is that it was too short, too thin, and it did not really make a difference. I would suggest to use laces instead of the straps because you can tie them a lot tighter than with the provided straps. I, for myself could take the skates off even with the buckle shut as far as it will go, and the extra laces, the liner just did not give me enough hold in the heel area which was very uncomfortable. The next thing I did not like about the skates was the fact that they bend very easy to the inside, but are rather stiff to bend to the outside, at first. I could feel them getting softer even after the first time I skated them, which was kind of weird for me, but if you are used to soft boots you are familiar with that, I guess.

Not considering these few problems I had with these skates, they are pretty tight. The soul plates seem indestructible they resist cess slides even on rough grounds and slide very well, as well as on soul tricks and on royals or torques. They are very easy to lock on to topsides and because of their softness and the large soul area provided, there is plenty of negative space also and the fact that the skates bend so easy to the inside makes negative tricks very easy to lock on.

I only tried to jump rather small gaps since I haven't skated softboots in a long time and I was kinda afraid that I might hurt myself when attempting bigger stuff. Like I said, the lack of support for the ankle already caused me some problems when grinding.

Conclusion:

After all you can tell that Deshi has improved the quality of their skates a lot since the first ones. It seems like they put a lot of money and hard work into development and improvement of their skates. Although there are still a few flaws which should be improved, the Deshi DK3-Louie Zamora is still one of the better products out there. A good state of the art skate very well designed from a rather small hard working company that is worth to be supported…

- Wolfgang Zapata

Photos: Ricardo Lino