Joe Rocket Heartbreaker Boots Review

Written By Lali

Joe Rocket both broke my heart with these shoes, and simultaneously made me happy. Here’s what I mean…

They took a concept that solves an actual problem in the motorcycle market, shoes for shorter lady riders, and threw about 2% of their time and energy into their design, then slapped a $130 price tag on them. face palm

Don’t get me wrong, I still like these shoes a lot and will continue to wear them. Yet as a 5’4” (163cm) woman who is passionate about this subject and KNOWS the amount of confidence being able to touch the ground on both sides of the bike can bring someone, the energy put into designing these is heartbreaking to see. I guess they named the shoes correctly at least.

I’ll start with that I do love:

  • Perforated leather sides for airflow

  • 2.5 inch heel hidden on the inside.

  • The track/race boot inspired design (but more on that soon…)

  • Still decently comfortable to walk in

  • They are adjustable if you have wider calves.

And now for the rest…

  • The Heartbreaker boots SQUEAK. They’re noisy because the design of them is all over the place. They included this weird buckle that looks so out of place on any race/track inspired design that they have going down the front of the shoe. The buckle feels and looks and IS cheap and adds nothing to the design or safety of the shoe. It rubs against the leather and makes it squeak even more. Not a fan, I’m going to be cutting mine off. I say cutting because the buckle is half sown into the shoe, and only half loose…so you can’t even fully remove it. Ahhh! No thought into the design here at all :(

  • Padding on the inside is THICC. Even with perforation, these get a little hot, and I was riding with them in only about 70F in Pennsylvania in March. There is no perforation in the front of the boot near the toes so these will get hot in the summer.

  • The sole is cheap. It’s rubber but near the toes but it’s so thin that I can almost feel my fingers through it on the inside and I can’t imagine it will do well on really hot tarmac in the summer. The rest of the wedge part of the sole is fine and sturdy, but the front part of the sole wasn’t thought out at all and they could have added another 1 inch platform there.

  • Speaking of the platform…I still find myself tippy toeing on my MT07 on these shoes, but definitely not as much as with my normal shoes. This is because they neglected the front part of the shoe…they added a 2.5 inch heel, but added no height to the front part so if you are short enough that 2.5 inches of a heel still doesn’t touch the ground, then you will still tippy toe. A thicker sole in the front part of the shoe would have solved this issue but still, the 2.5 inch heel overall helps.

  • If you have thinner calves, you will probably find the tightest setting on these to still be too loose. They are adjustable which is nice, but the unadjusted setting is still too wide on me. You can see this in the photos of me wearing them on the MT07.

  • The design can’t decide what it wants to be…a serious track/race boot, or floral design from the 70s. Everything seems like it doesn’t flow nicely together.

  • They are haphazardly glued together, you can see the glue spilling out of the sides between the shoe and sole in a lot of places and that’s usually the tell tale sign of a cheaply made shoe. For $130 I do feel like they could have done better…I wouldn’t even be mad if they were more expensive as long as they were more thoughtfully made.

The verdict:

3/5 stars. I like these, but I don’t love them. They get the job done about 70% well, but they leave a lot to be desired. I wish Joe Rocket put more thought into these because they actually made a product that solves a real problem us short riders have. If they don’t clean up version 2.0 of these shoes…then I just might do it for them. Instead of heartbreaker I’ll name them something more endearing. Find them here: Heartbreaker boots

Lali