Your choice of running shoe is a very personal decision. You've got to balance how well they protect your feet and legs with how they fit, how heavy they are and how they look.

    If you want the closest thing to an objective look at quality and cost, a Danish website called runrepeat.com has crunched the numbers from nearly 135,000 consumer reviews it gathered over a year, along with the suggested retail price of the most popular brands.

    The biggest surprise: The higher the price, the lower the rating in many cases. In fact, the 10 most expensive running shoes, with an average list price of US$181 per pair, were rated 8.1 percent lower than the 10 cheapest models (average price US$61).

    "If money is a matter to you, you will not get more in expensive running shoes," says the website's founder, Jens Jakob Andersen. "Affordable mid-range running shoes are very nearly the same as expensive running shoes."

    That doesn't mean that you should buy US$15 running shoes at a department store. Those will almost surely cause you injuries. But Andersen believes that running shoe makers have poured so much money into marketing in their battle for a slice of a multibillion-dollar market that we don't know what's real any longer.

    "When you spend more, you expect more," Andersen says, trying to explain why expensive shoes may have disappointed some purchasers.

    Runrepeat bills itself as the Yelp of running shoes. Andersen says he takes no money from any company, funding the site himself. There are no ads.

    So which brands come out on top? Skechers, Saucony and Vibram FiveFingers took the three spots on the podium, while Reebok, Adidas and Hoka One One brought up the rear.

    "What Skechers are doing great is that they don't do the really high-premium running shoes," Andersen says. "They are the running shoe brand for moms."

    Words to Learn 相关词汇

    分析

    fēnxī

    crunch

    perform calculations on (numbers or data) on a large scale

    殿后

    diànhòu

    bring up the rear

    be last in a line or sequence

    高价跑鞋更好？不一定！

    选择跑鞋是个私人决定。你要权衡鞋子对腿脚的保护，合不合脚，鞋子的重量甚至外观。

    但如果你想要最客观的了解质量和价格，丹麦网站runrepeat.com分析了一年多共计13.5万多名消费者的评论数据，还给出了最受欢迎品牌的建议零售价。

    令人惊讶的是：价格越高，评价越低。实际上，平均标价181美元，价格排前十的鞋子，评价要比价格排最后十名的款型低8.1%（后十位均价61美元）。

    网站创始人延斯·雅各布·安徒生称：“如果你比较在意钱，买昂贵的跑鞋就没多大意义，中档跑鞋不比贵的跑鞋差。”

    这不意味着你该到百货商场买一双15美元的便宜跑鞋。这样的鞋子几乎无疑会给你带来伤害。但是安徒生认为跑鞋制造商为了在这个百万美元的市场分一杯羹而花成千上万的银子做营销，最后肯定会让我们眼花缭乱。

    “你花的越多，期望值越高，”安徒生这样解释许多消费者不满高价鞋的原因。

    Runrepeat网站自称跑鞋点评网站。安徒生说他没有收任何公司的资助，完全是自己支撑网站运营，也没有做广告。

    那么哪个品牌排名老大？斯凯奇，索康尼和伐柏拉姆五指鞋跻身前三甲。锐步，阿迪达斯和Hoka One One排在最后。

    安徒生总结道：“斯凯奇之所以如此牛，是因为他们的跑鞋不会溢价过高。他们的跑鞋普通家庭主妇也买得起。”