DMT KR1 Road Shoe

The DMT KR1 Road Shoe is built around DMT's 3D Knit upper, a seamless knitted construction the Italian brand builds without stitching or gluing separate panels together. DMT, founded in the Marche region of Italy in 1978, was the first cycling shoe brand to bring a fully knit upper to market, and the KR1 carries that technology into a roughly 3mm-thick knit that wraps the foot the way a well-fitted sock does — aiming for a close, glove-like fit with minimal seams to cause hot spots over a long ride.

Closure comes from a single Boa dial, which pulls evenly across the front of the foot with fine, millimetric adjustment in either direction. It's a simpler system than the dual-dial setups on some race shoes, which keeps weight down but means you're working with one zone of adjustment rather than independently tuning forefoot and midfoot tension.

Underfoot is a unidirectional carbon sole that DMT builds stiff enough for hard, sustained efforts, with venting at the forefoot to help manage heat and a replaceable anti-skid insert at the heel so the sole doesn't need replacing outright once that section wears down. At roughly 257 grams for a single shoe in a size 42, the KR1 sits in genuinely lightweight territory for a road race shoe, largely thanks to the knit upper shedding the weight of traditional layered synthetic panels.

At $479.99, the KR1 is priced as a top-tier race shoe, and the knit upper is the shoe's defining tradeoff: it flexes more than a traditional synthetic or leather upper, which some riders feel as extra give around the heel and midfoot during hard efforts, in exchange for a fit that's genuinely closer to sock-like comfort. It's a fit for riders who prioritize low weight and all-day comfort from the upper and are fine trading some structural rigidity for it, rather than riders who want maximum lateral support above a stiff carbon sole.