I don’t own much OEX gear however I often have friends telling me some of it is pretty decent for the price. When I wanted a new set of light weight walking poles for ascending Jebel Toubkal in Morocco, and beyond the OEX Ultralite Carbon X poles sounded like a good shout. I’d already spent a fortune on a load of other gear and I needed something nice and light to meet my luggage weight allowance and to keep my pack weight down on the way up Toubkal.
I’ve got no big headlines for you about the features of these poles as the world of walking poles isn’t exactly edge of your seat stuff, there’s no brand new features on these to shout about – in fact I can imagine being a product designer for walking poles is a bit dull.
The most noticeable thing to point out with these poles is quite simply, the price. If we compare these to a high end brand like Leki a similar adjustable carbon fibre pole for example a Leki Skytera Carbon Lite will set you back an RRP of £170 a pair. The OEX Carbon X is a fraction of that price if you get the members price at Go Outdoors of £45.
At this point, just like I did when I saw these, you are probably thinking – or at least you should be – “Carbon fibre walking poles at £45 quid, what’s the catch?” read on, lets get right into it, and let’s see if there is one.
Construction Quality: Generally the poles are pretty well built. It’s a shame about the mud baskets and the ferrules. Ferrules are the rubber tip covers for those who haven’t heard the term.
The poles are let down by the provided mud baskets, one of these vanished during training for Toubkal somewhere in the Derbyshire Dales and the other made it’s exit somewhere on the start of the hike up Toubkal.
Regarding the ferrules, these should wear over time they are rubber after all in this case however they didn’t get worn out much like the mud baskets they just did a magic trick and vanished.
The pole section locks do feel a little flimsy but no issues so far with these! When weighted these grip fine.
Weight: 340g Pair, 170g Single
These actually come in lighter than the aforementioned Leki Skytera Carbon Lites which I was quite surprised by.
Price / Value For Money:
You can’t really fault these on the price coming in at a fraction of what you would expect to pay for a Carbon Fibre pole, however you may have to spend extra replacing parts.
Performance And Usage: I used these on plenty of walks from the Derbyshire Dales and all the way through training for Toubkal ascent and they performed well. Apart from the mud baskets and rubber tips falling off which of course, negatively effected the performance. As stated by the Go Outdoors website these are a trail walking pole and they are quite good for just that.
Product Features:
Everything you’d expect in a walking pole really!
I’m not sure why the locking mechanism isn’t listed in the Go Outdoors specs – maybe as there’s a lot of patents out there for these sort of mechanisms. It is pretty standard to see this feature on most poles now.
Carbide tips, again standard and great for gripping hard packed /rocky ground/rock/ice/slippy surfaces.
Extended foam grips: Again pretty standard to have extended grips. There are notched grips on these which give a bit more to grab onto when I’m holding further down instead of constantly adjusting the pole. Some brands use smooth grips which are ok but these perform better.
- 4-section construction
- 100% carbon fibre tube sections
- Extended foam grip
- Carbide wear tip
- Soft touch wrist strap
- Trekking baskets included
- Minimum length: 105cm
- Maximum length: 135cm
Conclusion: I actually really like these poles. However the mud baskets and ferrules falling off so easily is a pretty big fail on a product which otherwise is very impressive for the price point. Living in the UK mud baskets are a really useful feature reducing the likelihood of the pole sinking into soft soil /mud and you going for a stumble. As for the ferrules coming off we all expect this to happen eventually they are rubber after all they do wear out – in this case they didn’t wear out they just vanished. With these poles you really do get a bargain but they are let down by the basic features, annoyingly and arguably the most important parts, the parts that come in contact with the ground. I’d be more than happy to pay a bit more for them especially if those niggles were fixed. Still for £45 quid they are still pretty good and I still use them and as the old saying goes ‘you get what you pay for’
Final rating
4/5
Requiem For The Extreme 