This is not every skate brand in the world. There are more… However these are the big guys, the good guys, the ones who are creating great quality skates and trying to keep the sport alive. Some of these began at the genesis of the sport and have not died despite the ups and downs of inline skating. Some of these are newer and focused razor sharp on performance. But you can be assured if you buy a pair of skates from them they’re going to be great quality.
They’re not going to come apart underneath your feet, and they’ve spent years (and in some cases decades) working out how a boot and wheels should be made. That’s what some of the other brands out there haven’t quite worked out yet.
And so, in no particular order, the best inline skating brands:
Rollerblade
Ever wonder where the word rollerblade comes from? This brand launched in 1982 and was pretty much the first company to have worldwide distribution. They’ve kept going where a lot of earlier skate brands have dropped out (Salomon, I’m looking at you). Whenever someone says “rollerblading” it can be traced back to this company. Make no mistake, the sport is called inline skating, and rollerblade is not an actual term for the sport, but a brand, and that’s how influential this company is.
They introduced the sport to millions. Here’s the man, Scott Olson, at the start.
They produce the following skates, all in excellent quality:
- Speed (race and long distance)
- Fitness (performance, recreational, x-training)
- Urban (freeskate, aggressive)
That list is how they categorise their skates, and who am I to argue?
Basically, you know you’re going to get a good quality skate when you go to this company. They also do well on having standard, affordable skates as well.
They’ve had their ups and downs like all company, but their innovation nowadays is great, and seem now as much as ever to be in their stride, they do more freeskates and fitness skates than they do aggressive, and offer some really popular freestyle skates for slalom.
SEBA
Launched in 2005, Seba focus on creating amazingly well-performing skates that give you the maximum in control. They are well known for their freestyle and freeride range of skates (the former being a bit more high-performance version of the latter).
Basically, these are for good skaters who want to do lots of things on their skates, you can go fast, you can do slalom, you can do tricks. They specialise more towards freestyle than aggressive, and they basically stay out of the recreational camp because that’s not what these skates are about.
They are optimised for performance, you can think of these as the performance skates brand.
They pride themselves on the testing and development phase of their product creation, and skilled inline skaters who have skated for years swear by them.
Powerslide
Every brand on this list – to greater or lesser extents – has people working in them who love to skate. Some of them like Seba have skating running through their blood. But perhaps Powerslide do the best job of shouting about this fact.
They’re out on social media creating great content all the time, and the great Ricardo Lino was working for them up until recently where he left for Micro Skate (a new brand doing interesting things, one to look out for, but not established enough yet to make this list).
Powerslide’s story begins in 1994 during the inline boom, the brainchild of speed skater Matthias Knoll, but it wasn’t till 1997 when they launched their own product line. From that point they’ve been learning and developing their skates ever since, innovating as they go, recently releasing the trinity mount for more stable, low centre of gravity skating. So with powerslide you have people who love to skate, and who want to make a great product for their customers. This is a good combination.
They go totally nuts in the speed skate category (you might expect this with who started them), with an enormous range of top-quality speed skates.
With this attention to performance, they have a huge range of freestyle skates as well with some of the very best you can buy.
As well as these performance areas, they provide a decent range of fitness / recreational skates with soft boots – the boots that won’t quite give you the control of their other ranges, but will make up for this in their comfort.
USD
USD have been an aggressive inline skating brand since 1997. This means every year they’ve released a pair of aggressive inline skates which as time has gone on, and as they’ve looked at the design and learned from the feedback of their users, they’ve got better and better.
The USD aggressive skates that are available now are miles better than the technology used back when they began. They are super low to the ground, have a great boot for high control, have the grind plates designed well and next to a chunk out the side of the skate to make grinds easy. They come extremely highly recommended.
With their new pair of USD Aeons, they threw out the Universal Frame System (UFS) that every skate for the last twenty years has relied on, and made on of the best pairs of aggressive skates you can buy.
K2
K2 started out near Seatlle, Washington in the US in 1962 making skis, and didn’t start selling skates until 1993, but ever since they have, and liked other companies with a good snow sport pedigree, they make excellent quality skates.
They specialise in the soft boot, and make some seriously comfortable skates. But they don’t really extend into the “proper” skaters market of freestyle skates. So the people who love skating loads and have been doing it for years, often own a pair of freestyle skates because they’re so adaptable, you can change out the parts and customise them to work for your type of skating. Whereas that’s not really what you’re getting with K2, you’re getting a pair of really well-made comfortable skates, but don’t expect to be able to upgrade them much.
- Recreational
- Fitness
- Aggressive
Basically it’s what they term “lifestyle” which is better translated as “casual”. They do make at least one pair of speed skates however as far as I know. Maybe they do more, but they don’t shout about it on their website.
Roces
Roces history stretches back to 1952 and a small town 50km from Venice, where Ottorino and Lina Cavasin produced leather trekking and ski footwear, moving into ski boots in the 70s, and when plastic materials were applied to sport technology, ice skates. It wasn’t until the 90s, when the next generation owners noticed Scott Olson’s (of rollerblades) inline skates while walking through a ski show in Las Vegas, that they entered the inline market. But they’ve been here ever since.
Here’s a nice little video on their history, with a cute old couple holding a pair of skates. It would have been better to see the old couple skating in them.
They make very high-quality skates across almost every category of skate except maybe speed. But fantastic freestyle, fitness and aggressive skates.
I remember my neighbour (who was cooler than me) getting a pair of aggressive Roces skates when we were both skating together (of course, I was geekier, so I went out and got some Salomon’s – conspicuously absent from this list because they ran away from skating).
Roces, like some of the other great brands on this list, have been here since the very beginning through the ups and downs, and have kept going through great innovation.
FR Skates
FR make some of the best skates you can buy.
They’re especially good at the freestyle or freeride skates (these two terms, basically mean the same thing).
I’ve got a pair of FR skates, and from my experience they’re a solid dependable skate. I feel like I would happily drop them out of a moving helicopter onto a medium-to-hard surface, like the top of someone’s car… and they would be fine. I don’t expect I’ll ever get the chance to test this out, and when I’m in that helicopter flying over your car (or someone else’s car, of course…), then will I actually go through with it?
But, the point is… if there is a point here… they’re solidly build.
Also, pretty comfortable.
Bauer
Ok, this brand is on this list for their hockey skates. When I was growing up everybody wanted Bauer Turbo’s – these were the quad skates that all the boys older than me used to skate on, all the boys who scared me.
They specialise in ice hockey skates, and have used their insight, technology and innovation to create some of the best inline hockey skates on the planet.
According to Wikipedia, and some other random website I found, Bauer may be the oldest company on this list saying as it does that they date back to 1927, when apparently the Bauer family established their company in Ontario.
Just an interesting tit bit there, but I thought I better throw a hockey skate brand on this list.
Honorable Mentions
Are the above the best inline skate brands in the world? Well, it’s a pretty good list, but it does miss off some fantastic companies. The criteria I’ve used above are a mix of just how long they’ve survived producing high quality products, as well as their focus on performance.
But, the following brands are worth a shout as well:
Fila
Razors
Them
Flying Eagle
Adapt