New Balance Walking Shoes for Women: A Foot Surgeon’s Guide
New Balance offers 2A, B, D and 2E in women's - width beats cushioning for most hard-to-fit feet. Which model suits which foot.
Written and medically reviewed by Dr. Tom Biernacki, DPM, FACFAS · Last reviewed 4 October 2026
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On this page
- Quick answer: New Balance walking shoes for women
- Why width beats almost everything else
- The version trap: your usual model may have changed
- Even the retailers disagree on the numbers
- Which New Balance, by what your feet are doing
- Getting the width right
- Skip New Balance if
- What we will measure
- The numbers, side by side
- Related guides & reviews
Testing status: the models on this page have not yet been through our own wear protocol. Figures quoted are the manufacturer’s or a retailer’s, and are labelled as such. No score and no seal appear here until we have measured the pair ourselves.
Where to start
Three places to start, drawn from the models further down this page. None has been through our bench yet, so there are no scores here. Get the width right first: New Balance makes many women’s models in 2A, B, D and 2E.
- Neutral daily walking: New Balance 880v15The workhorse: four women’s widths and a 6 mm drop. The default for most people who need width and do not overpronate.Women’s — check price
- Your shoes wear on the inner edge: New Balance 860v15New Balance’s stability model, in multiple widths. If the wear is on the outer edge, you supinate and this is the wrong tool.Women’s — check price
- Thinning heel pads, hard floors: Fresh Foam X More v6The tallest, softest option in the range.Women’s — check price
Paid links: we earn a commission at no extra cost to you, and it never changes what is listed. If you are rebuying an 880, read the version trap first; who should skip New Balance is here.
Why width beats almost everything else
Most footwear advice is about cushioning. For a great many women, cushioning is not the binding constraint — width is.
A shoe that squeezes the forefoot pushes the metatarsal heads together, which is the mechanism behind neuroma pain, aggravates a bunion by loading the joint from the side, and makes a broad or splayed foot uncomfortable regardless of how good the midsole is. No amount of foam fixes a shoe that is too narrow.
New Balance is one of the very few mainstream brands that still takes this seriously. On the 880v15, women’s widths run 2A (narrow) · B (standard) · D (wide) · 2E (extra wide). That is a genuinely wide range, and it is the reason this brand should be on your list if your foot has ever been described as difficult to fit.
It matters doubly if you wear an orthotic. A custom device needs both width and volume, and a removable footbed to make room. Width options plus a removable insole is the combination that decides whether your device actually fits — see our wide toe box guide for how to measure your own forefoot before you shop.
The version trap: your usual model may have changed
This is the practical warning on this page, and it catches people out every year.
The 880 went from an 8 mm drop in v14 to a 6 mm drop in v15. Two millimetres sounds trivial. It is not, if you are the reason drop matters: a lower drop asks more of the calf and the Achilles, and asks the plantar fascia to tolerate more stretch first thing in the morning.
So if you have Achilles tendinopathy or plantar fasciitis, have been comfortable in the 880v14, and reorder the v15 expecting continuity, you may find your mornings get worse and blame the wrong thing. Version numbers imply sameness that manufacturers do not promise. Check the drop each time you repurchase.
If that is you, our Achilles guide and plantar fasciitis guide explain why the direction of that change matters.
Even the retailers disagree on the numbers
A small illustration of why we measure things ourselves. For the 880v15, one major retailer lists the heel stack at 38 mm and another at 40.5 mm — for the same shoe.
That is a 2.5 mm spread on a figure people use to make decisions, and it is before you get to the question of whether either number survives a caliper. It is the same problem RunRepeat’s lab found measuring other brands: on the HOKA Bondi 9 a published 5 mm drop measured 9.1 mm, while on the Brooks Ghost 17 every published figure held up within about half a millimetre. Published numbers are a starting point, not a fact.
Which New Balance, by what your feet are doing
Neutral daily walking — the 880v15
The workhorse. Four women’s widths, a 6 mm drop, and a women’s weight of around 236 g, which is light for the amount of shoe. The default recommendation for most people who need width and do not overpronate.
You overpronate — the 860v15
New Balance’s stability model, also widely available in multiple widths. Only relevant if the wear pattern on your current shoes shows inner-edge wear — see the overpronation guide. If your wear is on the outer edge you supinate, and a stability shoe is the wrong tool; read the supination guide instead.
Maximum cushioning — the Fresh Foam X More v6
The tallest, softest option in the range. Worth considering if the fat pads under your heel have thinned and hard floors have started to hurt — a common change after fifty, covered in our walking after fifty guide.
Getting the width right
- Get measured, both feet, standing, late in the day. Width is measured as well as length, and most people have never had it done.
- Take the insole out and stand on it. The fastest honest test there is. If your foot spills over the edges, you need a wider fitting, not a longer shoe.
- Remember the letters differ by gender. Women’s D is a wide; men’s D is a medium. Buying from the wrong chart is a common and expensive mistake.
- Fit with the insole you will actually use. A device raises your foot and reduces the room above it.
- Do not size up in length to get width. A longer shoe slides, and a sliding foot jams the toes on every step.
Skip New Balance if
- You need a rocker for a stiff big toe. This is not the brand’s strength. See our HOKA guide — rocker geometry is what that brand does genuinely well.
- You are repurchasing a version number without checking what changed. The 880 example above is the reason.
- You need published toe-box measurements to decide. They are not published for these models yet, by New Balance or anyone else. Widths are a proxy, not a measurement.
- You are relying on a retailer’s stack figure. They do not agree with each other.
What we will measure
Width is exactly the thing this site exists to quantify. When these pairs reach our bench we measure internal toe-box width at the widest point and at the big toe with calipers — the number no brand publishes and the one that decides whether a shoe works for a bunion, a neuroma or a broad forefoot. We also weigh the pair ourselves, measure heel and forefoot stack, record midsole softness, and give an Orthotic Volume Rating for whether a device fits once the stock insole is out. Until then, this page tells you what is claimed and by whom.
Compared head-to-head: New Balance 860 vs 880 (v15) — New Balance’s stability and neutral daily shoes, on the published figures.
The numbers, side by side
Here are the shoes named on this page with their published numbers beside each other — the comparison a shopper otherwise has to open six product pages to do.
| Shoe | Heel stack | Forefoot stack | Drop | Weight men’s, as published |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Balance Fresh Foam X 880v15 | 40.5 mm | 34.5 mm | 6 mm | 299 g |
| HOKA Bondi 9 | 43 mm | 38 mm | 5 mm | 297 g |
| Brooks Ghost 17 | 36.5 mm | 26.5 mm | 10 mm | 286 g |
| New Balance Fresh Foam X 860v15 | 43 mm | 35 mm | 8 mm | 331 g |
Manufacturer-published figures unless that shoe’s own review names a different source. A dash means nobody publishes the figure; we do not estimate it. None of these are Podiatrist Tested measurements.
These are the figures the brands print. Where an independent lab has cut one in half, the measured drop has usually come out higher than the box says — by up to 6.2 mm, mostly because the forefoot is thinner than claimed — while the zero-drop models measured within 2.2 mm of zero. One shoe so far has measured lower than stated, so read it as a tendency rather than a rule. The figures and the sources are on the heel-to-toe drop chart.
Reviews for Walking
Individual shoe pages state their evidence tier, published measurements and who should skip them.
Skechers Hands Free Slip-ins
Spec AnalysisUntested. A heel panel engineered to stay open cannot also be a rigid heel counter, and Skechers publishes no stiffness figure for it — nor a drop, a weight or a width.
New Balance Made in USA 990v6
Spec AnalysisNew Balance publishes no weight, drop or stack height for the 990v6, but it does publish B through 6E widths — and that range is why it still matters. Not tested by…
Dansko XP 2.0
Spec AnalysisOccupational clog with a removable dual-density footbed and slip-resistant outsole — not yet tested.
Our funding and evidence policy
We earn affiliate commissions from qualifying purchases. Our policy is to assess published evidence and fit needs rather than rank products by commission rate. Current reviews are specification analyses; see our method for their limits.