A question of construction - BOA Lacing System or good old shoe laces.

SIMMS launched a new series of wading boots called Rivertek with the M3 BOA Lacing System. When you check out their website boatechnology.com you will find the following sentence:
"It is a choice between yesterday's product and tomorrow's technology."

The SIMMS Rivertek with BOA System.

Ehh? Sorry? First of all: Where is tomorrows technology? Because what they offer, is a yesterdays product. In 1991 (!) PUMA invented the first system like this as the PUMA DISC System and called on us "Turn it on!".

Well, it didn't turn the world on. The technology seemed to be technically immature. And the "advantage" of even closure and no pressure points turned out to be a problem for athletes that do not have the perfect foot or do want to put more or less pressure on different parts of their foot.
But maybe the BOA System is perfect for such a clunky thing like a wading boot, because there's no need for fine tuning - although a wading boot has to stand enormous pressure and has to work under toughest conditions. But BOA promises that their system can definitely not break or open during use. And they worked on another weak point: they use stainless steel laces ("stronger than tank armor"! as they say). We'll see if the plastic parts of the system itself will show the same durability, but there was great improvement in the field of plastic since the PUMA DISC System.

Technology is great. Advance is great. But The Fly Guys aren't quite shure, if you want to discuss that point with a "broken BOA system" a 100 miles away from the next SIMMS/BOA System "sparepart" dealer - and with a whiny voice ... "But they promised ..."

That's the good thing about the good old shoelaces: If they break, you just add another knot. And that is something a flyfisherman really knows how to do.