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This Italian-built trainer has a well-cushioned ride for your long runs.

The RW Takeaway: Pricey for a trainer, but it delivers many excellent long runs.

Price: $195 Type: Road Weight: 9.0 oz (M), 6.9 oz (W) Drop: 5 MM

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“They’re beautiful, comfortable, and supportive,” one wear-tester reported. “What could be bad? They’re $200.”

Who am I to say how you should blow your money? But, as the prices of running shoes have skyrocketed, there are a lot of great performance models hovering near or north of two Benjamins. The Atomo, though, was made in Italy, so there’s gotta be an up-charge for that alone.

Price aside, the Atomo is a smooth trainer that performs generally well on dry roads. There’s nothing particularly exciting about it, really, but the sum of the parts works here. “They resemble the Hoka Clifton in terms of look and fit,” said one tester who runs for the Lafayette College track team. “But they don’t have as much cushioning.”

The midsole is an expanded EVA blended with a rubber-based polymer. Adding rubber can make a shoe heavy, so Diadora tweaked the mixture to deliver a light enough shoe that was still responsive and more durable than EVA alone. As their reps told me, they wanted the shoe to feel the same way at mile 400 as it did at mile 10. Our wear-testers had only enough time to put about 100 miles on the shoes before we began this review, so we’ll check back when they’ve thoroughly trashed their pairs to see how that claim checks out. But the early results are promising.

“The midsole is big—like early Hoka big,” one tester wrote. “I expected a cushy ride, which wasn’t the case. By no means am I complaining about this surprise, as I actually prefer firmer shoes. I’d wear this shoe to run a half marathon.”

The upper is a standard engineered mesh, the kind that popped up around 2015—before then, stitching and overlays ruled the top half of shoes. Again, it’s nothing terribly exciting, but it gets the job done. Our testers were most impressed by the forefoot fit, especially one woman who has bunions that get abused in some of the models she tests; the Atomo never caused her problems. The shoe runs almost a half-size short, so if you’re on the fence, opt for the larger size.

Alexandra A. | Age 21 Average Pace: 7:30 Footstrike: Midfoot

“I loved this shoe. I have extremely high arches and felt that these shoes could support them. I ran on the road at varying paces from 8:00 min/mile to 5:45 min/mile (normal runs and workouts). These shoes had enough cushion to compare, or even to beat my Hoka shoes. I felt that the Diadora ran a little small for the size, however they were not too small for me. I felt that the toe box was very small with respect to the rest of the shoe. The material did not stretch with my stride (which is good). I did not find any hot spots when breaking in the shoes. The tongue was a little short, however not short enough to be annoying or affect the overall shoe. I thought there was a lot of padding around the collar, which I liked.”