We Strapped on Exoskeletons and Raced. There’s One Clear Winner

had individual exoskeletons Everywhere at CES 2026. There were ambitious designs from newcomers WiRobotics, Sumbu, Ascentiz and Dephy, while Skip Mo/Go was promoting its long-awaited technical trousers. Dnsys (pronounced din-sys), a comparatively well-established name, had a few new launches to tease, Hypershell was back with its top model, and Ascentyz had us running across the show floor.

Exoskeletons are a relatively new class of wearable device designed to enhance, support, or assist human movement, strength, posture, or even physical activity. The main piece goes around your waist like a belt, and from it, a pair of mechanized splints extend from above the hips to strap onto each thigh, where they provide some robotic assistance with common activities like walking, running or sitting.

Once used only in medical rehabilitation and factory settings, exoskeletons are now sold as mainstream consumer devices. It is also a rapidly growing market, with reports expected to grow from over half a billion dollars in 2025 to over $2 billion by 2030.

Climb every mountain.
Courtesy of Dnsys

To date, only Hypershell and Densis (both Chinese companies founded in 2021) have consumer exoskeletons you can buy. And, as promised when we first reviewed a pre-launch prototype of the Dnsys X1 (5/10, WIRED Review), we’ll be racing them as soon as we can. So, with the launch of Hypershell X Ultra, that day has finally come.

Through a series of “athletic” activities at London’s Lee Valley Athletics Centre, we went head-to-head with the $1,999 Hypershell X Ultra and the $1,899 Dyonsys X1 Carbon Pro. Both are major products, both are commercially available, and both made people stop and stare, though it might have been our amazing athletic style.

one leg up

Dnsys and Hypershell spend a lot of marketing budget promoting the physical benefits of their exoskeletons. For example, Hypershell claims its devices can reduce heart rate by 42 percent, reduce exertion by 20 percent while running, and increase hip flexor endurance by 63 percent. Dnsys suggests that wearing their equipment will “reduce power demand by up to 50 percent.”

Even though we tracked heart rate, speed, and distance using the Hypershell Pro smartwatch, some of our efforts suggested we use More Energy compared to those without exoskeleton.

But it can’t be denied that exoskeletons work. They put a robotic spring in your step and propel you forward positively. How much actual benefit you get from assistance will depend on you as an individual. One of WIRED’s crack product reviewers enlisted for this test is Chris Haslam, a 76-year-old father who has a titanium hip. Chris’s father was able to use an exoskeleton to climb a hill without his usual relief at the halfway point. However, Chris – a healthy, active 48-year-old man – found them more of a hindrance than a help.

Having two different exoskeletons allowed us to compare performance and discuss perceived effort. Yes, some of the sprint runs were a little awkward, but the more time we spent wearing each device, the clearer picture we got of what the exoskeleton was actually doing and how it felt while doing it.

tests

We took the exoskeleton for a jog around the track. Jeremy is on the left, Chris is on the right.
Photograph: Dulcie Godfrey

slow and steady: We completed an unassisted, exoskeleton-free baseline run of 400 m before repeating the same tests in each exoskeleton. Speed ​​and distance were kept the same, so differences in exertion could be clearly seen through drops in heart rate.