In this article i’m going to highlight the key differences when it comes to roller skates vs roller blades. I’m going to talk about how they feel, how they move, how they perform at the skate park and for other tricks, whether you can dance in them. Let’s get straight into it….
Roller skates vs roller blades – An Introduction
The consideration of whether you want to buy, or generally prefer, roller skates or roller blades, can be difficult for some skaters and easy for others. Skaters many times, tend to get used to one style of skate rather than the other. I personally have both and I switch between them which is not without its issues, because they have a very different feel, they perform in a different way and it can be confusing for your body’s ‘auto pilot’ to switch often!
I’m going to talk about some of the key differences below but roller skates in general, are more known for dancing, doing softer tricks, whereas inline skates tend to be great for long distance or super fast skating. They can also be hardwearing from the get go and skate park ready!
Roller skates vs roller blades – how they feel
The feel of roller skates vs roller blades is stark. Roller blades are extremely stiff providing a great deal of support. They are more akin to a ski boot, whereas roller skates tend to be softer and feel more like trainers or sneakers. They can be very comfortable. The roller blades are in need of extra support to balance the front to back, blade shape of the wheels. The quad skates feel solid and more stable in some ways providing a more spread out ground cover than inlines, but inlines can feel more stable in terms of the feeling you will fall forwards or backwards.
Roller blades tend to be fastened with sturdy clips and straps/buckles whereas roller skates can often simply be fastened with laces, contributing to the difference in ‘stiffness’ in terms of how they feel.
If you are switching between the two, a major difference in terms of how they ‘feel’ is the toe stop or absence of one at the front of the boot. You can lean down onto a toe stop to stop yourself falling forward or just get some stability with roller skates but this is not so with roller blades. Switching between them has caused me to fall previously, where my ‘auto pilot’ subconscious, forgot that there was no toe stop there on my roller blades.
Roller skates vs roller blades – how they perform for street skating and smooth long pathways
Roller blades are great for long roads or pathways of fast skating. They are great for travelling distances when you have somewhere to go, or you just want a longer ride. They require slightly more endurance and will burn slightly more calories compared to roller skates. Roller skates can be used on long pathways or for long journeys but they have got more ‘wheel’ surface touching the ground so there is more friction and may be slower than roller blades.
With roller blades you can take long powerful strides going fast and covering more distance more easily. However, this does not mean quad skates are not suited to covering long distances or going fast. You can tailor their wheels, perhaps to have a faster wheel with less friction (by adjusting the size and hardness).
Dancing
Roller skates tend to be better for dancing. They are easy to spin around on. Roller blades or inline skates can be used for inline figure skating, which is lovely, but so too, can roller skates so in this department, roller skates win.
Note you can dance on inline skates but this requires a more specialist skill.
You can see an example of one skater trying to learn to dance on inline skates, in this video below. You can see that the style is more akin to a figure skater:
how it started vs how its going 💗🛼 my artistic inline skating journey
Now compare that, to the following style of dancing in roller skates:
Skate Dancing! #venicebeach #rollerdance #rollerskate
Skate parks and more hard core tricks
Inline skates or roller blades are built for hardcore. For example you could zoom straight down a set of stairs and maintain great stability on inline skates compared to roller skates. They can grind without any added plates and they provide an enormous amount of ankle protection, straight out of the box!
In contrast, roller skates sometimes need to be tailored for grinding and extra care would need to be taken when performing challenging tricks like the one I mentioned – travelling down stairs. They are less stable when considering a front to back stability. It is almost impossible to fall forward on inline skates because often, the front wheel sticks out beyond the front of the boot.
Inline skates can be scuffed and treated more roughly than roller skates due to the hardness of the boot and ankle support but this does not mean that you cannot do some great tricks on quad skates.
The comfort levels will be better after proloned skating on quads compared to inlines, in my opinion.
Quad skates can be better for ‘carving’ in bowls. The trucks allow the skater to lean into turns which is great for carving.
Both types of skates can be great for the skate park but are probably more suited to different types of tricks with inline skates being faster and more stable and quad skates being great for carving, corners and bowls.
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