Dalbello Veloce Space 120 Dual Ski Boots Review

I was hemming and hawing on the chairlift at Kirkwood this spring. Knowing I wasn’t the biggest BOA fan, and sporting quite narrow feet, I stared down at the shiny new Dalbello Veloce Space 120 Dual BOAs that enveloped my toes with a bit of dismay. 

Ski boot testing is tough work. You parse the ischemic pain, slop, and shin bang caused by an improper fit from a boot that is downright bad. Next, figure out who the brand made the boot for and whom it will serve.

And yet, after I spent what felt like three eternities cranking both BOA dials all the way down, I was pleasantly surprised dropping into The Wall. Snaking through slushy bumps, I felt my heel snug up into the back of the heel pocket. That’s no small feat for my 98mm-and-below preference.

I began to get into the flow. Catching air off the back of a mogul, I found transition on the steep side of the next. I was generally having a blast. The wrap of the cuff kept me securely in place as I thrashed and slashed down toward the base area.

Once on piste, I was even more pleased to feel how well the stance complemented my preferred skiing style. I tapped into immediate power transfer from the upright cuff whenever I wanted to hit the gas and carve hard through the remaining corduroy.

In short: The 2026 Dalbello Veloce Space 120 Dual BOAs ($830) was updated with the double BOA treatment, which helps its already popular comfort fit. To the unfamiliar, the OG design is a classic mid-volume, four-buckle, all-mountain ski boot with a cushy liner and affordable price point.

Peruse how other ski boots compare to this pick in our Best Ski Boots buyer’s guide.

Dalbello: They Make Cabrios, Right?

The Veloce Space is a radical redesign of Dalbello’s relatively recent foray into lighter four-buckle all-mountain boots. The brand has long been a staple, if not a dominator, of the plug race market, producing stout World Cup boots in the form of the DRS WC.

But on the recreational side of the business, the brand’s cabrio offerings hold much more fame. Dalbello took a step back toward traditional overlap boots that you can lift without hiring a personal trainer about 4 years ago.

The Krypton and the Il Moro built legions of devoted followers from the freestyle and freeride world. But the brand clearly wanted to branch out even further.

When I worked as a bootfitter back in Mammoth, those boots were a bit of a revelation for our customers. The first generation came with softer, damper plastic and an extraordinarily cushy liner — those sets basically sold themselves.

So, Dalbello sparked my interest when they redesigned the Veloce into a more high-performance flagship boot.

What’s in a Name?

The new Veloce shares basically nothing but a name with the old marshmallow that flew off the shelves. That’s not a bad thing.

Most obviously, there’s not a single buckle to be found on the thing. But adding a BOA to a boot doesn’t just change the closure; you have to make a whole new last. That gave Dalbello the opportunity to rework every part of the shell and liner.

One of my favorite additions is a zeppa (boot board) that is purpose-built to be ground — a veritable cryptid in the era of cost and weight savings. Dalbello added depth holes to help bootfitters gauge their grinding to adjust the skier’s stance, both laterally and fore-and-aft.

Skiers who remember getting their boots worked on in the ’90s and aughts probably might not be impressed, but it’s nice to get some customization back in the recreational market. It looks like this is standard across their high-performance all-mountain, freeride, and freestyle boots this year.

The liner is also an impressive upgrade over the previous Veloce. I particularly like the tongue, which has added stiffness on the outside but significant amounts of foam facing the shin. The bootfitter in me knows all that soft foam will pack out soon. But I took comfort in the ankle BOA — cranking it down eliminates any fear of shin slop once that tongue volume eventually decreases.

The asymmetrical ankle bone pockets are nice, and all the hand-stitching on the toe box feels premium.

Crank It Up. Or Down

Let’s get down to brass tacks on BOA. I’ve never made a secret of the fact that I think lower BOA is a fundamentally flawed mechanism. Lots of folks (mostly boot designers who make BOA boots) have argued with me in the past about the BOA’s wrapping function of the scaffo (lower clog of the shell). But when my short, narrow instep is the first thing to feel pressure when the dial tensions the cable, that tells me the whole endeavor is kind of moot.

My insteps aren’t particularly sensitive: I spent 300+ days in the previous generation Tecnica Mach1 LV 130, infamous for its crushingly low instep. But the scaffo BOAs get me, which means I can’t understand how they’re offered as a solution for folks with tall, problematic insteps.

But I will concede that I’m swayed by the upper cuff BOA. I think the way the upper cuff wraps the ankle and calf is a real performance gain. So, I’m chuffed to see the Mullet BOA (upper cuff dial with a two-buckle scaffo) gaining traction in the market.

On a wider boot than I’m used to, I was able to use the upper BOA’s tension to my advantage to lock my heel in place while keeping the lower dial loose enough that I didn’t feel a numbing pain atop my foot. 

I think the upper dial works particularly well for carving fast turns on piste, where the mechanism provides more stiffness and support at speed than your average 120-flex buckle boot could offer.

Bottom Line

So who’s this ski boot for? Well, the technologist, for one. Anyone who is excited by features will look agog at the spec sheet on the Veloce Space Dual BOA. It’s got dials and gizmos out the wazoo.

This iteration of the Veloce is endlessly customizable: A bootfitter’s dream. Dalbello mapped the shell with more malleable plastic — even including visual indicators — to make stretching and grinding common problem areas like the navicular and sixth toe incredibly easy. There’s cuff alignment on both sides for the bow-legged or knock-kneed skiers who need adjustments.

Dual-sided cuff alignment accommodates bow-legged or knock-kneed skiers, while a grindable zeppa allows a bootfitter to precisely adjust your ramp angle and lateral foot positioning for a customized stance

For all-mountain skiers with medium- to high-volume feet who care about comfort and performance, take a closer look at this ski boot. It’s comfortable and warm, while being able to deliver real precision and power on and off piste.