We Strapped on Exoskeletons and Raced. There’s One Clear Winner
Personal exoskeletons were everywhere at CES 2026. There were ambitious designs from newcomers WiRobotics, Sumbu, Ascentiz and Dephy, while Skip Mo/Go was back to promote its long-awaited tech pants. Dnsys (pronounced Deen-sis), a relatively well-established name, had a few new launches to tease, Hypershell was back with its top-of-the-line model, and Ascentiz had us sprinting across the show floor.
An exoskeleton is a relatively new class of wearable device designed to enhance, support, or assist a human being’s movement, strength, posture, or even physical activity. The main piece goes around your waist like a belt, and from it, a pair of articulated mechanized braces extend across the hips to attach to each thigh, where they provide robotic assistance for normal movements like walking, running, or squatting.
Once used only in medical and factory rehabilitation, exoskeletons are now sold as consumer devices. It is also a rapidly emerging market, with reports suggesting growth from over half a billion dollars in 2025 to over $2 billion by 2030.
Currently, only Hypershell and Dnsys (both Chinese companies founded in 2021) have consumer exoskeletons that you can purchase. And, as promised, when we first reviewed the Dnsys So, with the launch of the Hypershell X Ultra, that day has finally arrived.
Through a series of “athletic” pursuits at the Lea Valley Athletics Center in London, we went head-to-head with the $1,999 Hypershell X Ultra and the $1,899 Dnsys X1 Carbon Pro. Both are blockbuster products, both are commercially available, and both made people stop and look, even though it could have just been our incredible athleticism.
A helping hand
Dnsys and Hypershell devote a lot of marketing budget to promoting the physical benefits of their exoskeletons. Hypershell, for example, claims its devices can result in a 42% lower heart rate, a 20% reduction in effort when walking, and a 63% increase in hip flexor muscle endurance. Dnsys suggests that wearing its devices will “reduce energy demand by up to 50%.”
As we discovered while testing the Hypershell Pro more energy with the exoskeleton than without.
But there is no denying that exoskeletons work. They put a robotic spring in your step and propel you positively. The tangible benefit you receive from this assistance will greatly depend on you as an individual. Chris Haslam, one of WIRED’s crack reviewers recruited for this test, has a 76-year-old father with a titanium hip. Chris’ father was able to use an exoskeleton to climb a hill without his usual respite halfway. However, Chris, a healthy and active 48-year-old, 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 bit tongue-in-cheek, but the more time we spent wearing each device, the more we got a clearer idea of what the exoskeleton actually does and how it feels while it does it.
The tests
Slow and steady: We completed a baseline run of 400 meters, without aids or exoskeletons, before repeating the same tests on each exoskeleton. The pace and distance remained the same, so the difference in effort could be clearly visible through a drop in heart rate.
