Asics Gel Dedicate 8 Clay - long term review

My honest consumer feedback about the Asics Gel Dedicate 8 Clay tennis shoes after a season of using them

It has been quite some time since I bought the tennis shoes Asics Gel Dedicate 8 Clay. I played more than 20 games with them (probably a lot more but I haven't counted) and it is time to give you my honest comments about them.  
Basically I am pretty much satisfied with the Gel Dedicate 8 Clay, especially for the low price I got them. I will divide my impressions into 3 main categories: comfort, performance and durability.

Comfort

I wore a lot of Asics shoes in the last couple of years and most of them were quite comfortable in general. To be honest I would rate the Gel Dedicate 8 somewhere in the middle. They are OK but there I things that I would change for my perfect tennis shoe - they feel bottom heavy and therefore the dynamics that I want to achieve in my movements is lower than I wish. Also the Gel Dedicate 8 Clay shoes are not as flexible as I wisht them to be. 

Other than that, they achieved good ergonomics and are perfectly fine for wearing throughout a whole day. The top mesh in the front part helps in the very hot days, still I wouldn't recommend them for extremely hot weather conditions.

Performance

In 90% of the cases I used the Gel Dedicate 8 Clay on clay surface as they are designed for. On this surface they did extremely well - very good grip and overall performance. Sliding is a bit hard since the grip with the surface is too much sometimes but still achievable. 
On serve I also feel like I have good grip and contact with the surface. 

In general this shoe is a solid performer on the court. 

Durability

Back in the days Asics were the shoe brand that I associated with 2 things - ergonomics and durability. I have to admit that at least from my point of view durability has dropped a bit in the last couple of years, not significantly but just a bit. We can already see some wear and tear in the shoe, something that you can see yourself in the following video review that I made for you this week:

And that is basically it for my long term review of the Asics Gel Dedicate 8 Clay tennis shoes. I have another old Asics tennis shoes (all-court) for backup but I rarely use them as I mostly play on clay these days and I rely on the  Gel Dedicate 8 Clay. 

I would also recommend you to check the Asics Jolt 4 running shoes which I wore quite often this summer.