The Hypershell X Ultra helped me hike a hill that I couldn’t have hiked before

By Nirave Gondhia Published September 8, 2025

I’ve just returned from a trip to Berlin for IFA 2025, and while many products stood out enough to win our Best of IFA 2025 awards, there’s one that I can’t stop thinking about: the Hypershell X Ultra.

It’s the first exoskeleton I have tried, and I confess, it’s the first time I’ve thought about the potential of an exoskeleton. I had many hesitations and was fairly skeptical about its potential, but the Hypershell X Ultra convinced me that it’s more than just potential: this is a product that could help me right now.

I spent a few hours with the Hypershell X Ultra in Berlin, starting with a hike up an iconic hill in Germany and several flights of stairs, before an equally challenging descent down, a car ride to the IFA venue, and several thousand steps through the show floor wearing the Hypershell X Ultra.

This is my experience with the Hypershell X Ultra, along with all the key information you need to know.

The X Ultra is the latest exoskeleton from Hypershell, which launched four years ago, raised $1.3 million from over 2,000 backers two years ago, and has since grown to 15,000 users. 

This growing experience and larger user base provide Hypershell with the necessary information to evolve the exoskeleton category, and a partnership with SGS has also led to the creation of a new set of standards for the category to rally behind.

The Hypershell X Ultra features two motors — one on each hip — that combine to offer 1000W of power. This is a sizable 35-percent increase over the previous generation, which was the first to offer one horsepower in combined power. This means it’s capable of providing more lift and assistance to get you moving and can be more supportive to those with larger masses.

There’s also a sizeable battery to ensure you’re kept moving. In Eco mode — more on the modes below — the Hypershell X Ultra offers up to 30 kilometers of range and 800 meters in elevation when set to 50% power. Naturally, higher power reduces the range considerably, but it should still be approximately six kilometers in Hyper mode.

As you may have guessed, Eco mode is designed to balance power output and longevity, providing less assistance or resistance than other modes, but offering considerably longer endurance. 

However, if you’re in particularly challenging terrain or need additional bounce or lift while handling steep ascents, Hyper mode is the equivalent of enabling sport mode in your car. There’s also a transparent mode, which is nearly identical to the same mode on the best wireless earbuds, and disables the motors so you return to your natural capabilities.

Once connected to the Hypershell+ app via Bluetooth, you can also enable a new Fitness mode, and this is one of the most interesting features on the Hypershell X Ultra. It works similarly to resistance bands or an Endless Pool by providing resistance to increase the intensity of your overall workout.

The app also makes it easy to granularly change the percentage of power used in the other modes. There’s also a host of different settings you can customize, including hill descent support, haptic feedback intensity, and how responsive the assistance is compared to your natural movement. There’s a specifically useful feature that allows you to adjust the torque distribution towards your right or left leg, which is ideal if you have weaknesses in a specific leg. 

If you don’t have the app, you can cycle through just the eco and hyper modes by single-pressing and then immediately double-pressing the button on the right side. The buttons are fairly easy to push, but it’s much simpler to control it via the app, as I accidentally put the Hypershell X Ultra into transparency mode while trying to change the power level. 

When I did, I realized just how great — and challenging — the Hypershell X Ultra actually is. 

Imagine having an electric bike for your legs, and the difference it makes compared to a standard pedal bike, and it will explain the core of the Hypershell X Ultra experience. Transparency mode reveals just how much of a difference that assistance makes, which is further accentuated when it is removed.

A heart attack five years ago and spinal fusion surgery on my neck nine months later mean that intensive hikes can be challenging. The Hypershell X Ultra made it effortless to achieve this hike, which isn’t Mount Everest, but it comes at a surprising cost.

The biggest surprise is that the only parts of the hill hike that were particularly challenging were where it was in transparency mode. In hyper mode, it felt effortless to scale the hill and even many of the stairs, although this was still particularly taxing on my physical health. 

The Hypershell X Ultra supports your personal health and can help you achieve dreams that may otherwise seem unattainable. However, if you don’t often hike, you’ll want to start slower and let the Hypershell X Ultra gradually improve your fitness, and therefore, increase your own natural capabilities.

The fitness mode is particularly useful if you are aiming to improve your leg strength, and wearing the Hypershell X Ultra in this mode offers a strengthening experience that’ll be familiar if you’ve previously used resistance bands. It’s a surprisingly effective way of strengthening core leg muscles, and there’s an ISO mode in the app which can help you stretch your muscles before or after a workout as well. 

Walking 10,000 steps with the Hypershell X Ultra is significantly easier than without, but it still impacts my energy levels. Yet, the day after my hike and experiment, all I could think about was the Hypershell X Ultra. 

This was partially due to how much easier it would have been to walk the show floor that day, but the other reason was its use case for micro exercises. It’s not medically certified or positioned, but I used it in fitness mode while walking slowly back and forth for five minutes, and it helped significantly reduce the chronic soreness I feel in my muscles after exercising. 

It’s been 48 hours since I took off the Hypershell X Ultra, and I’m now thinking about how much farther I could explore. This was the goal of Hypershell, and it certainly delivers: the Hypershell X Ultra gives me the confidence to live life on my terms and provides that necessary boost to keep me going further.

The Hypershell X Ultra is available at $1,999 from Hypershell’s official website, with shipments expected to begin later this month.