Highlander Tiree Pro Trekking Poles | Tested and reviewed

Scottish brand Highlander is a great port of call when bargain hunting – and the Tiree Pro fits that narrative perfectly. At £40 per pair, it’s a stone cold bargain, delivering surprisingly impressive performance without breaking the bank.

For entry-level hikers, or anyone on a budget, it’s a solid choice, with the three-part, telescopic, lever-clamp technology and carbon-aluminium build displaying a long-proven design style. But the Tiree Pro comes with big pros and cons.

The positives? It’s incredibly good value, feels strong and stable, offers broad adjustability from 100cm to 135cm, and has an excellent extended hand grip with natural contouring. You also get decent all-round features including grippy tungsten-carbide tips, two types of baskets and a nice wrist leash.

The negatives? It’s heavy at 244g per pole and it doesn’t pack down very compactly: collapsed-down, it’s 63cm long, which feels awkward to store in a backpack.

Furthermore, due to the bargain basement price point, many of the hardware components – such as the lever clamp locking mechanism and the wrist leash adjustment cap - feel rather cheap and basic. But you really can’t grumble at this price point. For £40 these trekking poles are superb value, even with a few flaws here and there.

Design, locking mechanism, materials and durability

This is a simple, basic, no-frills pole for the entry-level market. It uses a classic trekking pole construction technique with a proven design that has been around for many years. It’s a three-part pole, which folds down in a telescopic style and is locked in place by lever clamps.

None of this is revolutionary or unique – it’s an off-the-shelf design we’ve seen hundreds of times before – but it performs solidly enough and delivers unbeatable value.

At this price, you’d expect the Tiree Pro to be entirely made from cheaper aluminium. But it actually has one carbon segment. The top section of the pole is made from carbon, while the lower two parts are made from aluminium 6061.

This design technique feels pretty bombproof. The pole feels hefty and thick in the hand, and long-term durability should be pretty impressive, although more time is needed to truly find out.

The locking mechanism used is the classic lever-style clamp lock. There are two of these little devices on each pole, enabling you to extend or shorten the second and third pole segments. You simply open the lever, slide the pole out to your desired length and then snap the lever back in place.

This grips the pole segments securely and, on initial impressions, leaves the pole with a strong, stable structure. It works pretty well. A small, grooved dial on the side of each locking device can be used to alter the tension of the clamp when required. You can do this on-the-go, half way up a mountain, without any problems.

However, with a pair of poles priced at just £40, it would be fair to say that some components, such as the locking mechanisms, feel a tad cheap and nasty. Inevitably, due to the realities of economics, they are not premium parts and this may affect long-term performance. We haven’t had any problems yet, but it’s important to be realistic.

With all outdoor kit, you usually get what you pay for, so at this bargain basement price point there’s an inherent risk that performance will deteriorate over time. It’s something to bear in mind when making your purchasing decisions.

Length, adjustability, weight and portability

In our view, the Highlander Tiree Pro does not score highly across the metrics of length, weight and portability – it’s too long and heavy, and it’s somewhat awkward to carry in a backpack.

For the price, we suppose it delivers half-decent performance, and you can’t complain too much, but for some hillwalkers the flaws may be a deal-breaker. But, in terms of adjustability, it scores far better, with a good range of length options to suit all needs. Here are the full details.

On our scales the Highlander Tiree Pro clocks in at 244g per pole. That’s pretty heavy – one of the heaviest poles we’ve tested in recent years – and such a hefty weight will instantly put off any ultralight-ers.

But others may see the chunkier, more substantial build as a reassuring sign of strength and stability, and won’t be bothered by a few extra grams in return for such a bargain.

Our thoughts? After using ultralight poles such as the Fizan Compact and Leki Skytera FX Carbon SL, we found the Highlander Tiree Pro a little too heavy – after all, it’s 75g and 62g heavier per pole than these two options respectively.

During our test hikes, the Tiree Pro felt a bit cumbersome and unwieldy in-use, and on bigger mileage days the extra weight appeared to slow down the intensity and agility of our arm turnover and pole placement. But, having said that, at £40 for a pair you can’t really grumble, and for slower-paced hiking the extra weight may not be a big issue.

In packed-away mode, with the lower two thirds hidden telescopic-style inside the upper third, the Highlander Tiree Pro is 63cm long. That’s certainly longer than ideal and means portability is average rather than good.

The pole will stick up quite high when stored in backpack side pockets or suspended in trekking pole loops, and it feels a little burdensome to carry.

It’s not as long as some others (the Komperdell Carbon C3 Pro is 68cm long), but it’s much longer than many others (the Leki Skytera FX Carbon SL and Black Diamond Pursuit Carbon Z are both 40cm long).

Adjustability is a stronger suit of the Highlander Tiree Pro. It is adjustable from 100cm to 135cm – a very broad range – and can easily be tweaked longer or shorter to suit the terrain and gradient you encounter. It works nicely.

Hand grips, leashes, baskets and pole tips

All of the features and accessories you’d expect are present with the Highlander Tiree Pro. They all deliver decent performance, but – as with the locking mechanism clamps – most of the components feel a tad cheap.

This is probably unavoidable for the price point, but you certainly don’t get premium hardware at a bargain basement price.

The only component we really don’t like is the cap for adjusting the D-loop wrist leash’s length – it feels a little clunky and possibly at-risk of slipping. But it’s not an essential issue and probably won’t cause too much hassle, even if it did completely fail.

Other components are slightly better. The wrist leash itself feels comfy enough, the tungsten carbide tips “bite” nicely into the ground, and Highlander generously includes trekking baskets, snow baskets and rubber foot tips with every set of poles. But the best feature without doubt is the hand grip.

We’ve been very impressed with the Tiree Pro’s hand grip, particularly considering the cheap price. Made from EVA foam, we’ve found the grip comfy with a natural shape for our palm and fingers, and we’ve loved the extended grip.

This has superb length (30cm in total), with the main hand grip 14cm-long and the extension continuing a further 16cm down the shaft of the pole below the main hand grip. This design enables loads of versatility in terms of hand positioning and gripping techniques.

In our eyes, the foam is relatively firm with an iota of give. It is nicely contoured, with shapely, smooth curves designed for your fingers. There’s a shallow depression for your little finger, ring finger and middle finger to rest comfortably within.

Your little finger can rest atop a ridge-like bulge in the hand grip, while your index fingers sits naturally in the shallow hollow between two other bulges. It all feels comfy with a natural fit. The extended length of the grip, meanwhile, has a standard rounded style, with cross-hatched etching for added grip.

Verdict

A carbon-aluminium pole with a telescopic design and excellent extended hand grip, at a bargain price point – but the components feel a bit basic and cheap.

About the author

James Forrest writes regular features and route guides for Trail and has been one of our main gear testers for the last few years. James is based on the edge of the Lake District so when he isn’t off on his latest crazy adventure or challenge, he’s walking in his local fells.

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