Jonathan Ellsworth
CEP Wintersport Compression Socks
Days Worn: 20+ 
I’m not sure whether I performed a particularly kind deed in a past life, or somehow found favor in the eyes of Ullr, or simply lucked out in the genetics lotto, but I am delighted to report that cold hands and feet are not an issue for me while skiing.
As Andrew and Julia have reported, it is difficult to report with confidence that CEP’s stated claims are true. Because (thankfully) my feet don’t run cold, I didn’t experience any particular improvement or problem with respect to warmth.
Did the CEP Compression socks enhance performance? I don’t know, but I can say, like Julia, that they did enhance fit for me. I’ve recently added a custom, high-performance liner that is slightly thinner than my (very good) stock liner from Lange. The new liner is excellent, and the CEP socks snug up the fit around my foot and have helped make my new setup feel dialed.
I can also report that as my stock liners packed out, I had been experiencing some shin bang, and my shins had developed rather permanent, vertical, red abrasions that ran from top of my ankle up my shin along the tibialis anterior. But these abrasions have now cleared up, and started to do so right about the time that I started using the CEP socks.
CEP socks come with a left and right model, and the company boasts that, their socks, “adjust to the anatomy of the foot for a perfect fit thanks to medi’s three-dimensional manufacturing process.” I can’t say much about this “three-dimensional manufacturing process,” but I can vouch that the CEPs do feel like a perfect fit: Where other socks might leave small creases or folds, the CEP socks wrap to your foot so well that there is no bunching.
But if your boots are a very tight racer fit, I doubt that these socks will be thin enough to work for you, and I can imagine that your boot and liner might already be so snug that the (minimal) additional thickness of the CEPs could reduce rather than improve your circulation. However, if your current sock-liner-boot combo leaves enough room for you to wiggle your toes a bit, then you likely have enough room to try the CEP.
The CEP Wintersport Socks are extremely well made, and seem to have helped eliminate shin bang issues I was having. But beyond this, if there were any performance gains or recovery benefits of the CEP, they were subtle, subtle enough that neither Andrew, Julia, nor I can say that we noticed.
Would I recommend them? If you’ve got slightly more room in your boots than you’d like and you’ve also got circulation issues or problems with shin bang, these might be worth a try. But if the fit of your boots is dialed and you aren’t experiencing other issues, then given our experience so far, we can’t say that you will definitely notice an improvement in terms of performance or recovery over your current socks.
Should any of our impressions change, we’ll be sure to update.