Board: Ride Kink
Size: 147
Camber Option: Hybrid Twin Camber. Camber with micro rocker zones at the contact points.
Bindings: Ride Rodeo LTD
Stance: 21 Wide 9 Negative 9 Goofy
Boots: DC Lynx 8.5
My Weight: 155
Resort: Keystone
Conditions: Just before spring snow confusion. Not quite slush, not quite normal snow.
Flex: Softer, but not a noodle. Lower end of the park spectrum sitting in that supportive jib stick area.
Stability: Getting camber back in this deck has helped this a lot. The flex isn’t terribly different than the past few years but having that camber just makes it so much easier to feel comfortable at speeds, even on the tiny size. The sidecut is also right where it should be to keep things in control.
Ollies: YAY CAMBER!!! Such fun, it’s a soft but not too soft board with camber. Enough snap for anything short of the big line in the park.
Pop On Jumps: Camber just has such a nice spring to it off a lip. It will handle anything up to about 50-60ft under a good jumper, anything bigger than that and you risk washing out just from sheer speed and impact. But it snaps a lip great and the landing gear is there.
Butterability: Just soft enough that the board will never fight back, but still stiff enough it wont go limp. Super fun.
Jibbing: I’m so happy this deck is camber again. With the flat one you had to watch yourself so you didn’t go over the handlebars and the sweet spot for presses was lacking. This one has a great press point right outside the binding area and when you get into it the board just stays locked in till you snap out. Really great. Boardslides lock in like a champ and it pushes through kinks smoothly.
Carving: The new sidecut this board has is pretty well balanced to it’s stiffness. While jibsticks are very rarely also carving decks, this one allowed a good amount of fun. Really drive your knee into the apex and your back foot will break loose, and you can’t really keep your edge in trying to Euro, but it performed admirably at all the kinds of turns I’d expect a board like this to be able to handle.
Rider in Mind: Park kid spending a little bit more time on rails than jumps and has no interest in giant slopestyle courses.
Personal Thoughts: I owned a Kink the last year it had camber. It was one of my favorite decks of all time. Till this. This has replaced the old one in my mind. There was also always a very blurry line between this and the Crook/Crush and giving this deck camber again has really provided a bigger gap between the two. It rides really well.
Check out the past reviews of the 2012, 2015, and 2016 Kink.
Comparable Boards: DC PBJ, Rossignol Retox, Lib Tech Box Knife
Support your local snowboard shop buy locally. Find a shop here.
This board was loaned to us for review by Ride Snowboards marketing department.
*Discliamer this board did not change for 2018 so we carried the 2016 review over.
5 Comments
Hey, great website one of the few unbiased snowboard review sites out there… Based on what I have seen on here narrowed it down to – Ride Kink, Lib Tech Box knife, Rome Gangplank and DWD Larson. For a med-soft jib/butter board, that still has some snap. Do you have an order of preference? Or any that particularly standout out? Cheers
Larson, Box Knife, Kink, Gangplank as far preference.
Sweet appreciate that, thanks. Must rate really rate the Larson! Out of interest does that preference have anything to do with where they’re made/build quality?
No, it pretty much comes down to the ride of the board. The Larson was a top pick 2 years ago and I still think it holds up.
Fair enough, that is what counts. And always interesting to hear where you’re coming from.