jeffbax

Weight: 140lbs
Boot size: 8.5"
Riding style: All Mountain
Age: 23, pretty stabilized growth-wise
Budget: ~300-400
Location: Northeast USA (live in Boston)

I have gone boarding about ten times now in the past 3 years, but its the first time I'll have ever owned one... I'm not playing ice hockey anymore so I am picking up a new winter sport

I've been looking at a few and seem to be narrowing it down to:

Ride Antic ($400)
Rome Agent (400)
GNU CHB MTX ($400)
Rome Solution ($319)

From what I've been able to read, these seem like pretty general boards, I'm looking for something I can grow into, I can carve down blues pretty well and take blacks pretty slow. Obviously I have a lot of work to do. I think I'd prefer to stay under/around $400 for now, but I'm mainly concerned with overlooking some boards that might be better values.

I'm not exactly sure about height, but 154cm seems like thats where I should look. When going to a local shop they said I probably don't want to go any higher than 155cm and recommended shorter boards to help build confidence in control, but for the money I don't want to outgrow the board too quickly.

Any advice? I've been trying to search, but google reviews generally suck and it seems that opinions are quite frequently mixed on any given board

I got a decent pair of Salomon boots and Ride RX bindings already, they seemed to fit well, I just need to finally pick a board

Jenzo

Any chance you can demo from local shop?

jimmerjammermrk

I was looking for a new all mountain stick a few weeks ago.

Finally settled on a K2 podium. I was also considering a Ride society, Salomon burner, and K2 zeppelin. Any of these would be a solid freeride board, with the society probably having the most flex, the podium and burner coming in somewhere in the middle, and the zeppelin having the least flex. Depending on how advanced you are, I might say stay away from the society and zeppelin.

There are a ton of other great boards out there, but these are a few of the ones I researched fairly heavily.

jeffbax

Its a bit tough, I don't get so many shots to go regularly with work to demo a lot and am about to go on a trip with my friends in Tahoe in a month so I'm more inclined to try to just pull the gun (although it may be less wise). I'm not sure I'm at the point where I would necessarily notice the little differences between roughly similar boards (should that be the case..)

I'll give those boards a look jimmer!

Dawg Catcher

ride or the rome agent. both are solid companies and both are solid boards. if you are anything like everyone else on here this wont be the last board you buy in a 6 month time frame so worst case scenario you are dissapointed sell it on craiglist and get something else or keep it for a rock board.

SnowBun

Rome Agent seems to be a pretty good board, but can't speak from personal experience. I have the RX bindings, and I don't know if you rode them yet or not, but if you haven't, I'm sure you will enjoy them once you do.