How To Find A Good Snowboard

Here are instructions for how to find a good snowboard. To find a good snowboard, you need to find out what are you intending to do with it. Every season new designs and features are presented into this hyper dynamic market. Don´t let yourself be fooled by marketers, read reviews and invest some time reading about the products offer before you buy.

1. If you´re just starting to ride, then you should look for a cheap all mountain board that will get you through your first week or two. Also, if you will be snowboarding just a week or two a year, this cheap board could be good for a couple of years. Several unknown brands sell reasonably good boards for very low prices. Remember, mountain towns always offer a variety of used snowshops, and even the thrift stores can give you some good stuff for a few bucks.
2. When buying a snowboard, if you don´t mind the fashionable side of it, you can buy it when  the season is over. If you wait until March or April, you´ll find amazing deals. Package deals are also a convenient way to buy if you´re starting, but make sure you try the boots on first. Snowboard boots sizing tends to be quite weird.
3. For more advanced riders, the decision comes down to style, budget and interest in fashion. A park rider will go with a shorter, more flexible board, that will also be less durable. On the other hand, a rider that enjoys the out of bounds and powder riding will need a bigger, stiffer board, with a tendency to have a longer life. For the ones who like it all, an all mountain board will be mid sized, mid stiff and also have a longer life than a park board, but a shorter one than a big mountain board.
4. Check the boards building quality. on a general basis, "sandwich" construction, which is the type of board that shows the different layers of material in the side, is preferable to injected boards. A sandwich construction will look slicker and will not show any layers, just a synthetic coating from the top to the edge. This is because injected boards are produced injecting polyurethane into a mold, as opposed to layered boards that have a core usually made of wood going along several layers of both metallic an synthetic materials. When an injected board gets hit in the nose, which usually happens within the first day of use, there may be water going in, as opposed to the layered boards that can withstand more abuse without going fluffy.
5. There´s a lot of sizing charts to decide the "perfect" board for each rider. However, these should only be used as a guide, because often some of the board´s feature, such as width, rigidness or camber size (how high the middle part of the board sits when resting) can modify the performance more than just height. If you have the chance, go and demo a board before buying it to find the right one. Remember, a snowboard can be quite an investment, you don´t want to buy blind.