In this side-by-side product review Outside Pursuits leads you through everything you need to know in order to pick the best park and freestyle snowboard for your specific needs and type of snowboarding.

We’ll take a look at what makes the best snowboards for parks and the best snowboards for freestyle boarding for the money and what to avoid. Also see How To Choose The Best Park Or Freestyle Snowboard  later in the article. What is the best park snowboard or freestyle snowboard for you?

Quick Answer: The 5 Best Park and Freestyle Snowboards

1. 2018 Gilson Duel Men’s Park Snowboard
2. Rossignol Men’s Retox Amptek Freestyle Snowboard
3. BATALEON Goliath Freestyle Snowboard
4. Signal Park Snowboard
5. Bataleon Feel Better Freestyle Snowboard

Best Park and Freestyle Snowboards

	2018 Gilson Duel Men’s Park Snowboard	Rossignol Men’s Retox Amptek Freestyle Snowboard	BATALEON Goliath Freestyle Snowboard
Edge	Soft Edge / Hard Edge	Deep Progressive Sidecut	Sidekick uplift at nose and tail
Flex Profile	SuperFlex	Twin Freestyle Flex	Mid-flex rating
Special Features	Poplar wood core, Shape: Park	AmpTek Freestyle Rocke	Carbon and triax reinforcement
Customer Ratings	5.0 / 5.0 Stars	2.5 / 5.0 Stars	N/A

Also see: Park and Freestyle Snowboard Comparison Table

Best Park and Freestyle Snowboards

#1 2018 Gilson Duel Men’s Park Snowboard

If you’re looking for a dedicated park board, this is the first stop on the board shopping bus for you!

This board is a mostly flat design throughout the midsection but quickly pulls into a rocker at the nose and tail. Combined with the flat nose and tail shape, it makes the board more agile, easier to spin, and fun to kick up into butters. After all, that’s what park’s all about, right?

However, because of that you’ll be doing more work to keep the board floating and charging in powder so keep this board in the park if you want to be efficient. On top of all that, the rolled up edges, called soft edges, are detuned so they don’t catch on features in the park.

Of course, like we talked about, this detuned edge shape will make it more work to rip a carve on the board compared to something more technical. Plus the lack of camber means this board will struggle to get air.

Best for dedicated park boarding, especially grinds, butters, and jibbing with little time on the groomers or off-piste.

#2 Rossignol Men’s Retox Amptek Freestyle Snowboard

If the Gilson Duel is a butter board, the Rossi Retox is a poppy, jump-boosting board with a more lively camber.

This board is definitely feature made for all-mountain freestyle. The camber gives pop and pre-load to jumps but means a good solid edge hold when boarding all over the mountain to get to your destination.

Inside, the wood core is made on the stiff end and works arm in arm with the camber profile to add more pop. However, that means a more stubborn board that might be a little more prone to catching edges or hanging up when grinding and buttering.

Thanks to the clipped nose and tail there’s less swing weight and more mass near the center so you can pop and spin off the smallest features.

Best for extra hang time all over the mountain on a very affordable board.

#3 BATALEON Goliath Freestyle Snowboard

For a little more well rounded all-mountain ride look at the Goliate Freestyle. This board is at home in the powder, all over the mountain, and in the park.

More so than most boards on our list so far, this board is loaded with cutting edge tech. The Sidekick uplift smooths out the board by detuning the edges near the nose and tail while leaving things relatively flat in the middle of the board. This eases turn initiation while maintaining rigid edge hold once the is tipped up.

WIth a slight camber the board performs somewhere between a flat board and a fully cambered board. That’s one of the reasons this board fits into the truly all-mountain category as it can ride powder, groomers, or park.

Thanks to the carbon stringers and triax laminates in the board, the deck has tons of power transfer, too!

Best for all-mountain freestyle riding with powder and park thrown in to really conquer everything.

#4 Signal Park Snowboard

When was the last time you got a blank snowboard just waiting to be customized to your liking? And the best part is that the board itself can be customized to your riding style.

Okay, technically this board is a medium/soft but compared to most boards on our list it’s on the low end. That said, however, the cambered shape of the board makes up for a bit of the softness with an overall edge engagement when you tip the board up.

Thanks to the flat nose and tail more of the board mass is centered and that means easier and faster spins. Like the Gilson Duel you can get more spins with less air.

Unlike the Bataleon Goliath, however, you’ll want to keep this board in the park. It just isn’t meant to glide over the powder and the soft flex means you’ll struggle to maintain control in all mountain conditions.

Best for a soft flex board that allows you to really manipulate board shape and edge pressure in the park.

#5 Bataleon Feel Better Freestyle Snowboard

While the Goliath board shreds freestyle and all mountain, the Feel Better board prefers to eat park and spit it out.

Sharing a lot of features, like the sidekick edge uplift, with the Goliath doesn’t mean much when the rest of the board is a different animal. Make no mistake, the Feel Better and Goliath are not interchangeable.

For beginners and park riders, the Feel Better is a clear winner. This board has a much softer flex and flatter profile overall. This means more rider control and forgiveness in the park when you’re working on those tricks.

That said, this board has a lot going for it and it won’t back down from riding the whole mountain if you want to get out of the park and shred.

Best for one board that can cover the park for beginners up to advanced riders.

Park And Freestyle Snowboard Comparison Table

How to Choose the Best Park or Freestyle Snowboard

Somehow snowboarding seems to be synonymous with popping kickers in the park. Of course, there are tons of ways to enjoy a day on the slopes with your snowboard. Today we’re going to focus specifically on freestyle and park boards, however.

Just to make sure you’re in the right place, let’s briefly clarify what we’re talking about as far as these two disciplines of snowboarding. Terrain parks, the areas filled with rails, kickers, and pipes are the place to go when it’s time to refine some tricks. Freestyle, on the other hand, is when we take those skills all over the mountain like tail taps for the boys!

If this sounds like your kind of day on the hill and you’re just not sure what snowboard to take with you, let’s clear it all up! We don’t want you to get laughed out of the park by showing up with the wrong board.

• Snowboard Length
• Snowboard Profile
• Sidecut
• Snowboard Internals and Core
• Edge Tuning
• Conclusion

Snowboard Length

It’s easy to understand how snowboard length affects your time on the mountain. Shorts boards are:

For freestyle, if you plan to spend time off-piste, you may want to go a bit longer than the average park board so you don’t sink in the pow (which will cause a huge loss of control). For terrain parks, the snow is already packed down and you’re usually not ripping down the hill at full speed so a shorter board is probably a better choice for agility.

Snowboard Profile

There are two big shapes that make a difference in park and freestyle boards.

Camber is the upturned shape like an upside down U which causes your force to be spread out evenly along the length of your board. Most boards have some camber profile but turn upward at the nose and tail which is technically rocker.

Rocker or flat is essentially the U shape of a board, bending upward from the middle toward the nose and tail. Most boards in this category are actually more flat than really upturned but it’s essentially the opposite of camber.

Cambered boards are great for stability and edge hold which can be really important to help get an edge in and dig your way up the side of the pipe. They’re also good for grip and edge hold on super hard snow and ice.

Because cambered boards are pre-loaded and can be really loaded up on jumps they tend to have a lot more pop than flat boards. If you want extra air, you’ll need some degree of camber.

Flat boards are great for rails and grinding because they slide a little better and don’t put as much downward pressure under the board. This gives the board more of a “buttery” or smooth sliding feel underfoot with less likelihood of edge catches.

Flat boards fall behind cambered boards for pop and preload when it comes to kicking off jumps.

Sidecut

Snowboard sidecut refers to the difference in the width of the board between the widest points at the nose and tail versus the narrowest part of the middle of the board. The difference, usually in millimeters, is expressed as sidecut.

Sidecut, when taken as a whole, forms some part of the circumference of a circle. The size of this imaginary circle dramatically affects the ergonomics and performance of the snowboard. Therefore the more sidecut, the smaller the turn radius of the snowboard. The larger (or less pronounced) the sidecut, the larger the turn radius of the board.

Of course this turn radius can be impacted by how hard you load the board, how good the edge grip of the board is, and whether you’re fully carving or skidding a turn.

Sidecut is a relatively tough subject for snowboarders to agree on when it comes to freestyle and park. For park skiing, a generous sidecut is usually a good idea because it gives more control over the hardpack of the groomed snow and when you tip the board on edge to rip up the side of the pipe, it will be able to keep up.

For freestyle, if you’re going off-piste a lot, a less aggressive sidecut may be fine. This will usually give better float in the powder and in general a more smooth, buttery feel in soft snow.

NOTE: It’s worth noting that it is possible to have good sidecut design while still having flat or upturned edges (de-tuned). In doing so you’ll reduce hangups and edge catches when sliding, switching, or grinding but at the same time you’ll have to put in more effort to tip that board up on edge when you want it to engage.

Snowboard Internals and Core

Inside every snowboard is a core of material. This is usually wood, carbon, fiberglass, titanium, or other various lightweight, poppy materials with lots of flex.

Manufacturers are always changing and updating materials so it’s hard to cover them all here. However I’ll try to give you a few thinking points that can help guide your decisions.

Usually poplar wood cores are common, even among high end boards. Other woods can be laminated or added in various shapes to alter the geometry and performance of the board.

Over the top of a wood core is usually some layers of fiberglass, resin, metals, and other various components. For park boarding, look for a board that has been constructed with torsional rigidity in mind.

A board that lacks torsional rigidity will flex and falter when you put it on edge to grab the snow. That can make a park board unpredictable and unreliable. Those stronger internals can also be used to focus power into the tail of the board so you can really preload it and spring off.

However, for some applications a softer board my be more ideal. A flat board for grinding will usually be quite a bit softer and more flexible, for instance.

Edge Tuning

I alluded to this earlier, but I’d like to take a second to talk about edge tuning and edge angles. In order to take advantage of the sidecut shape of a board, you have to tip that board up on its edge to get the metal edge to engage the snow.

If this happens accidentally, say when grinding a rail or buttering a turn, you’ll take a nasty digger called an edge catch. If this has happened to you, you’ll know what I mean. If you haven’t experienced this yet, you will.

Some boards have purposely detuned edges which are slightly turned up. That way the edge of the board is less likely to accidentally grab a rail or a pile of slush during spring conditions.

That’s all well and good, but at the same time this design reduces edge catches, it also causes the edge of the board to do its job less effectively. That means a relatively loss of edge control and the requirement of tipping that board up on edge much more aggressively when you do want the edge to do some work for you.

Conclusion

When it comes down to it, the best snowboard for you is a very particular choice. I can’t tell you what to get, you have to figure it out based on what you like to do!

Should you go with a soft flex and a camber profile or a stiff flex and a flat profile? Well, that really depends on where you’re riding, how you like to ride, and what kind of tricks you’re focusing on. No one snowboard is perfect for everything on the mountain.

I tried to get you thinking about the characteristics of a snowboard that can help you get where you’re trying to go. In the reviews we covered a range of park and freestyle snowboards from specific to general. Some are good all over the mountain, some are so specific they can best be used for a narrow set of tricks!

If you’ve got a tight budget, go with something that’s more of a “generalist” snowboard and over time you can learn more about your riding style and save up for a specific board that meets your growing needs!

Thanks for reading The 7 Best Snowboard Helmets Reviewed. We hope this article has helped you to discover the best choice for a snowboard helmet to meet your needs and type of boarding. You might also be interested in our informative article entitled, How to Snowboard – A Beginners Guide.

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For more of our top snowboarding gear recommendations, have a look through these popular Outside Pursuits review articles: Snowboarding Boots, Snowboard Bindings, Snowboard Goggles.

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How We Researched

To come up with the top park and freestyle snowboards, we researched a variety of sources for reviews such as REI, Backcountry, Moosejaw, EVO along with our own personal experience.

We also consulted online magazines for product research and reviews to get as much unbiased information as we could. To help weed out fake reviews we used Fakespot.com to make sure we only looked at genuine reviews.

With so much quality gear available, we had to narrow it down based on what we felt were the best options were for the price. The author, Richard Moore, is a keen snowboarder.

To help narrow down the selection he used his personal experience along with recommendations from snowboard enthusiasts.

After extensive research, we came up with our list to help you choose the right one for you.

Sources