Ride Optimo Contraband Snowboard Binding Review |
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Compare Prices & Buyer Reviews
The Good Ride TakeA Good Ride Take on Binding Tech This is a Goodride breakdown for all you that are having a tough time choosing your bindings and what to make of the material you are looking at. Most bindings are Metal, Plastic or some combo of the 2. Metal Bindings have a lot of great aspects. Almost all-metal bindings are made from aluminum. Aluminum is great when it come to weight to stiffness ratio and also pretty durable. There is one key issue with metal/aluminum bindings; they transfer all the vibrations from the board right into your feet. This is the same principle that pelage “bass-less” bindings, your feet got totally tired or fatigued. The newer generations have much better/damp bases so this problem has been minimized and in some cases eliminated. There are some companies that make great bindings despite the vibration issue with Aluminum. Some that come to mind are Ride and Rome. Plastic Bindings also have many great features but let’s address some technical stuff first. Most plastic bindings are really hardened glass plastic mix. The high-end stuff tends to have a more carbon, and carbon fiber added for extra stiffness and weight savings. Plastic bindings really dominate the market right now and most top bindings these days are mostly or all plastic. They can be really stiff and react well to your commands. The new bindings finally dialed in the carbon/ fiber integration to the point that the bindings will perform with the stiffness of metal and absorb more chatter. Most industry leaders have limited or completely eliminated metal from their bindings and we feel that with the materials used right now this is the future. Some mostly plastic companies that we feel rock are Burton, Flux and Union. What kind of binding should you buy? It’s a tough call. Both Plastic and Metal bindings offer freestyle, freeride and all mountain styles. At this point we feel that plastic bindings are edging out metal bindings when it comes to the very high end $300+ category. However it is a tough call in the below $300 category as to which material has the advantage. The Good Ride Take on Ride- They are from the same parent company as K2 and you can see have many similarities in terms of board design and company policy. Ride’s customer service is better than K2’s and actually has a # to call on their site instead of just an on-line form. Ride, like K2 seems almost secretive when it comes to having third party entities like us or end users like you review their gear. So many companies like Burton, Rome, YES, Arbor ect. are really proud of their gear and try to do everything they can to get you to ride them. Ride seems to do the bare minimum and despite its large size has very few demo products. Their policy seems to be if you want to try it you have to buy it. Ride chooses mainly to work with variations of flat/rocker snowboards but has recently started to work with hybrid camber. Their hybrid camber is different than YES and Rossignol and leans more on the flat camber side of things but we still like to see them go in this direction. We have found that we like some of their shapes but other boards we weren’t fans of . Like K2 Ride’s rocker shapes always seem to be pretty flat between the feet and it makes for one of the better rocker set up out there. Ride makes pretty good bindings and many people swear by them. They have more parts than most bindings but all in all they do a very good job despite the fact that a lot of the binding is metal. We are big fans of the canted foot bed but can’t say we are a fan of their Contraband strap system. They make good boots that last for a long time but boots are so personal all we can speak to is their build and longevity. Company Info & Specs
Ride Optimo 2011OPTIMO CONTRABAND BINDINGSFOR OPTIMAL FLEX AND LIGHTWEIGHT EASE$299.95
NEW ARRIVAL, COMING SOON!
This premium new ContraBand™ binder packs a freestyle punch, followed by a roundhouse kick of flex. The Optimo Contraband binding features the brand new ContraFlex chassis design that’s easy to set up and adjust, and is light and flexible from start to finish. Jam-packed with tech, the Optimo binding includes Wedgie 2.5 & 4.0 footbeds for utmost drive and ollie pop, single ratchet design with new AeroGrip V-Strap and new Stealth highback for maximum side-to-side flex. Bottom line: the new Optimo Contraband is the optimal choice for your high-flying moves. STYLE: All Mountain Freestyle, Park Pipe COLORS: Black, Purple Fade SIZES: 7-9, 9-11, 11-13 CONSTRUCTION: BINDINGS FLEX-O-METER:
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