WhiteLines Magazine has rounded up our favourite all-mountain, freestyle, freeride and splitboard snowboards for the 2020/21 season

Source: WhiteLines Magazine

What is the best snowboard? It’s a question we get asked on a daily basis and a question that has ruined many a Whitelines staff night out. Truth be told, the best Snowboard isn’t determined by the product itself; it’s determined by the rider. Finding the right deck is an entirely subjective decision, based on your ability level, budget and, crucially, where you like to spend your time on the mountain. Are you lapping the park, pistes or powder? Are you getting your kicks in resort or out of bounds? 

“Truth be told, the best snowboard isn’t determined by the product itself; it’s determined by the rider”

Regardless of what you’re in the market for, there’s an abundance of choice. Frankly, the sheer quantity of options can be one of the most challenging aspects to overcome when picking out your next snowboard. Luckily, there’s no such thing as a bad board, per se – at least not in our Buyer’s Guide – but having trust in your equipment and confidence in your decision making process is essential. 

Below, you’ll find a hand-picked selection of our favourite snowboards for this year. This contains the best freeride snowboards, park and Freestyle snowboards, all-mountain snowboards and some of our favourite splitboard and kids snowboard highlights. You’ll find everything from weird and wonderful vilume-shifted powder twins to hard-charging park destroyers.

If you’re shopping for the first time or are still confused by some of the technical jargon then we’ve also put together some handy video explainers. Take a look at the links below for some useful advice.

Best Snowboards 2020-2021

• Salomon Dancehaul (Unisex) – Best All-Mountain Snowboard
• K2 Alchemist – Best Men’s Freeride Snowboard
• Gnu Barrett – Best Women’s Freeride Snowboard
• Rome Artifact – Best Men’s Freestyle Snowboard
• Ride Back Talk – Best Women’s Freestyle Snowboard
• Lobster Cream – Best Men’s Newcomer Snowboard
• Salomon No Drama – Best Women’s Newcomer Snowboard
• Jones Solution – Best Men’s Splitboard Snowboard
• Weston Riva – Best Women’s Splitboard Snowboard
• Bataleon Stuntwood – Best Kid’s Snowboard

Salomon Dancehaul (Unisex) Snowboard 2020-2021

Whitelines Choice Winner: Best All-Mountain Snowboard
PRICE: £400 / $450
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Riders looking for something weird and wonderful look no further, this gold breasted disco diva is set to blow your knickers off. Brand spanking new for 2020/21 the Dancehaul is Salomon’s foray into the world of short fatties, and you know what they say… once you go fat, you never go back. This is your new all-terrain cruiser built for blasting on piste, charging through chop and chunder, slashing your way through pristine pockets of powder and even throwing down in the park.

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K2 Alchemist Snowboard 2020-2021

Whitelines Choice Winner: Best Men’s Freeride Snowboard
PRICE: $700

The Dictionary defines alchemy as: “A seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination”, and we can’t disagree with its usage here. The K2 Alchemist is a no holds barred, no expense spared piece of kit. Let’s face it, this isn’t just a snowboard, this is a goddam’ feat of engineering. Built for deep days in the backcountry, narrow chutes, and deadly spines, this is where precision meets power, wrapped in the most premium package in their line. 

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Gnu Barrett Women’s Snowboard 2020-2021

Whitelines Choice Winner: Best Women’s Freeride Snowboard
PRICE: £500 / €560 / $560

A re-brand and re-build for the longest-running women’s pro-model snowboard, the Gnu Barrett (formerly B-Pro) beefs up the construction and gives it a more freeride focused shape for this winter. Not only does Barrett Christy have over 25 years of experience snowboarding as well as countless medals in everything from slopestyle to banked slaloms but she is also head of design for Gnu’s women’s snowboards. So, as you would imagine, the board that bears her name aims for the same high standards she did as a rider. 

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Rome Artifact Snowboard 2020-2021

Whitelines Choice Winner: Best Men’s Freestyle Snowboard
PRICE: £350 / $400

Rome have completely redesigned and rebuilt their boards, boots and bindings collection from the ground up for 2021. A pretty bold move, for sure (we’re picturing some late nights and Pepe Silvia moments), but it looks to have massively paid off. This season’s snowboard lineup is stacked with newcomers, as well as some reimagined classics. The Artifact maybe encapsulates this best of all. Their original park board gets a complete facelift and stomps right in to claim the Whitelines Choice top spot as the best freestyle snowboard of the year. Pure. Park. Perfection.

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Ride Back Talk Women’s Snowboard 2020-2021

Whitelines Choice Winner: Best Women’s Freestyle Snowboard
PRICE: $470

Coming in hot after receiving critical acclaim its inaugural season the Ride Back Talk is an aggressive freestyle snowboard built for discerning lady shredders. If you’re a hard charging, fierce ripping, balls to the wall kind of girl then the Back Talk is a board that’s gonna keep you on your toes and always have your back. Strap in and let your riding do the talking. 

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Lobster Cream Snowboard 2020-2021

Best for: Best Men’s Newcomer Snowboard
PRICE: €450

Here’s the thing with freestyle and freeride categories, they’re a bit like butt cheeks. You can pull them apart all you like, but they’ll always find a way back together. The brand spanking new Lobster Cream snowboard takes a pinch of powder design, with a big slap of freestyle construction and delivers an absolute peach of an all-mountain deck.

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Salomon No Drama Women’s Snowboard 2020-2021

Best for: Best Women’s Newcomer Snowboard
PRICE: £400 / $450
BUY DIRECT FROM SURFDOME
Brand new for this season the Salomon No Drama is set to take women’s freestyle riding up a notch. Taking inspiration from Salomon’s award-winning Huck Knife, the No Drama is a dynamic and lively snowboard that packs one hell of a punch. In the music industry, Madonna is known ubiquitously as the Queen of Pop, in the snowboard industry, the No Drama is garnering that very name for itself, too. One has won the Whitelines Choice award for ‘Best Newcomer’, and the other has been excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Stay tuned to find out which is which…

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Jones Solution Splitboard 2020-2021

Best for: Best Men’s Splitboard
PRICE: £785 / €900 / $900

Well, Jeremy and the gang have only gone and bloody done it. The completely reworked 2021 Jones Solution splitboard marks a major checkpoint in splitboarding’s ever-evolving construction standards. This time last year we were raving about their split collection but highlighted that the one drawback compared to their solid counterparts in the lack of the 3D Contour Base. Naively, we assumed that “the logistics of ‘spooning’ the nose and tail in a splitboard is probably beyond even the brains of the backcountry boffins at Jones”. How wrong we were. 

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Weston Riva Women’s Splitboard 2020-2021

Best for: Best Women’s Splitboard
PRICE: $900

You could pretty much count the snowboard brands producing the same number of men’s and women’s products on one glove – and we’d save the biggest finger for Weston. The Colorado-based backcountry powderhounds have an extensive line of both solid and splitboards where the lads and ladies have an equal number of unisex and gender-specific options to choose from. 

Because of this, there’s an abundance of strength in depth for every ability and style of backcountry enthusiast out there. The Riva splitboard is revamped for 2021 and is the most performance focussed splitboard for ladies lining up at the trail and ready for whatever conditions mother nature throws at them.

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Bataleon Stuntwood Kid’s Snowboard 2020-2021

Best for: Best Kid’s Snowboard
PRICE: €290 / $300

o, your kid is already better than you at snowboarding. Chin up, it could be worse, they could be a skier… There’s a strange no man’s land between kiddy snowboards and full-size adult decks, and when your grom has outgrown the former but the latter is still a bit cumbersome and unwieldy they’re often left a bit shortchanged. Enter the brand new Bataleon Stuntwood, the all-mountain freestyle ripper built specifically for the young guns. Drawing much of its DNA from the multi-award-winning Bataleon Evil Twin, the Stuntwood is the ultimate pint-sized party wagon for your prepubescent park rat. 

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