Burton Process Snowboard Review

Who is the Process Most Suited To?

The Process is best suited to intermediate to advanced riders that don't need their board (or they have another board for it) to perform at a high end for powder, speed, high speed carves and in crud. 

For everything else, i.e. if you like to make full use of groomers doing ground tricks, side-hits, lower speed carves, ducking into trees (if the pow isn't too deep) and taking laps in the park, then this board will treat you well, IMO. 

For an intermediate ride who doesn't like speed and doesn't see much powder, it could be a very good one-board-quiver. Or it can compliment a quiver, pairing it with a freeride or powder board.

Not beginner easy to ride, but not too far off. If you're a higher end beginner to low intermediate looking to take the next step up, it could work really well for you. 

Powder

Nothing to test in on the day, but specs and experience with other similar boards suggests it won't be great in powder. 

It's not completely camber (some flat sections) but they aren't significant. It also has a small setback stance location, but not much else going for it powder-wise. 

Carving

Has a nice feel on a carve, when doing so at slower speeds. But it doesn't take a hell of a lot of speed before it starts to feel washy. Slow speed carves, pretty good. But high speed/low angle carves not great. 

Turning

Ease of Turning/Slashing: Nice and easy to initiate turns on and doesn't take a lot of effort.  

Maneuverability at slow speeds: It's pretty agile at slow speeds and again, doesn't take a lot of effort to get it moving from edge-to-edge. 

Catchiness: Minimal chance of catching an edge. If I really tried to get a catchy feel, there was a hint of it in the tail, but really nothing. Nice and easy to turn and all round felt great at slow speeds. 

Speed

However, it didn't feel as comfortable at higher speeds. Fine at slow speeds, medium speeds, but when you started to really open it out, it got pretty wobbly/washy. 

Uneven Terrain

Crud/Chunder: Got bucked around the place pretty easy on this board. Didn't take much to bounce this thing around. Thankfully it was easy to make adjustments. Felt a lot of chatter in uneven terrain too.

Trees/Bumps: The easy and quick edge-to-edge turns helped to make the Process perform well in the trees. It wasn't a fun day for it, with the conditions we had, but it did admirably and would be even better on less icy days. Would get sinky in deep powder tree days, but softer days or shallow powder and it would be super fun in trees. Flexes well over undulations as well.

Jumps

Really fun. Not super stable on faster approaches or landings and could get particularly wobbly on uneven cruddy landings but for everything else, I had blast giving this thing air!

Pop: Really easy to access the pop. More limited total pop but not terrible total pop. Not as much pop as the Custom or Custom X, which I also tested that day but easier to access than both. 

Approach: Really easy to adjust and speed check and stable enough for small to medium jumps but doesn't have the stability to be amazing for larger jumps.

Landing: Not super solid on bigger landings but speed checking or dodging anything  after landing is really good. Forgiving of landing a little off center from smaller jumps. 

Side-hits: This was the part of the Process I liked the most. It was nice and agile and nice easy access pop. So you didn't have to wind anything up and you could seek out harder to access side-hits with confidence. 

Small jumps/Big jumps: Small to medium jumps are best. 

Switch

Really good. Easy transitions and rode very similar switch to my usual direction. Again if you're doing fast/big carves switch, it'll get washy but otherwise great.

Spins

Nice easy pop and nice and easy to setup without feeling like you'll catch an edge either. Landings were nice and forgiving too, in the sense that if you didn't fully complete your spin, it was easy to finish on the snow, without wiping out.  It did however have a little bit of over spin, when the rotations got higher. 

Jibbing

Really decent. For boxes/rails etc, I like my board to be nice and agile, for ease of setup, have easy pop to pop onto/off a feature and be catch-free. The Process did most of those things nicely. I'd prefer a softer flexing board though for jibs, personally, but stronger jibbers probably wouldn't be worried about the flex of the Process. 

Butters

Nice and easy to butter on, but at the same time didn't feel like it would be easy to over flex it. 

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