GNU Ladies Choice Review

Who is the Ladies Choice Most Suited To?

The Ladies Choice is a really versatile board that is well suited to most riders looking for a one board quiver, particularly those looking for one with a slightly more freestyle feel to it. 

Whilst it's not ace in powder, it's pretty good in powder for an all-mountain-freestyle board, making it a little more versatile. 

Not for beginners, but great for intermediate and up. 

Bindings angles: +15/-12

Stance width: 530mm (20.9″)

Stance Setback: Centered

Width at Inserts: 250mm (9.84")  

Weight: 2660g (5lbs, 14oz)

Weight per cm: 17.91g/cm

Average Weight per cm: 17.12 grams/cm*

*based on a small sample size of around 20 women's boards that I've weighed in 2020, 2021 and 2022 models. The Ladies Choice is a little heavier than normal but Jade found it to feel normal weight on snow.  

Tester: Jade

Rider Height:  5'7" (170cm)

Rider Weight: 145lbs (66kg)

Rider Boot Size: Women's US6.5 Thirty Two Exit

Bindings Used: Burton Lexa, Medium 

Damp or Chattery?

Not overly chattery but also not overly damp. Pretty close to the middle of the scale. 

Smooth or Snappy?

More snappy than smooth, but close to the middle of the scale. 

Powder

Wasn't enough powder to be a perfect test, but some there to get a feel for it - and it performs pretty well. 

It's never going to be the queen of powder, but for an all-mountain-freestyle board it ain't bad. And as far as twin's go it's really good. So for anyone who likes to ride switch a lot in powder, it's a great option. 

It has a healthy portion of rocker in the profile which helps it to float. 

Carving & Turning

Carving: Whilst not a carving machine, you can lay one over pretty well on the Ladies Choice. Nothing super aggressive/high speed/epic, but some nice carves can be had.

Turning: A breeze to turn on. It responded effortlessly and was all round just fun and easy to turn with. 4/5 for turning, 3/5 for carving. 

Maneuverability at slow speeds: Nice and easy to maneuver at slow speeds. 

Skidded Turns: Quite forgiving of skidded turns. Not beginner level forgiving, but really quite un-catchy and can get away with skidding turns most of the time. 

Speed

It's not a bomber, but you can certainly ride it at decent speeds without feeling like it starts to loose a little stability. 

Uneven Terrain

Crud: It gets a little bucked around in crud. It's not the most bucky going around, but does get a little bucked. However, it is easy to adjust and correct. 

Bumps: Nice and easy to maneuver between bumps and hugged them pretty well too. 

Let’s Break up this text with a Video

Jumps

Overall really nice board for jumps. 

Pop: It certainly doesn't have oodles of pop. And that's the one thing that really stops this board from getting 5/5 for jumps. But what pop is there is easy to extract. But if you really try to wind it up, it doesn't give back much more than when you give it a more casual push. 

Approach: Easy to speed check and find a good line to the takeoff - and make any adjustments as necessary. Decently stable for most approaches. Perhaps only really big jumps where you need more speed, it could get a little wobbly. 

Landing: Really nice landings on this board. Felt like it has the perfect balance between being stable on landings but also forgiving of less-than-perfect landings. Also easy to adjust in the air. 

Side-hits: Was easy to maneuver to control to get to the side-hits - and that easy pop was nice and forgiving landings for those less-than-perfect landing spots. Could have had a little more overall pop, but overall, really fun board for side-hits. 

Small jumps/Big jumps: Medium is the sweet spot for this board but still really good for smaller jumps and bigger jumps. 

Switch

Perfect! Switching into switch, riding in switch, landing switch, setting up switch. Everything about this board in the unnatural direction was really good. 

Spins

As just mentioned, the Ladies Choice is great for setting up and taking off switch for those 1s and 5s. And feels natural to spin and get the spin around. It's not the lightest, but still felt fine getting the spin around. For bigger spins could use slightly more pop. 

Jibbing

It's not a jib master, but for doing anything simple on boxes/rails, it's fine. If you're doing a lot of jibbing, then you might want to go for something more jib friendly, but if you're only hitting them now and then, it's perfectly capable for sure. And a more experienced jibber would have no problem's with more creative jib tricks too. 

Butters

It's not super soft in the tip and tail, but it's also not that stiff. It's easy to butter without being ultra easy and gives some decent spring out of the press. 

Overall, the Ladies Choice is a really fun board to ride, can ride in every condition and do whatever you want to on it. It's especially good for jumps, switch and spins, but it doesn't have any major weaknesses in other areas. 

It's a do-it-all, but a do-it-all that's more freestyle focused than freeride focused.