Lib Tech Skate Banana Review

The Lib Tech Skate Banana is a super fun, playful, surfy/loose feeling freestyle oriented board, based on my time with it. It certainly has its limitations, but if you ride it to its strengths its very likely to put a smile on your face, as it did mine. 

In this review, I will take a look at the Skate Banana as a freestyle snowboard.

As per tradition here at SnowboardingProfiles.com I will give the Skate Banana a score out of 100 (based on several factors) and see how it compares with other freestyle snowboards.

Overall Rating

Board: Lib Tech Skate Banana 2026

Price: $579

Style: Freestyle

Flex Rating: Medium (6/10)

Flex Feel on Snow: Medium-Soft (4/10)

Rating Score: 84.2/100

Compared to other Men’s Freestyle Boards

Overview of the Skate Banana’S Specs

Check out the tables for the Skate Banana’s specs and available sizes.

* weight recommendations are as per Lib Tech's website. Lib Tech's weight recommendations are quite unhelpful, in my opinion. 

Who is the Skate Banana Most Suited To?

The Skate Banana is best suited to riders looking for a loose, playful ride to get creative on, particularly if you like low speed ground tricks, buttering, spins, grabs, small jumps, side-hits etc and like or want to explore the jib-line in the park.

Or someone who just likes to cruise greens and blues at a leisurely pace and wants a surfy feeling board that they can slash around and/or just cruise and/or hit some trees or bumps with. 

Not well suited to bombing hard, locking in an edge and carving up a storm, or for getting big air. 

While it could be a one-board quiver for the right rider, I would typically include this as part of a two or more board quiver as the creative freestyle deck and/or as a board that you would take out with newer riders where you'll be riding slower and can try things on and stay at the pace of your mates, while still having fun slashing around and trying things. 

Doable for beginners. In terms of its ease of turn initiation and low-catch feel, it's really well suited to beginners, IMO. But its loose feel would make it trickier to control when just starting out and make it pretty challenging when one-footing off the chairlift. 

TEST/REVIEW DetailS FOR THE Skate Banana

O.k. let’s take a more detailed look at what the Skate Banana is capable of.

Demo Info

Board: Lib Tech Skate Banana 2026, 156cm (255mm waist width)

Date: February 26, 2025

Carving

I didn't find it hopeless for carving, but also not great, to be fair. Pretty loose and washy, particularly when carving at good speed. 

Turning

Ease of Turning/Slashing: But when it came to ease of turn initiation and slashing, it was way more at home than with carving. Really easy to initiate turns on and it loved to slash around. 

Maneuverability at slow speeds: I found it super quick and effortless to get from edge-to-edge at slower speeds. 

Catchiness: Very close to being catch-less. Really low catch-risk, from my experience. 

Speed

Given how loose it felt and how washy it was for most carves, it wasn't quite as wobbly at speed, as I would have expected. But that said, it didn't take anything super fast to get it to start to feel unstable. 

Uneven Terrain

Crud/Chunder: As expected from this board it got bucked around quite easily. But it was super easy to recover and make corrections. 

Trees/Bumps: Really good in terms of edge-to-edge quickness but not so good in deep pow. Outside of deep pow though, super fun for weaving quickly and effortlessly between trees and bumps. 

Powder

In what we had it felt OK but not great in terms of how easy it was to stay floating above powder. But did have a fun surfy feel to it. In deeper powder, it likely wouldn't fare as well, being a true twin centered board. That said, the ample rocker in the profile would help. 

Jumps/Side-hits etc

While I found it lacked somewhat in total pop and stability for faster approaches and bigger landings, it was overall really fun for smaller jumps, with super easy pop access and easy maneuverability. 

Pop: Super easy to access its pop, but not heaps of total pop. 

Approach: Really maneuverable and easy to make adjustments, but not super stable for faster approaches for larger jumps.

Landing:  Forgiving of smaller landings when you don't get it right, but for bigger air gets pretty easily bounced around and if landing too nose or tail heavy, flexes too much, making it difficult to ride it out without bailing. On smaller landings those tail and nose heavy landings are fine and that bit of flex helps to keep things under control. 

Switch

Super easy transitions into switch, but can overspin a bit and washes a little if you quite aggressively transition, particularly at faster speeds, with its looseness. Takes on same characteristics riding switch as in normal direction, naturally, being a true twin. 

Spins

For spins I found the Skate Banana really good but not without faults.

The good? Easy, catch free setup and landing and nice easy pop. It also feels good rotating in the air and super easy to finish an incomplete rotation on the snow after landing.

The not-so-good? Overspins quite a bit, so you almost need to plan to land a little under-rotated to ride out straight. But even then you still get that spin-continuation on the snow that isn't ideal, IMO. Also can feel pretty washy/unstable landing from bigger air. 

For the most part super fun for smaller air spins. Not as good for bigger air spins. 

Jibbing

The Skate Banana is born to jib, IMO. Again, if you're someone who is a high-end jibber and hit more extreme features, then you may not appreciate the lack of stability/looseness, but for most of us who are tinkering on smaller features, it feels really confidence building, enabling a greater ability to try things. 

The qualities I found that helped it to be this was its easy pop, super low catch-risk and easy, effortless maneuverability. 

Butters

I found it super easy to press its nose and tail and they felt identical to each other (taking into account muscle imbalances between legs) as you'd expect with this board. Really easy catch-free feeling on rotations too. 

It was something I felt I could over flex, but overall nice for buttering around on. If you're a super strong/athletic person and strong with butters you may find there's not enough resistance there, but a lot of riders will appreciate the low-effort required and the low chance of catching an edge.  

Score Breakdown and Final Verdict

Check out the breakdown of the score in the table below.

For me, the Skate Banana felt like one of the looser/surfier feeling boards going around. Something that was super fun for getting playful with at lower speeds. Butter/ground tricks and smaller jib features were its biggest strengths, IMO as well as smaller jumps/side-hits etc. 

You're not likely to think too highly of it if you expect to be able to bomb it and ride it aggressively without it washing out on you, so if that's what you're looking for, then this isn't the board for you, IMO. But if you ride it to its strengths, you'll likely have a great time on it.