Niche Story Snowboard Review

Hello and welcome to my Niche Story snowboard review.

In this review I will take a look at the Story as an all-mountain snowboard.

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

Overall Rating

Board: Niche Story

Price: $574 (USD recommended retail)

Style: All-Mountain

Flex Rating: Medium-Stiff (7/10)

Flex Feel: Medium (6/10)

Rating Score: 88.4/100

Compared to other Men’s All-Mountain Boards

Out of the 35 Men’s All-Mountain snowboards that I rated:

• The average price was $481 (USD)
• The average score was 80.4/100
• The highest score was 92.7/100
• The lowest score was 64.0/100
• The Story ranked 4th out of 35

Overview of the Story’s Specs

Check out the tables below for the Story’s specs and available sizes.

Specs

Sizing

Who is the Story Most Suited to?

The Story is perfect for anyone who wants a snowboard that they can do it all on – and go anywhere on the mountain. About the only weakness is in jibbing. So basically if you’re not that worried about jibbing but want to be able to do a bit of everything else, then this board should be high on your list.

It’s also great for anyone that places importance on eco-friendly snowboard building. Niche is one of, if not the, most eco-friendly snowboard companies out there.

Not for the beginner. It’s too stiff for a beginner rider. You’d have trouble controlling this thing as a beginner. But for intermediate & up it’s great if you want just one board to do everything on.

The Story in More Detail

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

Demo Info

Board: Niche Story 2017, 159cm (262mm waist width)

Date: April 9^th, 2016

Conditions: Icy at first, but softened up and got a bit slushy in the afternoon. Not a cloud in the sky! It was the ideal day – in terms of the weather – except that I left my sunscreen in the car!

Bindings angles: +18/-6

Powder

I didn’t get any powder as such on the day, but I did get some slush to float over and it felt good floating over that – and was a teaser for how this thing would float over some deep powder.

And the specs definitely suggest that it will be a good floater – and from reviews from others. The Story has a hybrid rocker shape – the rocker between the feet helps this board to float. It also has a 20mm setback stance – this also helps with float in powder.

Carving & Turns

This board was fun to carve on, even in the icy conditions I had in spots. The edge-hold is great and it didn’t feel washy even with wide carves at speed.

The hybrid rocker shape also features camber sections under the foot and out towards the tip and tail. These camber sections help with the Story’s edge-hold which improves the board’s carving abilities and gives some good spring out of turns.

The edge-hold in those hard and icy conditions is also helped by the Story’s magne-traction edges which helps it to grip – this makes it especially appealing for anyone who regularly faces icy conditions.

Speed

There’s going to be a running theme here – and that’s that the Story is good at pretty much everything. And speed is no exception. This board was fast and glided well on flats.

And most importantly, it felt stable when riding at speed – I didn’t get any washy feeling when letting it rip.

Uneven Terrain

For a medium-stiff flexing board it was surprisingly easy to negotiate bumpy terrain. I’ve got no answers to the reason why – it just felt better than expected. It won’t ride the bumps like a soft flexing board but it was pretty good and better than expected.

Jumps

It was really fun going over jumps (and lips and rollers and anything that I could air off) on this deck. The landing was probably the best part. It had a really stable feeling on landings.

But it’s also got plenty of pop – thanks largely to those camber sections but also probably the Basalt Stringers (eco-friendly carbon fibre) have something to do with that too.

Also this board is pretty maneuverable but you can also hold your line well – so I felt confident with approaches to jumps. If I had a good line you could stick with it but if you need to adjust this board responds well.

Switch

With a directional shape and a 20mm setback it was never going to feel perfect riding switch – but in saying that, you could definitely do it and the more you rode it the more you’d get used to how it rides in the other direction.

Jibbing

The biggest weakness of this board. To be honest I only hit one box – it wasn’t horrible. You can hit the occasional jib, but it’s the only below average part of this board.

I could have done more down the jib line – but to be honest I wanted to spend my time on this thing doing the things that are really fun on it.

Pipe

I didn’t take the Story into a pipe but based on the specs I think it would feel right at home there. It’s got great edge-hold, it’s got speed, it’s got pop.

The only thing that stops it from being perfect is that it’s not a centered board – but that directional setback setup is what helps it to be good in other areas.

Changes from 2018 Model

As far as I can tell, the 2019 model is the same board as the 2018 model apart from the graphic.

Changes from 2017 Model

Apart from a change in graphic the 2018 Niche Story is the same beast as it was in 2017.

Score Breakdown and Final Verdict

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

This board is do everything, everywhere defined.

It was super fun to ride and you can feel confident taking it anywhere on the mountain. And to boot it’s built in possibly the most eco-friendly way of any board out there.

No surprise then that it ranked 4^th in my Top 10 All Mountain Snowboards list.

The biggest surprise for me was how this board felt and handled, given the waist width. I usually hate riding wide boards. Anything over 260mm usually starts to feel cumbersome and hard to turn. The Story was the exception to that for me. And part of the reason, I would say, is that there is a big magne-traction bump right at the waist – so the width at the inserts isn’t as wide as the waist width would suggest.