Nidecker Mosquito Review

Overview of the Mosquito’s Specs

Who is the Mosquito Most Suited To?

The Mosquito is best suited to someone looking for a short wide powder board to compliment their quiver. Not really a quiver of one kind of board, unless you only go up for powder. Particularly good for powder in trees. 

Whilst it's small in length, and not massive in terms of width for a short wide, it's quite stiff, so it's more board than you think, so certainly not for beginners. 

The Mosquito in More Detail

Bindings angles: +15/-15

Stance width: 520mm (20.5″)

Stance Setback: Setback 30mm (1.2") on effective edge. Setback 130mm (5.1") on overall length of board. Big difference between nose and tail!

Width at Inserts: 272mm (10.71") at front insert and 266mm (10.47") at back insert*

*note that Nidecker actually publishes width at inserts! Which is really cool. First brand I've come across that does this. Hopefully others start doing it too. Nidecker measured at 272mm back insert and 267mm at front insert, so we were slightly different on the back, but only 1mm. 

Rider Height: 6'0"

Rider Weight: 185lbs

Rider Boot Size: US9.5 Adidas Tactical ADV

Bindings Used: Burton Malavita M 

Weight: 2900grams (6lbs 6oz)

Weight per cm: 19.08 grams/cm

Average Weight per cm: 18.43 grams/cm*

*based on a sample size of around 100 models that I’ve weighed in 2019, 2020, 2021 *& 2022 models. The Mosquito is a bit heavier than normal. But on snow it only feels marginally heavier than normal. 

Powder

This is what this board was born to do! And I waited until I could get this board in powder to test it where it most belongs. And it didn't disappoint. 

There wasn't a hint of nose diving - it just glided above the powder beautifully, like it was floating on clouds. 

And it's no real surprise. Whilst the overall surface area on a the 152 (wide but not excessively so for a short wide) isn't huge, it's wide enough to have the surface area of a typical 157ish. That plus a long wide nose and very short, narrow swallow tail and some healthy rocker in the nose, help to make this board unsinkable. Not to mention an overall setback on the board of 130mm (5.1") (30mm (1.2") setback on effective edge. 

Speed

This perhaps surprised me the most about this board. It actually felt quite stable at speed - a lot more than I though it would. But that stiffness really helps keep it quite stable despite it's small size. 

It was really damp - whilst you could see the nose vibrating (how could it not being that long) you hardly felt any of that resonate under foot. 

Uneven Terrain

Crud: For the most part it wants to just float over top, but when it has to it can smash crud to bits as well. It has a penchant for sticking to the snow - and this includes when in crud - it doesn't get bucked around easily. And if you do get thrown off your line a little it's pretty easy to correct. That dampness really helped here too. 

Bumps: It's a nimble board, so weaving between bumps was really good. 

Let’s Break up this text with a Video

Jumps

I didn't expect this board to be good with jumps, and this time it didn't surprise me. It wasn't very good. Not what it's designed for of course, but I still like to jump on any board I get on - not like you can't do it, but just not very exciting. This one prefers to be grounded. 

Pop:  Gotta give it hell to get any pop out of it - and even then there's not oodles. 

Approach: Pretty stable and at the same time quite easy to correct course when you need to - so you can track a line but it's also fine for seeking out trickier approaches - for the likes of side hits. 

Landing: Pretty solid on a landing, but there's not a lot of forgiveness there for if you get it wrong. 

Side-hits: Approach is OK, but otherwise, didn't like it that much for side hits. 

Small jumps/Big jumps: Medium

Switch

Not great - felt weird and no surprise there, there's almost no tail on this thing. It's so geared to ride in one direction that riding it backwards just feels wrong. 

Spins

Easy enough to get spin around because of it's size, but setting up/landing switch is awful and trying to get it to pop to get yourself the time to get around on smaller takeoffs isn't easy. But not what this board was designed for, of course. 

Butters

If you want a board to butter with, this is not it. There's basically no flex in a tail press and whilst there's a bit more flex you can get out of the nose, it feels super weird, because of how long the nose is - and there's not control there. And the difference of feel between the nose and tail is huge. Definitely not a butterer. But again, not what it was designed for. 

Score Breakdown and Final Verdict

The Mosquito excelled in powder - which was expected - but it was surprisingly good for carving and at speed - and was quite nimble too. Get powder in the trees as we had, and this thing is home. 

It's not a one board quiver, unless you have a very specialized style and only really go out on powder days.