Old Smart Rating System

Note: This is the old smart rating system. The system was updated on September 7, 2015. Please click here to learn about the new smart rating system. 

I have created the smart rating system as a means to score snowboards to give an overall snapshot of a snowboard’s performance and as a means of easily comparing different snowboards in the same category.

Why Does the System Need to be “Smart”

Snowboards are designed to be good at specific things.

For example a free-ride/big mountain/powder board has not been designed to be good at things like jibbing or riding switch – it is meant to be good in powder, great at carving and bombing at speed etc.

Similarly it is not an important aspect of a Freestyle board have a great deal of speed or ability in the backcountry – but it must be good at jibbing, switch and jumps in particularly.

Therefore, in developing a points system more or less importance must be given to each performance factor depending on the style of board that is being rated.

There are currently four different categories of snowboard that I have a points system for:

• Freestyle
• Freestyle-All-Mountain
• All-Mountain
• Freeride

How it Works

Each board is given a rating (out of 5) for 8 different performance factors. Those factors are:

• Powder
• Carving
• Speed
• Uneven Terrain
• Switch
• Jumps
• Jibbing
• Pipe

Each factor is also given a weighting (from 1-6). With 1 being un-important and 6 being Very Important.

For example Powder would be given a weighting of 6 for a freeride board as it is very important that a freeride board performs well in powder. Jibbing on the otherhand would receive a 1 as it is un-important for a freeride board to be good at jibbing. On the otherhand a Freestyle board would get a weighting of 6 for jibbing.

The Scoring

So for each performance factor (i.e. powder) a total score is given.

For example, let’s say a freeride board is being scored and that board scores a 4 out of 5 for powder. That rating of 4 is multiplied by the weighting of 6 and the total score for that factor is 24.

The weightings allocated to each style of board is outlined below

Freestyle

Powder:	2
Carving:	2
Speed:	2
Uneven Terrain:	3
Switch:	6
Jumps:	6
Jibbing:	6
Pipe:	3

Freestyle-All-Mountain

Powder:	2
Carving:	3
Speed:	3
Uneven Terrain:	3
Switch:	6
Jumps:	6
Jibbing:	3
Pipe:	4

All-Mountain

For All Mountain boards the weightings are fairly even across all the performance factors as the purpose of All-Mountain boards is to be able to do a bit of everything.

Powder:	4
Carving:	4
Speed:	4
Uneven Terrain:	4
Switch:	4
Jumps:	4
Jibbing:	3
Pipe:	3

Freeride

Powder:	6
Carving:	6
Speed:	6
Uneven Terrain:	6
Switch:	1
Jumps:	3
Jibbing:	1
Pipe:	1

Example Rating

Let’s take a fictitious board and use it as an example to better illustrate how the system works. Let’s say that it is a Freeride board. Now let’s assume that the board scores the following ratings for each of the performance factors.

Powder:	4.5 out of 5
Carving:	4 out of 5
Speed:	4 out of 5
Uneven Terrain:	3.5 out of 5
Switch:	1.5 out of 5
Jumps:	3 out of 5
Jibbing:	0.5 out of 5
Pipe:	2 out of 5

To determine the final score (so that we can see how the board rates by just looking at one number so that we can easily compare it to other freeride boards) we simply multiply each of the scores above by the weightings for freeride boards, so:

Powder:	6 x 4.5 =	27
Carving:	6 x 4 =	24
Speed:	6 x 4 =	24
Uneven Terrain:	6 x 3.5 =	21
Switch:	1 x 1.5 =	1.5
Jumps:	3 x 3 =	9
Jibbing:	1 x 0.5 =	0.5
Pipe:	1 x 2 =	2
TOTAL:		109

Then the scores for each factor are added up for a total score. In this case the total score is 109. Which would be a good score. If we were to then select another freeride board and do the same thing we can easily compare the two numbers.

Of course this won’t give the whole story but it gives a quick overall snapshot of the board’s performance.