Soul Stick Blower Review

Board: Soul Stick Blower

Price: $649 (USD)

Style: Freeride

Flex Rating: Unknown

Flex Feel: Mid-Stiff (7/10)

Rating Score: 84.8/100

Compared to other Men’s Freeride Boards

Out of the 35 Men’s Freeride snowboards that I rated:

Overview of the Blower’s Specs

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

Specs

Who is the Blower Most Suited To?

The Soul-Stick Blower is best suited to someone looking for a board that's going to kill it in the powder.

But don't let that fool you into thinking this is just a powder board. It can handle carves pretty well and won't let you down on those groomers, when you're in search of powder spots - or if you're just not getting the powder you want or its all tracked at the end of the day.

Not what I would call a one-board-quiver but makes for a great powder board within a quiver, particularly if you want your powder board to be able to carve up groomers as well.  

It doesn't feel overly technical to ride, but still too much board for beginners or lower intermediate riders. 

THE Blower IN MORE DETAIL

Bindings angles: +15/-15

Stance width: 20.5″ (520mm)

Stance Setback: Not sure about on effective edge, but was 74cm from the middle of front binding to the nose and just 36cm to the tail from the middle of the back binding. And to the middle of swallow tail was just 17cm from middle of back binding. 

Width at Inserts: 11.2" (284mm) at front insert and 11.3" (287mm) at back insert.   

Rider Height: 6'0"

Rider Weight: 180lbs

Rider Boot Size: US9.5 Adidas Tactical ADV

Bindings Used: Burton Malavita: M 

Weight: 7lbs 3oz (3260grams) 

Weight per cm: 20.12 grams/cm

Average Weight per cm: 18.59 grams/cm*

*based on a sample size of around 200 models that I’ve weighed in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 & 2023 models.  So the Blower was definitely heavier than average on the scales, but given how wide it is, the weight per surface area would be about average, I would say. On snow it felt like a normal weight. Felt light even, for a 162. 

Powder

Super fun in powder. Which was no surprise given the specs and look of this board. Floated effortlessly and didn't have to worry about nose diving at all.

There is a really healthy amount of rocker in the nose, it's setback a long way and has a narrower tail than nose - plus that swallow tail. So really no surprise at all at how good it felt in pow. Soul Stick's approach to building snowboards is based on surfing, and you could see that come through in the Blower in pow. 

Carving

Despite powder being very much the Blower's biggest strength, it was surprisingly good on a carve. Felt like I could lock in the edge and drive a good deep carve. Hard to say what it would be like on a harder snow day, but it performed much better on a carve than I was expecting. 

Turning

Ease of Turns/Slashing: It turned fairly easily, not completely effortlessly and did prefer to carve (or surf pow) over turning, but given it's size, wasn't actually too bad. 

Maneuverability at slow speeds (nimbleness): It wasn't lightning quick edge-to-edge at slow speeds, but given it was a 162 and a really wide 162 at that - which is way bigger than I'm used to riding, it wasn't actually that sluggish when turning at slow speeds. Given it's size it was never going to be super agile, but given it's size it was way more agile than I expected or that I typically get from boards this size (or in some cases a lot smaller). 

Skidded Turns: Didn't feel overly catchy or anything, and whilst it slightly preferred engaging the edge, it wasn't completely unforgiving of skidded turns. 

Speed

Hard to say for sure how it would fear in hard pack, but in the conditions, it handled speed nicely. Felt nice and stable - and it wasn't all smooth sailing - a lot of crud built up as the day went on. 

Uneven Terrain

Crud: Handled it really well. Got quite a bit later in the day and it sailed over well and felt stable. 

Trees/Bumps: In the pow in the trees it was nice. Too big for me to be optimal in the trees - and whilst it was pretty quick edge-to-edge for it's size, it wasn't lightning quick overall. 

Jumps

Not what it's designed for so wasn't expecting much and didn't get a huge amount either. 

Pop: More than I was expecting. Not a huge amount but not too bad either. It wasn't super easy to access but wasn't hard to access either. 

Approach: Felt pretty stable on approach and not overly difficult to make adjustments/speed check either. 

Landing: Just don't land tail heavy - or nose heavy for that matter! There's not a lot of tail to land on, if you get tail heavy - and the nose is to big it's a little cumbersome to land on. Not much room for error with landings. 

Side-hits: Not terrible but not great. Too big to be ideal. And whilst it wasn't un-maneuverable by any means, it wasn't super nimble either - and the pop wasn't hard to access or non-existent, but it wasn't anything special either. 

Small jumps/Big jumps: It can the approach to bigger jumps - but landings are too sketchy, so I'd stick to smaller jumps with this personally.

Switch

Nah! But not what it's designed for. 

Butters

Not that it was impossible to press or anything but the nose is way to big and tail way too small to have any real enjoyment from presses/butters. But again very much not what this board is designed for. 

The Blower excels in powder and that's certainly it's strongest point. 

But it can bomb a bit too and carves well. It's the kind of board you could definitely spend the day carving up the groomers on - and it handles crud/chunder well too. 

It's something that's going to be a quiver board for most - the powder board in their collection - but for a narrow band of riders, this could be a one-board-quiver.