Yes Hybrid Snowboard Review

Who is the Hybrid Most Suited To?

The Hybrid is best suited to anyone looking to go for something short/wide for freeriding and in a softer flex than more burly freeride boards. Great in powder and trees and also for carving up groomers and riding fast. Could also work as a non-short-wide option for those with larger boot sizes. 

It's described by YES as the hybrid of the Pick Your Line and 420 - and I'd say that's a pretty apt description. Mostly it's like a slightly softer more forgiving short/wide PYL. 

Certainly a directional board, but isn't bad for jumps and even spins - but preferably in multiples of 360. 

It's got a stable feel for sure, and you can certainly carve on it and there's plenty of camber, but you can also get a more surfy feel out of it too, when you want to. 

Not for a beginner, but forgiving enough for an intermediate rider.  

Bindings angles: +15/-15

Stance width: 585mm (23″)

Stance Setback: Setback 40mm

Width at Inserts: 283mm (11.14") at front insert and 277mm (10.91") at back insert (narrower at the back because of taper, inspite of setback)  

Rider Height: 6'0"

Rider Weight: 185lbs

Rider Boot Size: US10 Vans Aura

Bindings Used: Burton Malavita M 

Weight: 2880g

Weight per cm: 18.34 grams/cm

Average Weight per cm: 18.45 grams/cm*

*based on a small sample size of 51 boards that I've weighed in 2019 and 2020 models. The Hybrid is slightly lighter than the average, but given how wide it is, it's quite light. It felt about normal on snow, in terms of weight.  

Powder

Unfortunately I had no powder to test the Hybrid in. But based on the feel of the board and the specs, it would float really well in powder. And I felt it would be a good tree board in powder. 

It has a reasonable amount of taper, a good amount of setback and a little bit of rocker in the nose and tail. So, all that plus how it felt to ride, and this is board I'm looking forward to getting into some pow in the future. 

Carving & Turning.

Overall a fun board to turn on. It's smooth and fun on an S turn and has little consequence when you get off your game, which was a pleasant surprise, given that it's predominantly camber. 

Carving: Felt nice to carve on. I wouldn't say it was an overly aggressive carver, but you could get still get quite deep on those carves and it just had a nice feel to those carves. 

Maneuverability at slow speeds: It's not lightning, but it's nimble enough. Size-wise, I thought the 157 was getting a bit long for me, given how wide it is. Usually with short-wide I would prefer something more like 154 or less. But I was pleasantly surprised with how the agility of this board and in general the edge-to-edge speed, riding fast or slow. 

Skidded Turns: Pretty forgiving of skidded turns. Not catchy at all. More forgiving of skidded turns than I thought it would be. 

Speed

Felt really in control of this board at speed. It had a nice stable feeling and felt good at speed on some not-so-even groomers I had on the day.

Uneven Terrain

And going onto that uneven terrain, the Hybrid was really good going around and going over bumps. It did well in the crud that I encountered too. 

Let’s Break up this text with a Video

Jumps

Overall a much better jumper than I had anticipated. 

Pop: Good pop and that pop was nice and easy to access

Approach: Good and stable for faster approaches and nimble enough for trickier, slower approaches. 

Landing: Nice and solid on landings. You could really stomp those landings. It's got that wide landing base, and enough stiffness for bigger jumps, but also forgiving enough for smaller jumps. 

Side-hits: I had fun on sidehits with this board. It was nimble enough for trickier approaches, good in uneven terrain for bumpier approaches and landings and had good and easy pop. Not the best for landing switch, but otherwise really good. 

Small jumps/Big jumps: It's good for all sizes of jumps. It's sweet spot is probably medium to large. 

Switch

Doable riding switch. I've ridden worse. But also not ideal for it. There's a good bit of taper and setback. 

Spins

Actually felt relatively light and quick to get the board around. Not the best for landing or taking off switch though. If you keep your spins in multiples of 360 all good though. 

Jibbing

Not something I would jib on regularly but it can do it if you want to. Not a master jibber by any means though. 

Butters

Like a lot of YES boards, it's more buttery than you expect it to be. It's more buttery than it's flex would suggest. Not something you would typically think about for this type of board, but still nice to have. 

This board was super fun. It just had that x factor that I get from a lot, though not all, YES boards. The perfect combination of the PYL and 420.

Because of the limited size options, it's not going to work for everyone but I found that the 157 worked well for me specs.

Was good to see they brought in a 153 model for 2021 (which remains for the 2022 model) - I think that will be a size that appeals to a lot of riders that didn't match well with the 157 or 161.