If you’re looking for comprehensive preview of 2021 snowboard gear, this is the place. While we only have five brands featured here, hit the drop down menu and check out the rest of our coverage. As time goes on we’re trying to fill in brands we missed at SIA/OR, so it’s worth coming back on occasion.

-- Select A Brand -- 686 Technical Apparel Academy Snowboards Arbor Snowboards Capita Snowboards DC Snowboards (coming soon!) Flow Bindings Jones Snowboards K2 Snowboards Marhar Snowboards Never Summer Industries Nidecker Snowboards Nitro Snowboards NOW Bindings Prior Snowboards Ride Snowboards (coming soon!) Rome Snowboards Rossignol Snowboards (coming soon!) Salomon Snowboards Slash Snowboards SHRED Optics (coming soon!) ThirtyTwo Snowboard Boots (coming soon!) Union Binding Company Venture Snowboards Weston Snowboards YES. Snowboards

So what brands are doing really cool things to promote a healthy planet and culture around snowboarding and made the biggest changes? Keep reading and find out.

There is a lot of talk these days about being environmentally friendly. Slowly more and more brands are turning to this ideology, but Arbor has been there from day one. Everyone knows them for making snowboards and skateboards from Koa wood, but did you know that it was harvested from a reforestation project? That’s right. Their wood was harvested from dead trees being lifted out of a forest on Maui, where it was sold to fund restoration efforts. This land is now part of the Haleakala National Forest.

While Arbor stopped using Koa wood in 2000 due to sustainable resources drying up, they’ve continued with their Returning Roots program. While other companies are busy talking and lobbying, Arbor is doing work and bringing you some of the best and most unique boards on the market. Even in their new clothing line, the goal is sustainability. So every step of the way since day one, Arbor has had natures back, and yours.

For the last couple years, Weston Snowboards has been donating 10% of sales on women’s splitboards to AIARE Scholarships. The goal all along has been to get to a place where they can responsibly donate like this from the sale of every splitboard they make. Up to date, they have been able to provide $7,000 to this cause and can now donate from the sale of all of their splitboards. Giving back to the community by helping provide the tools people need to be safe in the backcountry is something we can get behind.

The only splitboard that is an exception to this is the 10th Mountain Division. From this board, 10% of profits go to the 10th Mountain Division Foundation. “The mission of the Tenth Mountain Division Foundation is to honor and perpetuate the legacy of the soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division past, present, and future by doing good works that exemplify the ideals by which they lived.”

If you haven’t heard, Weston also completely rebuilt the Riva, and added the Eclipse to the women’s lineup. Nothing here was just carried over from men’s snowboards: they worked with their female riders the whole way to design the boards they wanted and needed.

Oh yeah, they dropped the Pow Slayer Series too.

This year, Rome went through a pretty large shakeup. A lot of boards were cut out, but Stale Sandbech was given an entire line of snowboards, and a signature binding to match. So while your favorite board might be gone, they kept a lot of the fan favorites and even brought a couple back. They even took the time to make a budget pow slayer coming in at $400. Suddenly a pow specific board doesn’t seem like such an irresponsible idea.

In other news, the fullwrap binding lineup was completely worked over. With most of them coming in at 15% lighter, good things are happening. If you’ve been holding out on upgrading your 390 Boss, D.O.D., or just want the new Signature Cleaver from the Stale collection, it’s time. And while you may notice that the Lady Katana has been dropped, this was to bring the women’s bindings up to speed. The Katana now has a full size run that will accommodate women’s boots so women’s tech is up to date with the men’s.

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Salomon has always been known for making great footwear that lasts. For the last several years they’ve been making their way into a top snowboard brand, but noticed they kind of forgot about boots. So enter “Fit to Ride” technology. The goal was to design boots that are as comfortable on day one as they are durable. Bringing this to the women’s line was the main focus for this year, and frankly their boots look great.

While everyone knows or should know about the Hillside Project, Salomon has been hard at work on the Dancehaul. It’s wide, it’s tapered, full camber with a tight radius, and according to Sabato, the best board in it’s class. Not only that, but it’s a unisex board with a size run from 143 to 157. So get one before they sell out next winter and you have to wait for another year.

The biggest news coming out of the Never Summer camp is stiffer snowboards with more camber in the profile. All of the snowboards you can find this camber profile by looking for “Shockwave Camber”. If you’ve been looking for something more stiff from Never Summer, now’s the time. It’s a fitting time too, because I don’t think anyone realizes it’s their 30th anniversary of making snowboards.

Never Summer also released a new snowboard for the 2020/21 year: The Harpoon. It’s a blend of the InstaGator and Maverix, imbued with the Fusion Camber profile. Sabato was one of the first people outside of Never Summer Industries to get to ride this board, so be sure to check out the review.

SHRED Goggles:

Over the years we have done a handful of reviews for SHRED, and we will have a few more this year. If you haven’t worn their goggles, they really do have the widest field of view, and that alone makes them worth checking out. What’s new this year however, is their lens technology. This year, they’ve dropped a new contrast boosting lens and it we like it better than all the others out there. Even when testing them one right after the other at the OnSnow demo.

Another cool thing is that a lot of their goggles will fit over prescription eyewear. They also pull this off without looking doofy.

This year, 686 Snowboarding has a collaboration with NASA….and with an astrophysicist on staff we can’t leave that out! Plus, it looks pretty slick.

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