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Sizes Available: 4, 6, 8, 10, 12m
Sizes Tested: 8, 10m

Ozone Says:

The Alpha V1 is a unique single strut design that has redefined our expectations of inflatable kites. it’s simple, incredibly lightweight and very effective it is a winner for any quiver. Grab a twin tip and go cruising or jumping, enjoy the ride while progressing with ease. You will be surprised at the jumping and looping capabilities of the Alpha; it has smooth lift and hangtime with precise feedback. The Alpha has great upwind performance thanks to the innovative flat arc design and an efficient high lift airfoil section.

The lightweight design translates to incredible low-end performance making the Alpha a very competitive choice not only for light wind freeriding, but also the expanding freeride hydrofoil scene in almost any wind strength. The power to de-power stroke is progressive and dynamic enough to provide smooth lift for transitions and jibes with a foil board. For high wind foiling in chop or waves, take a small size with shorter lines for loads of fun drifting the kite while carving swells across the wind.

In the surf the Alpha is perfect for drift style wave riding as it floats with you. The handling is direct and responsive which allows you to put the kite where you need it. The Alpha is not as dedicated to waves as the Reo, but it still delivers solid performance in cross-shore to on-shore conditions. Water re-launch is easy, by simply turning the bar or using the re-launch balls on the leader lines, the kite will roll over into the re-launch position. Going traveling? Take the Alpha with you, it’s incredibly lightweight, packs small and can do anything you want to do on any given day. The Alpha V1 comes standard with an ultra lightweight Compressor Bag, perfect for traveling and day-to-day protection for your kite. It is easy to use and compresses a kite to minimal size. Combine with the Technical Bag to fit multiple kites inside one carry bag.

Visit for more info: www.ozonekites.com/products/water-kites/alpha-v1

Our Testers Say:

“Loved this kite! At 5’8”, 160 lb.s and 60+ yrs old on a twin tip, I found this kite predictable, not too fast, not too slow and it handled gusts well fully powered and went upwind well.” // Jeff Waldberg

“I would have chosen to fly this kite in lighter wind, but that said, it was very steady for a light wind kite, no fluttering and easy to handle. Not that fast turning, but easy and forgiving, great kite for strapless surfboard.” // Kristin Vincenzo

“Very consistent kite, moves at deliberate medium pace, good lift and hangtime, direct steering with med-heavy bar pressure and good sheeting range, great drift, stability and depower – all which make it an amazing foiling platform.” // Dray Murray

Meet Our Testers

TKB Says:

Ozone’s new single strut freeride kite brings a new standard to the lightweight minimalist genre of travel and foilboarding kites. The first thing we noticed about the Alpha was its packaging, wrapped in a papoose-style pack bag that gives you the sense you could pack an entire quiver into just a small portion of your normal travel bags without coming close to your weight limit. The Alpha comes with a high flow Boston valve that requires the larger inflation nozzle and uses a single-setting fixed bridle that utilizes no pulleys and a single wingtip setting. The Alpha doesn’t offer any kite handling adjustments, instead it focuses on being incredibly light and agile in the air. As with all single strut kites there is a tradeoff ”” you do have to think about the amount of flutter that you get with a canopy that is supported by only one strut and two wingtips, yet the Alpha does an excellent job of keeping the canopy under control. When flown in the high end you will notice when you sheet out some flutter but the  feedback from that flutter doesn’t overwhelm your bar feel. What flutter you will experience with this kite is much less than that experienced with earlier generations of single strut kites. The Alpha is ideal for foilboarding, where the loads required of the kite are minimal and you can fly the kite in its low end. The Alpha has good depower and flies in middle of the window with a nice direct steering feel. The Alpha doesn’t feel quite as fast as the Reo, nor does it turn in such a tight pivot style steering arc as the Reo but still feels fairly direct in terms of turning, which is notable for a single strut. The overall sheeting feels fairly intuitive and progressive as you pull in the bar. Sometimes with single struts the sheeting can be a little bit washy but with this kite, the feel is fairly sharp and intuitive as you power up and the feedback is good. In terms of jumping it did create a fair amount of lift and it did have a fair amount of hangtime, which means that this kite could be an option for the traveling freerider that needs packability and a little bit of performance for all around riding, but you must keep in mind that single struts are always a compromise. Foilboarding is one area where power demand is minimal and single strut kites really shine without any of the compromises. When it came to relaunch, when the Alpha was in the water nose down in the center of the window it wanted to flip over immediately. By just applying some pressure on the bar the kite pivoted onto a wingtip and then taxied out to the edge of the widow and relaunched. A lot of times with foiboarding you find yourself with the kite in the water and you tend to be in light wind conditions. You definitely want a kite that has a lightweight build and a kite that rocks over onto its wingtip fairly easy in order to get out of those situations. Overall the Alpha version 1 is an excellent first stab at the single strut kite market for Ozone. Like many of the Ozone products, the build quality on the kite is solid with an excellent balance between durability and minimalism, with a fast, efficient and responsive canopy in the air that we recommend for foilboarding primarily and general travel freeriding secondarily.

Ozone released the new Contact V4 control bar this year which is a 4-line bar that has received significant updates from Ozone’s previous bar along with one massive upgrade in the quick release department. The Contact V4 features Ozone’s new ”˜Seat Belt’ technology which offers a completely new quick release design that features a groundbreaking mechanism that allows you to effortlessly reconnect your trim loop after a safety release by simply pushing the loop into its recess and it automatically clicks closed. There are a number of these systems on the market, but Ozone’s by far is the easiest mechanism to reassemble. This is a colossal improvement, as it is simple and surefire in the way in which this system works. The scenario goes like this: there’s a problem, you push the quick release, the kite depowers, but then you want to reconnect the quick release in the water and resume. Normally this is a 10-finger/two-handed struggle to hold the release open while you stick the loop back into its mechanism and close the gate apparatus to continue. Some models try to keep the release open upon release, but the Seat Belt design doesn’t require you to hold the release open to reconnect the loop into its locked position.

Ozone  tested this system extensively for three years with its schools, team and every day riders before it was released but as it is a new design, we had to see for ourselves whether the mechanism would behave under normal operating conditions and abuse with the usual sandy saltwater wear and tear. We’re happy to report that we were quite satisfied with its reliable functionality.  The quick release has the standard push away handle, a hand swivel above the release that also doubles as a travel guard and a molded locking finger to prevent accidental unhooking as well as a safety attachment point with suicide option. The Contact is a fixed length bar (available in 38, 45, 50 and 55cm sizes) that features a single center line safety depower with a low V. The center lines end in grey color-coded pigtails with loops for rigging purposes and the outside lines end in knots color coded with red and blue pigtails. The Contact features above the bar tuning with a cleat and a small carbon toggle that uses a bungee built into the tuning line to keep things clean in depowered situations. The bar has a plastic coated/PU throw line with no sliding stopper or adjustable length throw. The padded bar ends are tunable (three knots stock is on center) and feature integrated floats and retractable bar bungees. The bar ends are soft in the event of accidental face contact. This year the bar got a significant color change with much less obvious colors; there is no longer red on the left side of the bar grip although the leader lines coming out of the floats are color coded for red and blue. The grip indents have very subtle red highlights for those that are looking closely. Testers gave the new bar solid praise for its comfortable grip that is both wider with a nice raised pattern and smaller indentations for a fairly dense grip.

Visit for more info on the bar: www.ozonekites.com/products/control-systems/contact-water-v4-control-system


With the help of 14 testers from all walks of kiteboarding, Tkb’s staff assembled detailed gear reviews with objective performance criteria of the latest 2019 kites, twin tips and foilboards all packed into one neat and tidy 180-page digital package. Get all the reviews in convenient digital guide here: https://www.thekiteboarder.com/product/2019-freeride-gear-review-guide/