DUOTONE Select
Sizes Available: 132cm x 39cm, 135cm x 40cm, 138cm x 41cm, 141cm x 42cm
Sizes Tested: 138cm x 41cm
Duotone Says:
Every kiteboarder needs a ride that makes kiting easy for them, a board to make you look good on the water. The Select is perfect for riders who want an easy to use, forgiving board that loves to cruise and carve, but can also get some fantastic pop! With a board this good every trick you try will be a keeper. The outline offers excellent rail to rail carving, making it a great tool for learning about waves without making the jump to a surfboard. Early planing is a characteristic of this board that many riders love, it keeps going in the lulls too, ensuring you have a smooth ride whatever the wind is doing. In the chop, the soft flex helps to keep you in control at all times while taking the bumps out of the ride. Think of the Select as having its own suspension! The Space Flex Tips help to control the landings while the Carbon Beam adds torsional stiffness and ensures you always have forward drive. If you want to see your riding progress faster than ever before, jump on the Select and feel the difference, kiteboarding has never been so enjoyable!
Visit for more info: duotonesports.com/kiteboarding/boards/twintips/select/
Our Testers Say:
“Thin rails and single concave give the Select fantastic edge control with the wood core absorbing chop and sets up for easy pop.” // Ray Borg
“Solid board that feels more relaxed than other Duotone boards, goes upwind really well and handles tons of power.” // Matt Kargl
“Super sexy board with steady and stable ride and comfortable footpads, but took some time to get the footstraps adjusted.” // Brad Poulos
Tkb Says:
The Select is back for 2020 as Duotone’s super user-friendly freeride board that’s geared for casual cruising and early freestyle progression. Sizing the board up in your hands, the Select has a little bit rounder template and slightly more pulled tips than the Jaime and features slightly more rocker, but still sports a fairly calm rocker compared to more advanced wakestyle boards. The Select features a simple bottom shape with a single concave running the length of the board and a wide mono-channel between the fins that exits out the tips. The 132cm size comes with 4.5 carbon fins and the bigger boards in regular construction come with slightly larger 5.0 fins. When you first start jamming on the Select you notice its playful and forgiving edging that feels not quite as locked in as the Jaime with its more rounded tips and increased rocker. The Textreme feels a bit more like your classic freeride board with less directional intensity and a little softer flex pattern that takes the edge off chop as your edging upwind. You don’t get quite as much load out of the Select with its softer flex, but the outline and rocker does allow for easy jump initiation and a clean release with less attention to technique. We tested the Select against the same shape in the carbon Textreme construction and while the regular Select has a really nice light weight, the Textreme version takes it to the next level. The Select features Space Flex Technology, which has a cutout in the tips that is translucent and is said to lower weight and increase flex. It’s really hard to evaluate this feature’s true effect, outside of weight savings, but it’s worth saying it’s pretty nifty to look at. When it comes to carving, the Select shines with its rounder lines and big fins ”” this board makes it really easy to initiate carving turns, transitions easily from rail to rail and lends ease of use to the average kiteboarder’s carve game. Overall, the Select is a versatile and fun freeride board that lends confidence to progressing kiters, comfort to the casual cruisers and nimble carving in chop or small surf.
The Select comes with a sliding track system embedded in the deck of the board that allows you an infinite number of stance width adjustments. Our board was set up with Duotone’s deluxe binding system, the Entity, which comes in four sizes so that you can dial in the perfect feel and most comfortable connection to your board. The base frame offers a ton of options for adjusting duck and you can change the pad’s position relative to centerline, effectively controlling how close your heel is to the edge. For all its features, the binding has a nice low-profile frame that hugs the deck and feels very secure with footbeds that have a nice rubbery feeling with medium to soft plushness, subtle heel cupping and soft toe bumps that allow your toes to really bite into the pad. The center of the footbed offers a little bit of contour under the arch of your foot and the entire setup ensures that your foot has a sure grip on the board at all times. The strap features the novel snap adjustment straps that replace the more common Velcro straps with the kind of snap system you find on the back of a standard baseball hat. The straps themselves are dual adjustable and each anchor point can be moved forward or aft in the binding to get the perfect coverage for your foot. The underside of the straps have a soft velvety fabric that feels good and snug against your arch and the snap button system seemed to put up with every kind of abuse we could throw at it. Some testers had less patience for the snap button strap adjustment system. The snap system takes two hands to line it up and is definitely something you want to set when you are on the beach as opposed to on the water. While it might take a couple of moments to familiarize yourself and make changes, it is quite clean and offers riders a visual indicator of your strap setting with just a glance and always earned high praise for comfort. With four sizes of footpads to choose from, Duotone is taking fit and comfort very seriously with the Entity and if you choose to do the same with selection and tuning you will be rewarded with premium comfort and performance for long hard sessions.
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