Tkb Review: 2022 NAISH Dash LE

Sizes Available: 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14m
Sizes Tested: 8m

Naish Says:

The kite that will make your skills stand out from the rest. The Dash is for fast, aggressive riders and anyone who loves to push the limits. We’ve engineered this kite to be versatile for kite loops and unhooked moves, with lots of room to showcase your personal style. The Dash will stand out to riders with a need for speed and delivers powerful jumping and ultra-fast turning capabilities. We’ve adapted this year’s Dash with reduced panel count and seams to make for a lighter, yet extremely durable kite.

Visit for more info: https://www.naishkites.com/product/dash/

TKB Says:

Crank up some Black Sabbath or tune into some heavy metal and hook into the Limited Edition Dash’s fast turning, explosively edgy power delivery which is tuned for experienced riders looking for a kite that will match their extra proper kite handling skills to get some extra punch out of their kiteloops and big air riding.

Inflation Valve: Push button valve / Surelock nozzle required
Attachments: Center bridle: Knot / Wingtip bridle: Lark’s head loop
Centerline Split: Low-V
Front Bridle Options: Single setting bridle / fixed no pulleys

This year Naish has made some amendments to the canopy build to lighten the overall airframe while still keeping the sturdy hybrid C-shape feel that hails the best qualities of the C-kite Torch legacy. With its 3-strut airframe laying out a higher aspect canopy with the fuller C-shape profile into the wingtips, you get a kite that blends the user-friendly advancements of SLE depower with a chassis that is designed to appeal to riders that want edgy performance. If that weren’t enough, you can opt into the Limited Edition Dash with its fresh pirate graphics taking you back to the original Naish days.

Design and Features
The Dash continues with Naish’s One Point Inflation system that uses the Surelock push-Button inflation valve which keeps the pump hose attached to the valve while inflating and allows for deflation with the push of a button (just remember to push the button to close the valve (button sticking up) prior to inflating. With generous sized distribution hoses to the struts the Dash inflates and deflates quickly. The leading edge bridle is a single fixed setting bridle with no pulleys that simplifies the tuning this year with a single setting. The front bridle attachment point ends in a knot and the wingtip pigtail ends in a larks head with three wingtip settings that allow you to tune the bar pressure, you’ll find the factory setting in the middle. With tons of construction details like the crisp Quad-Tex Ripstop Fabric and Naish’s use of the Diagonal Load Seam the canopy does a great job of feeling crisp and transferring gusts into direct pulling power.

Impressions
From the very first moment, you can feel the Dash flying farther forward in the window and it’s peaky pulling power really comes alive after the canopy has developed some apparent wind from being flown aggressively across the window or with faster board speeds. While the Dash is user-friendly, it doesn’t offer quite the sheet and go feel you get from the Triad or even the latest edition of the Pivot, instead it comes alive for riders that choose to fly their kite more aggressively.

In terms of bar feel, the Dash continues to sport a bar feel that carries on Naish’s perfect bar feel which comfortably lands just on the light side of medium bar feel. The Dash is easy on your arms and wrists, but just enough input and resistance to give you a good read on the kite’s tuning and positioning. The power delivery across the throw feels intuitive so long as you expect to fly the kite more aggressively through the window to tap into the explosive power in the canopy. With the fixed bridle configuration that does away with pulleys, you can feel the extra crisp steering input combining with a turning response that feels quick and snappy. At the same time the steering arc is designed to be a bit wider, turning off the wingtips for a turn that tends to give you more acceleration, which meets its intended use as a big air kitelooping stallion.

As we ran the Dash through its paces, it felt as if the airframe’s weight reductions have helped the kite’s acceleration and turning, which tuned up the kite’s pulling power during big air sends and looping. With its fast turning but wider steering arc, the Dash created big high altitude airs once we adjusted our steering expectations and our load and release timing. With only a few jumps, we became extremely tuned to the Dash’s perfect launch sequence and found ourselves hitting some of the tallest airs of the day. The Dash builds tons of peaky lift performance and gives you decent hang time, but for super big sends the rider will want to focus on using the Dash’s steering performance and agility to keep the lift going or deliver soft landings by flying the kite more actively. In this respect, the Dash’s lively flying really delivers for the kiter with strong flying skills. The Dash’s turning speed gives you confidence during loops that it will cycle through the loop and catch you, but the power and agility of the kite delivers a punch that might better fit the expectations of more advanced kiters. In terms of unhooked performance, the Dash has good load and slack with its forward window position, giving riders the kind of tension and release that helps with completing handlepasses and unsent advanced freestyle maneuvers.

The relaunch on the Dash is reliable, from nose down dead in the window we used some tension on the leader lines to steer the kite towards one side before a wingtip flipped up and the kite taxied across the window for a later launch. The Dash definitely stays glued to the water a little longer compared to the Pivot and Triad, but it reliably relaunched every time with solid and consistent bar input.

In the end, the Dash is a very specific kite that is targeted towards the more skilled and confident riders, probably gaining the most appreciation from connoisseurs of the kiteloop while offering sufficient unhooking performance for crossover into freestyle. For big air senders that miss the flavors of the old C-kite days, the Dash gives you an edgy pulse for really big launches and with agile steering performance mid-jump, the Dash is more than capable of keeping up with improvised flight path changes. With refreshingly crisp steering and fast movement across the window, the Dash is guaranteed to keep the adrenalin pumping and with lighter, faster responses, the latest mods will impress loyal riders and is sure to appeal to the next batch of aerial kite loop chargers.

We rode the Dash with the Torque 2. Read the review here.