Tkb Review: 2022 NAISH Boxer

Sizes Available: 2.8, 3.4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16m
Sizes Tested: 7, 9m

Naish Says:

Sometimes less is more. Weight matters and the Boxer is the lightest, most responsive kite in our lineup. Made to excel in light wind, waves, and foiling, the Boxer offers easy transitions and relaunch capabilities. Its unique luff strut design allows the kite to feather so you can hold it further back in the window and ride it there, which eliminates the problem of your kite overflying you in gusty winds. The single strut’s rotational inertia creates even better handling for underpowered riding. If you’re looking to maximize your light wind kiting or get into foiling, the Boxer is the best option on the market.

Visit for more info: www.naishkites.com/product/boxer/

TKB Says:

The Boxer has become a real crowd pleaser amongst our testing team with rave reviews for its versatility, excellent power generation and superb canopy stability. In the race to lower canopy weight, the Boxer’s single strut airframe does an incredible job of blending stability with all-around user-friendly performance that ticks off the boxes for the daily driver that does a little bit of everything from kitefoil to surf as well as casual and fun freeride.

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 / one sliding pulley

Design and Features
The key component of the Boxer is its single strut frame that has homed in on the careful allocation of material usage. The secret in the sauce is just the right blend of structural stiffness while keeping the overall airframe feeling quick and nimble while the bar feel is remarkably resistant to canopy flutter. The wingtip goes light on its usage of Dacron and the trailing edge is built out of double layers of ripstop. The Boxer comes with Naish’s 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. The leading edge bridle is a single setting bridle that uses a single slider and the attachment point ends in a knot. The wingtip attachment point ends in a lark’s head loop, with two attachment options to adjust the bar pressure (ours came from the factory set towards the wingtip end for less bar pressure). The wingtips feature drain curtains which are key for quick relaunch when you are exploring the extreme lower end of the wind window, which is where we quite frequently find ourselves while kitefoiling.

Impressions
Straight off the beach, our first power strokes demonstrated the airframe’s light and responsive turning. With its light weight canopy, the Boxer demonstrates a super intuitive steering response that feels comfortably snappy and allows you to always put the kite exactly where you need it. The bar pressure has the standard Naish feel, ringing in somewhere between light to medium, which our testers celebrated for its ease on your arms while providing solid feedback. One of the highlights of the Boxer’s equation is the canopy feedback at the bar that feels relatively crisp for a one-strut, and as almost all our testers remarked, has very little flutter while riding. The delivery of power felt refreshingly progressive across the bar’s throw, making the bar dynamics really inviting for riders of all skill levels. Since we tested the Boxer across all disciplines, surf, hydro and twintip, we could force the canopy to flutter on the higher-end riding with extreme depower, but during most of our testing routine the Boxer’s canopy panels and trailing edge was amazingly stable and quiet. Since the Boxer covers the kitefoiling discipline quite well, we were impressed with the built-in depower that allowed us to dump all the pulling power, a feature which is greatly appreciated while hydrofoiling as well as surfing. Naish attributes the Boxer’s equally impressive drifting power to the canopy’s luff strut technology, but its ability to stay engaged in the wind window is probably also attributed to its overall light weight.

In the jumping department, we coerced the Boxer into some solid jumps that turned out to be very predictable and comfortable, and while the lift didn’t qualify as explosive, we did log some solid altitude with some good hangtime. The turning on the Boxer is pretty swift in speed and reaction and the steering arc trends toward a pivot style that makes it easy to keep in the power range. Whether you are on a hydrofoil, surfboard or twintip, this kite is really easy to control and place in the center of the window, which makes it fun for carving up waves and riding swell with the airframe staying planted in the window and ready to power or depower with the movement of the bar. The Boxer breezed through our relaunch tests with quick recoveries from nose down deep in the wind window. With mild bar input the Boxer rotated out of nose down and launched immediately for an incredibly reliable relaunch every time.

If the availability of sizes (2.5 to 16m) tells you anything, this kite has tremendous versatility across quite a few disciplines and with the overall reactions of the test team ranging from perma-smiles to rave reviews, the Boxer clearly nails the equation with spunky user-friendly performance that will keep you on the water much longer than you might have intended.

We rode the Boxer with Naish’s Torque 2 bar. Read the review here.