UPDATE: Check out our list of the Best Freeride snowboards for 2019-2020 here

If freestyle snowboarding and its trickery hold zero attraction for you, then you should look at finding yourself the best freeride snowboard for your specific interest. The good new is that now, more than ever, there’s a wealth to choose from that tick all manner of boxes.

• How To Choose A Snowboard

• Stiff vs Soft Snowboards
• What Size Snowboard Do I Need?
• Camber vs Rocker
• Snowboard Shapes Explained
• Do You Need A Wide Snowboard?

Once again you’ll need to drill down into your preferred kind of freeriding to get the best snowboard for your riding style: freeriding itself can be broken down broadly into on-piste blasting, riding gnarly powder lines with drops, natural terrain freestyle, and mellow playful pow runs including getting lost in the woods. For each kind, there are specific shapes and flexes that will function best.

With all of the above the chances are you’ll be riding forwards most of the time, so such boards will be directional in shape and flex to give you the maximum drive and control through your turns and ride up over powder. While some (if not all, what with the recent trend of taking fishes and big guns into freestyle terrain) will handle runs through the park, they’re definitely less able to perform as well across the spectrum as an all mountain board.

“…On-piste blasting, riding gnarly powder lines with drops, natural terrain freestyle, and mellow playful pow runs…”

When it comes to the niches of freeriding you’ll benefit from a softer, longer and in many cases more rockered nose to ease you into turns and float over pow, while a little extra width can aid buoyancy and carvability. Drilling down more, if you’re looking to go fast on hardpack or in the powder you’ll appreciate the extra response and stability from a stiffer model while tackling mellower faces and tight trees can be helped by having less torisonal stiffness, tighter sidecuts and shorter lengths than you might imagine.

So strap in and take a look at our testers’ best freeride snowboards of 2018-2019.

Scroll down to view all the best snowboards, or skip to a particular board using the links below

Bataleon Party Wave | Burton Deep Thinker | Jones Hovecraft Split | Jones Mind Expander | K2 Cool Bean | KORUA Shapes Pencil Split | Lib Tech Orca | Nidecker Mellow | Nidecker Tracer | Rome Ravine | Salomon Pillow Talk | Salomon Sick Stick Split | YES Optimistic