The Black Pearl 88 was the best-selling ski of the last decade, a streak of dominance that is highly unlikely to end this year, as Blizzard has once again raised the bar by creating a new generation of Pearls with an even higher performance ceiling. The 2025 Black Pearl 88 adopts the sidecut and baseline of the men’s Anomaly 88, but it’s Fluxform construction swaps the bottom Titanal laminate for a slab of carbon pre-preg, and the Ti pieces on top are slimmed down from .6mm thick to .4mm. Like the Anomaly, the Pearl breaks up the top Ti elements into two, nearly full-length strips running above the edges, with a separate Ti plate underfoot. Part of the reason for the Pearl’s sustained success is that Blizzard pays attention to the details, beginning with a ski’s most fundamental feature, its core. The TrueBlend core introduced a few seasons ago carefully intersperses vertical laminates of dense beech in a matrix of lightweight poplar to create a flex pattern that is smooth, round and balanced. Every size – and the Pearl 88 comes in six sizes – gets its own TrueBlend lay-up, matched with a size-specific sidecut and baseline. No ski gets as popular as the Pearl 88 without feeling easy to ski for a broad range of skier types. It responds readily to skier input and doesn’t have to be stomped on to finish a full, C-shaped arc across the fall line. The new dose of Titanal hasn’t sapped its energy, …

Despite being narrower than the Black Pearl 97 it replaces, the new Black Pearl 94 is better adapted to off-trail skiing, providing easily accessible power that treats clumpy crud with contempt. The Black Pearl 94 borrows its shape and size splits from the new Anomaly 94, but uses a Women Specific Design in its wood, metal and carbon core. By dint of its wider waistline, the Black Pearl 94 is biased in favor of off-trail adventures, longer radius turns and perhaps most importantly, a skilled skier on top of it. Extra width, particularly for a skier who will have scant opportunity to take advantage of it, is more likely to retard skills development than accelerate it. An expert can take advantage of its ability to batter heavy crud aside, while a slow-moving skier of modest skills will struggle to link the short-radius arcs she aspires to. But pandering to the technically proficient is hardly a crime for a high-end, all-terrain ski. The Black Pearl 94 doesn’t use its width to mask the deficiencies of the off-trail newbie, but as a reward for experts who will take advantage of it to go faster through a mine field of crisscrossing tracks. Throughout its impressive speed range, the BP 94 feels easy to balance on, and if its preferred turn shape is on the long side, so what, as long as the ride feels cushioned and secure? The way the FluxForm construction uses its quotient of Titanal allows the ski to flex more …

The Head Kore 91 W is either the best women’s ski for off-trail skiing, or the best off-trail ski for women, take your pick. The properties that make the Kore 91 W a great women’s ski and those that make it ideally suited for off-piste conditions are the same. The Kore 91 W got a shot in the arm three years ago when Head incorporated several new elements into the Kore design. First, it redecorated the interior, tearing out artificial Koroyd honeycomb and replacing it with its blended Karuba/poplar wood core. The switch to all-wood makes a difference in the feedback the skier receives from the snow, so the ski feels supportive but not fussy about how it’s handled. Within the Kore family, the design of the Kore 91 W is shifted, however slightly, in favor of edge grip on hard snow, versus smudge-ability on the soft stuff. The overall impression is of a ski without biases, unlike Mark Rafferty from Peter Glenn, who writes, “I’m admitting here that when I clicked in to the Kore 91, I had some bias. I’m already a Kore fan and own a pair. So, my thinking was, what did they do to mess with success? So, I rode this 91 hard. The short radius turns in the steeps were quick and energetic. In the lower angle hard carves? Velvety and ego-building. It’s quick yet damp. Head managed to make this year’s Kore even better. And that’s huge.” His compatriot, Clare Martin, sang in …

Nordica’s Santa Ana 92 has a baked-in bias for off-trail skiing, but it can spend all day on groomers and never skip a beat. That’s because its Titanal topsheet scallops only enough metal from its forebody to shed a little weight and soften torsional rigidity, so the ski will conform to irregular terrain instead of trying to crush it. The sculpted top metal laminate uses different dimensions according to the presumed snow condition a given Santa Ana is likely to encounter. Since the Santa Ana 92 is certain to include a large portion of groomers in its daily diet, its TSM topsheet runs nearly to the edge in the binding area. The sharply rockered shovel plays no role in edge engagement, but once the edge finds the snow, it locks on like a terrier with a tennis ball. When the snow is soft, the double-rockered baseline makes it uber easy to slip and slide to the submerged edge, cornering like a roadster through the rubble. While Terrain Specific Metal plays a leading part in the Santa Ana 92’s proficiency in a broad range of slope conditions, it’s not the only technology in play. New to the Santa Ana collection this year is a multi-laminate Pulse core, which adds wood and a rubbery elastomer to the TSM sandwich, so it’s easier for a lighter skier to decamber the ski and generate power out of the turn.

This season, everything about the retiring Kenja 88 remains the same in the Secret 88 – except the name, and of course, the graphics. The reason Völkl changed the model name and nothing else was nothing else needed fixing. A fistful of evolutionary changes has been applied to the Kenja 88 in the recent past that collectively has elevated the Secret 88 – and its unisex counterpart, the Mantra 88 – into the first rank of the most competitive category in the ski market. Three inter-related design features give the Secret 88 its amazing performance range. First among equals is Tailored Titanal Frame, that breaks up the top Titanal laminate into three separate pieces. Breaking the Ti topsheet into three disconnected parts allows the center of the ski to be more readily compressed, so the skier can load up a fat fiberglass layer just below the metal bits. When the stored energy in the distorted fiberglass layer is released at the bottom of the turn, the skier is fired across the fall line and into the next turn. The second game-changing feature that elevated the Secret 88 above the ordinary is 3D Radius Sidecut, that works in conjunction with the ski’s double-rockered baseline to create a long-radius sidecut that harbors a tighter turning ski inside it. The cherry on top of this high-performance sundae is called Tailored Carbon Tips, a clever way of using carbon to neutralize shock in the shovel, where the ski takes the brunt of impact with …

Lest anyone wonder how little Liberty earned a place near the top of the most competitive field in the women’s market, they did it the old-fashioned way: they earned it. I had the opportunity to ski both the Horizon 92 (in a 167cm) and its unisex template, the Radian 92 (179cm), and both delivered a limo-smooth ride with an unshakable edge in every circumstance. Despite skiing on a much shorter length in the Horizon, security through every phase of the turn remained unperturbed by clumpy crud or slick hardpack. While almost all models in the AME genre are part of a larger clan of off-trail-oriented skis with a wider footprint, double-rockered baselines and tapered tips, the presumption underlying the category’s out-sized popularity is that it will perform equally well on-trail or off. The shorthand for this on-trail/off-trail dual aptitude is “50/50;” on this scale, the Liberty Horizon 92 is temperamentally closer to a 60/40 groomer/off-piste ratio, with a particular penchant for short-to-medium radius arcs that don’t stray too far from the fall line. One of the inherent perils of a fat ski in a short length is that just as it crosses the fall line and the ski begins to flatten out, it will lose its tenuous edge hold and spin out, making a mess of the turn transition and knocking the legs out from under the lower-skilled skier’s confidence. Despite the considerable handicap of supporting a skier some 50 pounds over its target load, the Horizon 92 stayed on …

As a vector member of the AME Women’s community, the revised Nordica Santa Ana 87 epitomizes the qualities that can take an intermediate woman to the next level. It’s a breakthrough ski, a step above whatever this recreational skier is currently using, be it a rental, a hand-me-down or a package ski made for soft snow and green trails. Skis like the Santa Ana 87 open the door to skiing the whole mountain, ready to take you off the beaten path whenever you are. Within the 4-model Santa Ana line-up, the 87mm-waisted Santa Ana 87 hits the sweet spot for the women who wants to be able to travel off-trail without losing the carving qualities they’ll want when skiing the groom is the only game in town. The key contributor the SA 87’s accurate grip on corduroy is a top Titanal laminate that runs nearly edge to edge underfoot, accentuating edging accuracy over the smeary drift of its wider sisters. The SA 87’s modified metal topsheet is an inherited trait passed down from its predecessor, the Santa Ana 88, but what lies beneath is a new core that contributes to a smoother flex and more effortless edging. The Double Core at the heart of the Santa Ana 87 slips a layer of elastomer into its wood-core lay-up, so it’s easier for a lightweight skier to flex it while still holding a precise trajectory through tracked-out trails. First-time Peter Glenn ski tester Carlene Johnson, whose comments were consistently spot-on, filed this …

From a global performance perspective, Head understands that not all Kores will be treated equally. The Kore 85 W, as the narrowest of the clan, is expected to spend a good deal of its life on groomed snow, so it’s stiffened up accordingly. The Kore 85 W is nonetheless an off-trail ski by dint of its baseline and sidecut, so it has a special fondness for powder. An underappreciated Kore feature that makes it even more effortless to ski in deep snow is a chamfered top edge that lets the ski slice sideways with almost no resistance. Since all powder skiing entails some foot-swiveling, this seemingly minor feature has a major impact. For east coast skiers who seek out variable conditions, the Kore 85 W offers an ideal amalgam of quick turning chops and a baseline meant for irregular terrain, making it a perfect companion for pucker-tight tree skiing. “Loved this ski!” exulted one of Willi’s flock of female testers. “Handled well in the turns and felt like I was gliding!” “Great ski,” concurred another Willi’s woman. “It handled high speeds well, turned well and handled the crud just fine.”

No one can accuse the Head Total Joy of being a copycat model. Sixteen years ago, it debuted as the centerpiece of new series of women’s skis built from scratch, without reference to any unisex model. It was also the first time Head industrialized Graphene in a ski, a bold experiment that has paid off in spades. At this stage of the Total Joy’s evolution, Head engineers have figured out how to optimize this unique material, blending it with classic features like an all wood (Karuba-Ash) core, fiberglass and carbon laminates. It’s a heady blend: the wood gives it great snow feel, fiberglass gives it liveliness and snap, the carbon and Graphene keep the weight in check and its piezo-electric EMC damping system maintains snow contact with the same security as much stouter models. The most obvious change from the Total Joys of yore is a new tip shape that shaves away 6mm, trimming the forebody and diminishing its propensity for digging in hard at the top of a turn. The Total Joy remains the most carve-centric model in the All-Mountain East pantheon, but the narrower profile improves its handling in off-trail conditions. Its slimmer silhouette opens up its sidecut radius, which in turn makes it easier to maneuver in deep snow. Also new across the Joy collection (as of 23/24) is a softer-flexing mid-section that evenly distributes pressure along the full length of the ski. This adaptation alone is worth the price of admission if you’re an AARP member …

Like a fairy tale princess, the Salomon QST Lux 92 was born in humble circumstances, endured an awkward adolescence and gradually transformed into a raving beauty. You see, the first edition of the Lux 92 was clearly intended for intermediates, first-time buyers and bargain hunters, as it sold for $499 and didn’t share much of the high-tech construction of its wider siblings, the Lumen and Stella. The current Lux 92 has top-of-the-line features, including a full-length allotment of C/FX, the carbon and flax amalgam that provides the principal structural support for all the QST’s. Also onboard is a Titanal plate underfoot that improves stability throughout its mid-section. The QST series is a unisex family, so the Lux 92 receives the same bundle of upgrades as the “men’s” QST 92. Part of the most recent package of enhancements is a segment of injected ABS underfoot that boosts edge pressure in this critical zone. The combined effect of these embellishments is an elevation in performance that makes the latest Lux 92 one of the top performers in the genre. It isn’t $499 anymore, but it’s still only $599 – one of the best deals in the sport – with a performance range that runs from the basement to the penthouse. The 2025 QST Lux 92 is now so substantial that it can be skied in shorter lengths – its size range goes down to a 152cm – with no loss of stability. Sized properly, it won’t overpower a skier still learning the …

The Experience 86 Basalt W from Rossignol is part of a petite minority of Women’s All-Mountain East models that headlines a mostly Frontside collection. Rossi has completely re-imagined its Experience series, long the mainstay of its core recreational models, to fit what it perceives as a new skier type, the “All-Resort” skier. Skiing is still an important part of the overall resort experience, but it’s not the whole ball of wax for this resort visitor. While this person is an avid skier, she’s not going to go wandering out of bounds intentionally and whatever powder she essays will be on the side of the trail. She’ll find something else to do when the weather is lousy, and she’s not going to push too hard on the performance envelope. In commercial terms, the EXP 86 Basalt W is a “step-up” model, most likely a first-time purchase for a skier who has survived until now on rentals and second-hand fare. Its “all-trail sidecut” will engage at the top of the turn and hold firm through the finish, encouraging skills development without insisting on it. If the skier applies a little tip pressure, its supple forebody transfers energy with gentle insistence, coaching the skier up on an edge that feels confidence-building underfoot.

[Fischer’s Ranger women’s models are identical to their unisex counterparts. It’s in this spirit that we reprise our unisex review of the Ranger 90, whose every word is as applicable to its “women’s” version.] Fischer spent several seasons behind the R&D curtain re-imagining its entire Ranger collection of off-trail models. The result was a family of hybrids that blended the two branches of the previous Ranger clan, the surfy FR series and the more connected Ti models. All the new Rangers got a dose of .5mm-thick Titanal underfoot married to a fairly loose tip and tail. As befits the family name, they all possessed a decidedly off-trail bias. Fans of earlier Rangers will find the new series are more closely related behaviorally to the easy-to-smear FR models of yore than to the metal-laden Ti fraternity. The lighter weight (all poplar) core of the Ranger 90 suggests it might be a good option for living a double life as an in-resort/backcountry, all-purpose partner-in-climb. Its Aeroshape exterior further enables foot steering by reducing resistance when rotating a flat ski. Skiers who want a more substantial ski under them (in the Ranger series) should step up to either the Ranger 96 or Ranger 102, both of which mix denser beech into the otherwise poplar core. When choosing which Ranger to ride, bear in mind that Fischer draws no distinction, other than color and size range, between men’s and women’s models.