If you take a close look at the scores for the Power Instinct Ti Pro for all ten criteria (available on our members’ site), you’ll see above average scores for every criterion and a brilliant result for stability at speed, a benchmark of excellence. There’s only one area where it gets beaten up, literally and figuratively: off-piste performance. Little wonder. The Power Instinct Ti Pro is totally dialed for on-trail heroics: a system ski, it comes with a fairly high plate, the binding bumps up the ramp angle and it has a well-scalloped sidecut. These features contribute to uncanny control on groomed runs – the Power Instinct can hold an edge at speed alongside the best in the genre – but it’s as manageable as a moody cat in knee-deep crud.
The mere softening of the flex pattern couldn’t have made the Monster 98 a better ski if it weren’t already a damn good one. Among its bundle of admirable traits are a few features that are becoming so rare they’re endangered: a forebody that engages the snow the moment it’s tipped, a tail that’s more squared off rather than turned up and just enough rocker to rationalize calling them rockered. They sure don’t behave like typical rockered skis. They perform like race skis wearing a fat suit.
No question the Navigator 80 is softer than its burlier kin, but that’s hardly a demerit to the skier who just wants an everyday tool that lets him dine from the all-the-groomers-you-can-eat menu. What’s groomed in the AM is often bumped up by afternoon, when the Navigator 80 can bend its way around bumps with aplomb. While the Navigator 80 is perfectly attuned to the Finesse skier who prefers to ski in an upright stance, it’s ready to tip into big, laid-over arcs whenever duty calls. For its unbeatable ease of operation, accurate steering and category-killing value, the Navigator 80 is a Realskiers Silver Skier Selection.
There’s no way that Kästle can build a bad GS ski. In fact, it would almost be impossible for it to make anything less than a superb one. That’s because Kästle’s stock construction – vertically laminated poplar and beech core, prepreg fiberglass and top and bottom sheets of Titanal – starts race ready. Add a tip and tail design meant to wrench every last millimeter of edge contact possible and a cambered baseline that’s on the same page, swirl in Kästle’s signature Hollowtech to smooth out the forward suspension, and you have a winning formula.
Like a benevolent despot, the new Kästle LX85 has power in its bloodlines but mercy in its heart. A look at its components suggests a ski with all the rigor of a race ski, with a vertically laminated wood core encased in glass and twin sheets of Titanal. The cap construction of the earlier LX’s has been replaced with the square sidewalls associated with more powerful skis. But its tip and tail are tapered to take the edge off their reactions and the forebody has the slight elevation that is considered essential on an off-trail ski.
