Premier Pro Signature Wood Snowskate Series Review

The Premier Pro Signature Wood series snowskates are high grade quality snowskates designed for serious riding and serious fun. The Premier Pro Signature Wood series snowskates look professional - shiny wood construction, ridged bottom and thick black foam top all tricked out with pro rider graphics. Our team of testers hit the snow with two Premier Pro Signature Wood series snowskates (a full size and a mini) and we tried it all.

Premier Pro Signature Wood series snowskates are built with pressed wood laminates. A black foam center sheet covers the top with 7mm at the edges and 4mm at center center to create a concave. The bottom of the snowskates have a rough textured layering with five divots running the length of the board to make riding smoother and add carving ability.

Premier snowskates has four pro signature wood full size boards available, with screened graphics on the top pads and graphics set beneath the clear layer on the bottom. Pro Premier team riders JP Walker, John Cardiel, Nico Droz and Sebastian Raban all have full size pro signature snowskates. The full size snowskates are 36" long.

The mini pro signature wood snowskates are 33" long, and have the same design. Only two mini snowskates are available - a JP Walker mini and John Cardiel mini.

The difference between riding the mini and the full size pro signature wood snowskates is fairly large - most of our testers preferred the full size. The full size pro wood snowskate gave a good amount of response, and let the rider set his or her feet at a comfortable width. The Mini board would be better for smaller snowskaters, and for riders who want a feeling even closer to skateboarding on the snow.

I have to say, these boards were a lot of fun to test out. They're more toy-like than snowboards, in that you can just pick it up and take it outside, with no gearing up or driving to the mountain. Premier snowskates are designed to be used anywhere you have snow - your backyard, a golf course, a small hill, anywhere. If there's snow outside, you can snowskate.

And the learning curve isn't as large as it might look. If you can skateboard, you can probably hop on one of these Premier pro signature wood snowskates and re-create most of your moves in no time. In testing, we had guys performing kickflips and shuvits right away, with no warmup or explanation. Ollies were very hard to do, since the tail of the snowskate is so close to the ground, and you are pushing it into snow, but they were still possible.

There aren't that many problems that we found with these Premier pro signature wood snowskates. One very minor complaint would be the graphics screened onto the black top foam. Being screened on, the graphics wore off almost immediately. Which isn't a very big deal at all, but for some people that might be something to worry about.

The only other problem is that snowskates and snowdecks themselves aren't really popular yet. This means that at some resorts and other snowparks, you might get harassed or even turned away for trying to snowskate there. Many parks are opening up their doors to snowskaters, especially the bigger ones - whistler even has an area dedicated to snowskates!

I also found that these snowskates didn't want to slide on true powder without waxing - butthe bottom of the boards take wax easily. In wetter snow we didn't need wax at all, it was only in dry powder. You will also want to make sure that you don't try any huge hill on your premier pro signature wood snowskate - not that I don't think you can do it, but if you fall your nicely waxed snowskate has a good chance of flying down the hill without you, and killing some unfortunate skier or fuzzy woodland animal.

The end result of all of this is that I do recommend Premier's pro signature wood series snowskates. Premier was the first company to make snowskates, and they know what they are doing. They have an excellent team of pro riders with a variety of graphics - you should be able to find something you like. And the design, responsiveness and durability of these pro signature wood snowskates makes them the best that Premier has out there - a perfect choice for anyone who is serious about their snowskating, or who wants to make sure that they get the best snowskating experience possible.

If you are looking for a cheaper, more entry-level snowskate that you can still have piles of fun with but not worry about as much, take a look at the Warrior series.