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Welcome to POWDER's 2025 Gear Guide

Originally posted on Powder | By Max Ritter | Last updated Oct 1, 2025 11:40 AM ET

You asked for it, and we did it. Our 2025-2026 POWDER Gear Guide is finally here. For the last 12 months, we've spent countless hours testing every piece of ski gear we could get our hands on, including skis, boots, bindings, apparel, accessories, and everything in between.

This year, our gear reviews will follow similar formats as in seasons prior, with a look at technical details, construction, and other things to satisfy our nerdiest readers, and a deep dive into how we really felt each ski, boot, binding, backpack, helmet, goggles jacket, and pant performed in real-world conditions. If there was something we didn’t like, we’ll tell you, but the good news is that 2026’s gear is the best yet, and there wasn’t much to not like about it. Let's put it this way, that makes testing a blast.

If there are products in our reviews you’re psyched to get on yourself, we’ve included direct links to the best place to purchase them. Everything on the site is available at the time of publishing the story.

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How we test gear at POWDER

While it might look like all fun and games, POWDER testers take their jobs very seriously. We've assembled a team of veteran ski gear testers all across North America, all hailing from a diverse range of backgrounds. We've got everything from park rats with Superunknown entries under their belt, freeride comp rats qualifying for the FWT, AMGA ski guides, professional bootfitters and ski techs, ex-ski racers, crusty old-school telemarkers, and hardcore members of the Church of the Seven-Day Recreationalist (me). We strive to assemble a team with as many different takes on the sport of skiing as possible, because we realize a simple fact: everyone skis their own way. However, while some might lay perfect trenches, some might lay out perfect dub corks, and others prefer to hippy wiggle their way down low-angle powder, everyone shares similar levels of knowledge on how skis, boots, and other gear works. In other words, we think you can trust our team.

Most of our testing took place from November through April, with products in the hands of testers across the Mountain West. Testers have free reign with what to do with their gear during that time, and have been known to take it to the absolute limits. At the end of the season, in partnership with our old friends at Newschoolers.com, we brought together a larger crew of testers to Sunshine Village, Alberta to finish the year off strong with seven straight days of testing, shooting content, and celebrating skiing.

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Every brand participating in the test week sent us a pile of ski bags and boxes, so we had multiple size options for each model, ensuring testers could comfortably try what suited them best. Each day, testers broke into small groups to shoot photo and video content of each model and make sure they got as many runs as possible on each ski. Thanks to our friends at Sunshine Village, we had access to a large hangar to store, tune, and set up skis to make transitions and swapping skis as efficient as possible.

Each tester was given a questionnaire to fill out on each model they rode, to help us gather details on what they liked and disliked about the skis. We don’t use a ranking system here at Powder, instead focusing on objective feedback from our trusted testers. I sat down with testers throughout the week to get a chance to further expand on their thoughts on their favorite and least favorite models.