After you have set your budget the next step will be to determine if you want a hard board or an inflatable. In the earlier days of SUP inflatable boards were just bad. They were floppy, limited in shape and size, limited in what they could do well, and generally looked down on. But that was a long time ago. Inflatable technology has advanced dramatically since then to the point where inflatables are just as good as hard boards in many conditions. There are now very few instances where the go-to recommendation today is “absolutely get a hard board,” but they do still offer some advantages over inflatables.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inflatables<\/strong> Hard Boards<\/strong> There are now some inflatable boards that are implementing advanced dropstitch designs to create a proper displacement hull, but it is not commonly available are in the Top-Tier budget category.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After you have set your budget the next step will be to determine if you want a hard board or an inflatable. In the earlier days of SUP inflatable boards were just bad. They were floppy, limited in shape and size, limited in what they could do well, and generally looked down on. But that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[55,46,45,66,59,47],"class_list":["post-769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs-news","tag-paddlesports","tag-standuppaddle","tag-sup","tag-sup-inflatable-boards","tag-surfboard","tag-watersports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ifunpower.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ifunpower.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ifunpower.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ifunpower.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ifunpower.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ifunpower.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":773,"href":"https:\/\/www.ifunpower.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769\/revisions\/773"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ifunpower.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ifunpower.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ifunpower.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ifunpower.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Easier to transport and store
More impact-resistant
Higher Volume (more weight capacity)
Softer (safer if you fall)
Planing hulls only<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Require no setup\/teardown
More cut-resistant
Shared Rails and Volume Control (better surfing)
Stiffer (better power transfer and glide)
Planing or Displacement Hulls<\/p>\n\n\n\n