DUOTONE Pro Whip 5’3 2020
Reviews / Surfboards
102,827
At A Glance
The Pro Whip has long been a favourite board of ours, we’re big fans of the CSC shape - it makes it easy to travel with, and it’s also a Jack-of-all-trades board. For 2020 there has been a major overhaul from shaper Sky Solbach. The wide point has been moved further forwards, and there is an increase in nose rocker too. Finally, the overall surface area of the nose has been reduced. The rear half of the board is essentially unchanged.
The board uses the Vacuum Epoxy construction featured on all the Pro boards in the range. It’s light, flexible and designed to mirror the feeling of a traditional PVC board as much as possible. You need to treat it with some care and respect - indestructible it isn’t, but the feeling on the water is vastly superior to stiffer more robust construction.
There is a cork shock absorber across the whole top deck, and there are two heel damper areas under the front foot too. Finished with a Technora fibre net the graphics this year are a little bolder than last year. The X marks the spot for your foot placement, too, which is handy. The board comes with new fins and the choice of a Pro Pad, or standard deckpad, or you can just go for traditional wax if that is your preference.
On The Water
It’s great to see the Pro Whip get some tweaks this year, although to the untrained eye it looks largely unchanged. The big double channel is there, as are the wingers on the squashed thumb tail, but it’s what you perhaps won’t notice that makes the biggest difference. The changes to the nose area free the board up a little, stopping it from catching in the chop and allowing it to handle a little better in stronger winds and on bigger waves.
I’ve been riding it a fair bit, in everything from onshore mush to arguably the biggest wave I have ever ridden in the UK on a monstrous swell at Watergate Bay in Cornwall. I think this is what sums up this board so well; it can handle pretty much everything you throw at it. In small to medium waves, it’s an incredible ride, but it can also handle big powerful and fast waves too.
Even better this year the thinned out nose lets it handle a bit more speed. Racing down the face on a big one is still arguably an experienced served better on the Pro Session, but the Pro Whip can take it. Essentially that’s the beauty of this board, if you want a one-board quiver, for me this is it. Small enough to take travelling with no issues at all, capable enough to handle whatever you discover along the way and dynamic enough on the wave to engage even the most demanding of riders.
It’s easy to get a vertical snap; equally it will happily offer you a more drawn out carve too. I always run my own smaller fins, and these changed the characteristics quite a bit, offering a looser and more skatey feel when I wanted it.
Overall
As a one board quiver, you can’t go wrong here, great for travelling, capable in a myriad of conditions and with enough performance to satisfy the most demanding of wave riders. If I had to pick one board to ride for the whole year in a multitude of locations, this would be it.
Videos
This review was in Issue 80 of IKSURFMAG.
For more information visit DUOTONERelated
By Rou Chater
Rou has been kiting since the sports inception and has been working as an editor and tester for magazines since 2004. He started IKSURFMAG with his brother in 2006 and has tested hundreds of different kites and travelled all over the world to kitesurf. He's a walking encyclopedia of all things kite and is just as passionate about the sport today as he was when he first started!
