Flysurfer STOKE

Ah we do get a little bit excited here at TheKiteMag when we get an ALL NEW kite to play with… Flysurfer have been an interesting brand for the last few years as they brought their first inflatable kite onto the market (the Cronix), then the Boost arrived, and now the latest evolution is the Stoke…

As a brand with their roots in foil kites, Flysurfer have taken a different approach to their inflatable kites and there are always a few raised-eyebrow moments when you rig up a Flysurfer kite. The Stoke is no exception and as soon as you unwrap it there are a few interesting features… The most striking of these is Flysurfer’s Free Flow Valve. This is an entirely new system that we haven’t seen anywhere else – you push a red button in the middle to open and close the valve so at the end of your session there’s a nice controlled initial deflate without any caps or covers flying around.

The Stoke is a three strut kite, with a relatively chunky LE and struts so you feel like you are getting plenty of kite for your money. As with their other inflatable kites, the Stoke has plenty of tuning options on both the front and rear lines, and it also has a 3-Stage Simple Bridle which you adapt by changing where the rear bridle lines meet. There are freestyle, freeride and wave modes – we tried these out and there was a clear difference in the behavior and performance of the kite across them.

We had the 10m on test and were testing a few other kites of a similar size and we immediately noted that the Stoke delivers a serious amount of grunt. The low end is excellent and gets you going beautifully and there is then plenty of power on tap. For freestyle this resulted in a kite that will happily send you up and then keep on going – it is a boosting machine. For powered freestyle, there is a nice amount of pop and then enough slack to keep wakestylers happy. In the waves we would definitely recommend dropping down one (or two!) sizes – there is plenty of power there – then it’s a nice kite for surf, the turning is pivotal and the power shuts off nicely. Overall you get a real ‘flow’ with the Stoke, it turns crisply and evenly and you can really get into the groove… We tested the Stoke over a few sessions and enjoyed playing with the settings, but you could easily spend a few months tweaking it and getting it set up just right for you…

In a sentence: The build quality and attention to detail on the Stoke are excellent and we were very impressed with the power and super-smooth performance.