TEN Pinna

New Dutch brand TEN have a team behind them with a heap of experience in kite design and also – which matters! – in kite repair. When you have spent a lot of time checking over kites from all of the brands on the market and seeing where they tend to fail, it enables you to build a kite with the reinforcements exactly where you need them so you have a tough as well as not having an overly engineered kite…

We don’t generally mention bags, but as this is a new brand first impressions matter! And we were impressed by the bag which was well built with plenty of space to get all your kit in, and looks the business in a heather gray. We are always surprised by how much people talk about kite bags so it’s a big thumbs up here! Then the Pinna is built around a three strut platform, using double ripstop from Japanese company, Sakai Techfibre. The material feels lighter than other double ripstops we come across and overall this is a very light kite. Reinforcements are definitely not overdone and TEN claim that their unmatched experience in repairing a variety of kites has enabled them to keep these minimal and to drive the weight of the kite right down. Overall, in terms of construction, we felt that the attention to detail was top notch.

Once up in the air the Pinna is stable and direct, and with a compact bridle with one pulley on each side, the Pinna feels like a versatile and accessible kite. The Pinna offers a solid and consistent feel and, with a decent power stroke upon the initial dive of the kite, we were pleasantly surprised by the low end that the Pinna delivered. Upwind was good and, coupled with a surfboard, you will find that you can get out in lower winds, and still maintain ground. Also, having tested it with a foil, it gave us some big smiles with its relatively mellow performance. Boosting was good fun on the Pinna and it has a superb sweet spot for this – we found it has awesome amounts of lift, but also gave you some nice hang time so landings were not too heavy on the knees.

In a sentence: There is nothing not to like about the Pinna – from the bag to the boosting performance this is quite simply a very enjoyable kite to fly.