I started riding my watson toward the end of this season and loved it. The watson has great feel under the feet....it'll be my 4th season snowboarding and i think what u prob mean by balanced board is a board you can take in the park, high speed stability, steep terrain, great powder float, and good ollie power. Of course as we all know, no board will give you the best of everything. But what i do suggest first of all is getting a board with reverse camber/rocker. Is the new thing that a lot of the companies are doing with their snowboards and there is a reason for that, ITS THE SH!+!!!! You can honestly find a board to suit your needs from any higher end company. I would look at the Lib Tech Jamie Lynn Phoenix or Lib Tech Mark Landvik Phoenix (both of them are same boards with only difference being sizes and graphics). K2 makes some awesome boards with great pricing and have many different options as far as what kinda rocker you want. I'd suggest the K2 Parkstar or Darkstar. I just chose a Never Summer Revolver over a Lib Tech Skate banana because i wanna ride park, but I also want that high speed stability and ollie power that you get with the never summer. The Skate Bananas are known for being pretty "chattery" at higher speeds. Never Summer boards have a rocker and camber setup. Its rocker between the bindings and has a very smal micro-camber outside of the bindings to maintain the high speed stability while still having that powder float. There's a lot of great snowboard out there man, it takes some research to see what you want as far as the materials a board is built with, flex, and shape of the board. I'd look at Lib Tech, GNU, Nitro, Never Summer, K2, Ride, and maybe Burton if you wanna spend more than what the board is really worth. Burton is made outside of the u.s. by machines, i like hand built boards made in the U.S. personally. Goo luck!
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