Thought you Wakeworlder’s might find this story fun to read, and it may help boat shoppers make a list of things to look at. The opinions expressed below are mine and my wife’s and only relate to what we were looking for. It is not to say any boat is better or worse it is just our opinions.
Who we were and what we wanted:
Wife is a two ski skier. That is just what she likes and she could care less that it isn’t the “in” thing.
I am a learning wakeboarder, just getting my heel side wake-to-wakes down. I learned on our I/O with no tower and soon figured out I had gone as far as I could with our boat.
We both want to learn to surf!
The contenders and quoted prices:
Tige 22VE (2009) (2 demos) 66k
Malibu VLX (2009) 67k
SAN 210 (2009) (2 demos) 68k
Mastercraft X-Star (2008) 74k
Mastercraft X-2 (2008) 59k
The Tests:
In a general sense all the boats had what as a beginner I considered good wakes. They had different shapes and sizes, but I had fun behind every boat. The surf wake behind each boat with factory ballast also looked roughly equivalent to us novices. Initially money was not a huge consideration, but this was a very tight race so it started to factor in more as we kept shopping. That being said all the boats do what they are made to do well, so our evaluations shifted to the more subtle things you will see below. Like a big dork I put all this stuff on a spread sheet and ranked the items 1 through 10 with 10 being the best. I will spare you that and try to give you a general summary of what we found in each category.
Boat handling (power turns/steering/feeling of control):
1st place: Tige
2nd place: X2 and San210 tied
3rd Malibu
4th X-star (we later learned the demo had a steering cable problem)
Bow Rise
1st Tige (taps is why)
All the rest roughly tied, but visibility in the SAN was better than others because entire deck sits higher.
Rough water ride (this test included nailing a roller at wide open throttle and driving in windy chop)
1st was a tie with the X2 and Tige (this was fairly important to us since we like to load up friends and drive across the lake and look at real estate. These two boats were really awesome in this regard)
2nd SAN 210 (but we were on a pretty calm lake, it did pretty good with roller test though)
3rd Malibu
4th X-Star
Seats (quality/comfort/depth)
1st Mastercraft (X2 and Star same)
2nd Malibu
3rd Tige (comfortable but not as high quality)
4th San 210 (this was biggest factor in this boat losing, I didn’t really care, but my wife did not like the seat comfort or the depth. This boat has the most shallow interior of any looked at. They also placed the speakers just in the middle of the very thin side cushions, weird and not comfortable. Alterable seating arrangement was cool though)
Overall feel of quality (interior fit and finish BMW or Kia)
1st SAN 210
2nd Mastercraft and Malibu
3rd Tige (Boat lost major points here. Every time I got in the boat I looked at the glued in speaker box like carpet and it annoyed me. If this had been better or if the Tige was priced below the others we would have likely purchased it)
Boat Looks (sexiness!)
1st SAN 210 (No contest, to me this boat is drop dead sexy. I really wanted this boat on looks alone. Wife’s complaint about boat’s comfort above is why it didn’t win out)
2nd Mastercraft
3rd Malibu (I would tie it with Mastercraft, but wife said it looked like it was for the hairy chest gold chain crowd! Lol)
4th Tige ( I am sorry this boat has no game)
Stereo (best from factory option)
All tied, they made my ears bleed
If you are shopping we had a few other things on the spread sheet like storage, warranty, value retention (look for older models on internet and check depreciation), snap out carpet or not, dash layout and gauges, ballast fill/empty times, and tower looks/functionality/ease of collapsing. I won’t go into all of these here, but they are minor things to consider.
The Results:
Interestingly, no boat really emerged as the clear winner. I think if Tige gets some style and bumps up the interior quality they will give the big three a run for their money. Malibu may not have gotten a fair shake from us because 2 things. Wife was pulling me with all ballasts full and got swamped by a roller. She is my driver and sorta put the Kabosh on that boat. We also nailed a roller at wide open throttle and the boat felt like it was going to explode. We did this in all the other boats and they didn’t do that. The X-Star probably had the best wake of all the boats, but it seems to be sort of a one trick pony in that regard. If the wake was all you cared about you couldn’t go wrong with that bad boy. It also didn’t get a fair shake because the steering issue with the one we demoed.
In the end we got the X2. It has a great wake (surf and boarding), It handles and maneuvers very well, It has great exterior styling and looks awesome, It feels roomier than every boat except the X-star yet it is only 20ft, weird. The fit and finish are top notch. It handles rough water better than anything we drove except the Tige with which it tied. Overall, the X2 was a super well constructed beautiful boat that fit our needs!!
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