7 Demos later.... Its a Mastercraft!

[Kimper]

Copied and more integrated post that I put up on Wakeworld. Figured it belonged here too!

Thought you guys 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 are 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 Tige
2nd 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. The quality of stitching and vinyl were top notch and alterable seating arrangement was cool.)

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 awesome looking. 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

Towers
Mastercraft gets first place in strength, but it is last place for ease of folding down. They are very impressive. Massive billeted steel construction with 4 points of connection on the boat with huge backplates to distribute stress all along the gunwales so its extremely unlikely you would ever get any gelcoat/hull cracks or damage even with extreme use over the years. Any healthy male should be able to fold it down and put it up alone in about 5-10 minutes. My wife however could not do it alone.

All the other boats have 2 points of connection to the boat, but it seems quite a bit of thought has gone into all these towers and none of them seemed weak or unstable.

Malibu and SAN 210 tied with strong 2 point easily folding towers. I noticed no wiggle or rattles in rough conditions, and at 6 feet tall I could walk under them without ducking.

Tige's tower came in last simply because I had to duck just a bit to walk under it. Also the rotating board racks are a $2300 option. Fixed are standard. I don't like fixed because you have to step on the seats and lean out to get your stuff. Folding down was also easy on the Tige.
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.

Wake
I think (I maybe wrong) people like the wakes behind the boats that they train/learn on. The wakes behind these boats do have different shapes, but in my opinion the sizes are not dramatically different given the same weight in the boats. Size seems pretty simply related to how much you sink it down and how deep the hull sinks. So discussing shape, they are different, and I suspect it is simply rider preference or what you are used to if you "like" it or not.

SAN 210 - As a beginner I actually had the most fun behind this boat (another reason I wanted it!) The wake shape tends to put the board in the right place as you come off the wake, and the wake was more narrow than the other boats, so I was consistently getting nice heel-side wake to wake jumps. I did my best sets behind this boat, and really had fun.

Malibu - Again should have done one more demo on it. This demo was my first time to board behind an inboard. I was so impressed with it over my I/O it was hard for me to compare it to the others. I think it was nearly as narrow as the SAN and like the SAN provided good pop and seemed to put the board in a nice position as I came off the top.

Mastercraft - X2 and Star to me had the same shape wake. The X-Star wake weighted and unweighted seemed bigger. These boats produce a trough right before the wake that the others don't do. I liked that trough, and it makes the shape like this nice curved ramp. I bought the X2... What can I say I thought it was great! However, I didn't do too well as far as gettting and landing wake to wakes. I think there is a little more of a learning curve there or maybe I jsut was off. The X2 I had a borrowed board so hard to know exactly... But the shape and firmness seem spot on to me.

Tige - shape seemed like Mastercraft without the trough. Dealer claims you can change the shape all up with TAPs, maybe cool for the more advanced? With a ballast it really produced a large nice wake.

In the end, I just don't think I am good enough to really evaluate wakes like you guys would want, so take it all with a grain of salt. I think I will learn the mastercraft wake and think it is the best ever in a few months!

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!!

[RexDog1]

Welcome !!!
Nice Boat… ahhhh Black!!!!!

[Jimmauburn]

Absolutly LOVE the black and white X-2 colors !!!!! Congrats and Welcome home with your new toy !!!!

[magnum]

Wow, Nice Looking Rig!! Don't think you will be disappointed in your decision. We have the X-Star and love it . Thanks for all the comparisions but to me you made the best choice !

[flipper]

Welcom, good choice.

[AussieMC]

Congrats on the boat, great choice. If I wasn't a tournament skier or could afford 2 boats, that's exactly what I would get, colour scheme and all. I hope you really enjoy it.

[Tlxstar]

Beautiful boat. Congrats!

[ttu]

i love your write up you did over on wakeworld.

i did not test drive near as many as you did, but came from a 05 supra ssv22 to a 07 x2 and there is night and day difference in the quality.

great looking boat..

[H20BOY]

Very nice write up. Welcome

[JohnE]

Congrats on the X2 and welcome to the forum. Nice write up.