Can someone help me decide between sintered and extruded bas

There are a million articles discussing the two, and some consensus that "sintered is better" but it's not entirely true so I'll try to sum it up nicely:

Extruded:
Less porous material that is pressed into shape. This is the cheaper way to manufacture bases.
The non-porous part: Because it's less porous (aka sleek, solid) it causes less friction which allows it to work without wax. Less porous also means it doesn't absorb wax well. Those combined, means that the benefit gained from waxing an extruded board is small (though not non-existent) and you could say it requires less maintenance.
The pressed-into-shape part: because of the way it's manufactured, it's got a pretty simple structure which P-tex binds to easily, making this an easy to fix base. It's very easy to just keep filling in scratches and dings with a p-tex candle as they happen, usually such a repair brings it to "as good as new" status. This, again, makes an extruded base "easier/cheaper to maintain". This is also the reason it's common on boards meant for rough terrain such as street riding.

Sintered:
Die-cut into shape layer of material that is inherently more porous.
Being more porous makes it generate more friction so it's slow on it's own, but also makes it an idea platform to absorb and hold wax which is very slick making a waxed sintered base very fast.
Being die-cut allows for some cool designs but is a much more expensive process and also it's harder to fix. Some scratches will be filled with p-tex which might stick for a while, but more serious damage will often require the technician to cut out a fitting piece of material to glue in place of the damaged bit which requires skill and costs quite a bit.

So, lets sum it up nicely:

Extruded - doesn't require wax to function, cheap to buy and fix, doesn't benefit much from waxing, usually looks pretty lame (though that got much better in the last few years)
Sintered - requires waxing, when waxed is faster than sintered, otherwise slower. More expensive to buy and fix.

The real trick is that no board comes in both sintered and extruded versions (unlike regular and wide, for example). So you're never facing the choice of only what base to get, there are always more parameters to consider.
Entry level, jib & street boards usually come as extruded, for cost and durability. Top level ("flagship") and all mountain/bombing boards usually come sintered, for speed and status.

Also, consider that companies keep developing more and more materials and technologies so it's very likely that some extruded-base boards are just as fast as other sintered-base ones, and some sintered-base ones might be quite low maintenance, and so forth.

So how does one choose?
If you have one freeride board and one park/street board, I'd say get sintered for freeride and extruded for park.
If you're buying your first board, and are low on budget both for the purchase and maintenance, and aren't riding all that fast anyway - get extruded.
If you're a more advanced all mountain or freeride guy, and maintenance is just a laziness and not budget issue, or if you're riding rarely (say up to 2 weeks per year) - get sintered.
If you've got a board you really really like and the only thing that stops you from getting it is it's base - screw that, get that board and go have some fun.

Hope that helped.
 
Stanyboy":oxgjt0kn said:
I need to buy a new snowboard… and I want to go faster, but I don’t like the hot waxing stuff. I heard that a sintered snowboard base is faster, and I also read some articles about it here is one of them http://www.airbock.com/blog/airbock-2015-snowboard-collection-a-sneak-preview/ b :popcorn: ut I have no experience with sintered base. Anyone could help?


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