To buy skis or to rent skis?

“To Own or not own. That is the question…”

Before anything, one should ask himself wether it is worth buying a pair of new skis. The answer should be strongly related to how often we do ski during the winter season.

At the end of every season, we will find amazing bargains. It is the dealer’s last chance to sell that very season’s gear until the next winter comes. Skis valued in the eight hundreds see their price lowered to the four. Thats a fifty per cent discount. A magnificent bargain, isn’t it? It is not that clear, though. So let’s do some numbers.

A person who skis five weekends in the whole season plus a five-day trip on Christmas (or any other week during the winter) will enjoy a total amount of fifteen skiing days. If he/she chooses to rent the gear instead of using his/her own and the selection involves mid-range pricing, the total spent amount would be in between 225 and 300 Euro (rate between 15-20 Euro a day). If the election falls on the high-end gear the spent figure would then raise to 375 and 450 Euro range (25-30 Euro a day). The conclusion is simple: only if we rent high-end gear for 15 days we would get close to the spent of buying a new pair of skis ¡at discounts of 50% !

The advantages of renting above buying are a few:

We don’t need to worry about the skis maintenance and the spent related to it.

The total expenditure is lower if we don’t ski frequently.

We avoid transporting the gear and related stuff: ski-carriers for your car, dedicated bags, etc.

We can change our skis every single time we want to. One different ski every day!

But there are some drawbacks, too:

The first minutes are always a bit weird with the “new” skis. If we never use the same ski, we will spend some time getting used to it.

Every single year of skiing practice we will spend a figure around the 25% of a new high-end ski just by renting it. But we won’t get near its total value until four years of use.

At the end of the day, the decision is in our hands… and in our calculators! Using common sense, we will succeed. If we are sticked enough to skiing and we had already spent a nice figure in skiing courses to achieve a decent technique and we ski around 20-25 days a season, we can therefore start thinking about buying our own gear. So to own skis or rent skis can be a matter of timing.

However, we should have already bought another fundamental piece of gear before that happens: a pair of boots. They are the interface tool that lets us “talk” to our skis and with them we can understand the ground we are going through. Thanks to our feet, we receive a huge quantity of information. This is the main reason why we should have a pair of boots that transfers us the greatest possible amount of information, comfortably and safely. Anyone who has been renting boots long time enough and has then bought his own pair knows the difference. And it’s huge! We need to know what’s going on all the time!

SkiReviewer’s Buying Skis Guide

Introduction

1.- Sailing the Ski’s Gear Ocean – An introduction to variety

2.- To Buy Skis or To Rent Skis? – How worth is to own your skiing gear

3.- All Types of Skis Quick Guide

4.- Types of Skis – Explained one by one