Foil Drive trench board - Bold Roboto - the best trench board ?!

Описание: This is not a paid review, I paid my board myself.

★★★ Summary ★★★

Overall, the Bold Roboto delivers exactly what I hoped:
Keep all the benefits of Foildrive.
Much better ride, pump and carve.
Makes the foil much more efficient and lively.
Brings back the personality of the foil.
Not any of the usual trench disadvantages such as difficulties to swap batteries or huge trench at the front that disfigures the board and must (to some extent) lower the performance.

★★★ Links to Bold ★★★

https://boldboards.eu/product/roboto-...
   / @boldboards  

★★★ Context ★★★

Late July 2025, I finally acquired a Foil Drive trench board, the Bold Roboto, and it's time to give a feedback.

I had already tried trench boards before (Appletree), which worked well, but I wasn’t entirely convinced by the experience.

A few months ago, a little-known Northern European brand, Bold, announced its own trench board with a few specific features that immediately caught my eye—especially the ability to swap batteries effortlessly without having an ugly, ultra-wide, and long front trench.

As I did with Foildrive three years ago, I decided to take the risk of sending a payment to a rather obscure company, hoping it would deliver my dream board.

It paid off.

★★★ Delivery ★★★

The first thing that worried me was shipping—long distances, fragile gear… I pictured a damaged board arriving after a month of waiting.
No worries here: it’s the best-packaged board I’ve ever received, with very low risk of damage.

★★★ Build & Specs & Shape ★★★

The build quality is excellent. The board is stiff, with no hint of softness when pressing on it. It’s made with closed-cell foam, meaning no vent plug and no water ingress even if it’s damaged.

My model: 5’ / 38 L
Weight: 3.3 kg (reasonably light)
Thickness over the FD unit: 3.5 cm
These are impressive specs—it’s lighter and thinner than some much more expensive trench boards.

The shape - with a concave at the nose - is not the kind of shape that I have seen well performing in the past with Foildrive.
Yet, I have to say that it does not seem to make this board underperform at take off time on flat water.
Unfortunately at the moment I do not have another similar size board to directly mesure the performance and compare.

★★★ Battery swapping system ★★★

It works just as intended.
Untighten the mast, slide back, open the latches, and then you have enough space to open the nose cone.
To be able to slide the unit back, you can't use foam in the track.
I don't know how they did it, but this board has better connectivity without foam in salt water than most boards with foam in fresh water.

★★★ Ride Report ★★★

The board takes off well and is very stable laterally.
I do think the trench makes takeoff slightly smoother/faster than a board of similar volume and size—but the real magic is once you’re standing up.
The excellent lateral stability makes a surf style takeoffs easy, letting you skip the awkward knee phase and pop straight to your feet, which I never did before.

The first ride is… surprising.
The word that comes to mind: raw.
You feel more vibrations through your back foot.
The foil is more sensitive on all axes, almost as if you downsized.
It’s harder.

But once your body calibrates, it’s absolutely worth it.
This type of board gives back a large part of the snappiness, reactivity, and liveliness that Foildrive naturally dampens by adding a few kilos and 5 cm between the board and the foil.

Whatever you do—pumping or riding—your energy is more directly transmitted to the foil than with a standard board with Foildrive.

Think of a normal board’s thickness as a soft pad isolating you from the foil. With this board, that pad is gone.

Pumping becomes far more efficient—I could almost double my pumping with the same foil.

Touchdowns are drastically improved.
Riding upwind or recovering from a drop feels smoother, but the real difference is on carves.
I can now carves on waves low on the mast without being slowed down, and even when the board touches water, I can pump out of it. It was impossible before. It's a crazy improvement.

I’m not sure if this is only due to the streamlined hull, or also the extra reactivity from having a thinner board—but the result is pure fun.

The only downside: is that losing 5 cm of mast length requires you to rewire your brain—expect some breaching at first.

★★★ Killer music by Lorn ★★★
Not related to the board, but this music is epic.
   • Lorn - 555-5555  

‪@foildrive‬ ‪@BoldBoards‬