Surfboards: What’s a good beginner’s surfboard to buy?

Surfing: What is the best entry-level surfboard?

Beginners’ guide to surfing

Read Time: 5 Minutes

We’ve spent the last few articles covering the nitty gritty, the detail about what you need to know before you make your first surfboard. We’ve told you about the different materials boards are made with, the benefits and drawbacks of each, and the way different sized surfboards impact performance. And now that you know a little about what you need to look for, it’s time to go a little deeper and talk about the specifics.

As we’ve alluded to in previous articles, there are numerous factors which influence which board you should be buying, so we can’t necessarily give a board which is universally suitable. We can, however, give a few options.

If you decide a softboard is your best bet, there’s plenty of great options on the market. Mick Fanning has recently come out with his own hybrid softboard / epoxy brand of MF Softboards which are proving pretty popular . A lot of them are shorter and not so suitable for beginners, but the likes of the MF Beastie and and MF Super Soft are a great place to start at a middling price range. There’s also a board called Ezi-Rider from Ocean and Earth (O&E) which, as the name suggests, is pretty easy to ride and a great place to start for new surfers, while the Softlite Chopstick is a slightly cheaper option.

These boards offer plenty of advantages as we mentioned previously – they’re pretty easy to surf, very hard to damage and hurt a little less if you take them on the head. They also won’t cost you an arm and a leg – brand new, those mentioned above come in as low as just over $400 and no more than $650, so bearing in mind that they should last a long time they offer pretty good value.

But not everyone wants a softboard. Rip Curl (heard of them?) have an ‘All Day Mini Mal’ which is great in a range of conditions and for surfers of all ability. This comes in fibreglass though, so as we noted in previous pieces it’s going to take a little more taking care of and will also cost you a bit more. For some people though, this will be offset by how it feels in the water and the fact you’ll likely enjoy surfing it in smaller conditions even when you’re a more accomplished surfer.

Torq is a brand which offers a range of boards that have proven very popular particularly among learners. They use what they term an ‘advanced epoxy construction’, and the result is an extremely solid board. I’ve surfed these before, and they feel about as durable as any other board I’ve come across. You get the impression that you could hurl them against a bunch of pointy rocks and hardly create a dent, so as a beginner that’s one less thing you have to worry about. The durability doesn’t result in a lack of performance though – these boards are really stable, ideal for learning surfers, but if you’re a little more advanced you can definitely still surf them in bigger conditions and they feel pretty light underfoot.  

Of course there are numerous other options for you to take a look at – don’t feel obliged to limit yourself to Mick Fanning Softboards, Rip Curl Mini Mals and Torq boards. They are all a good starting point though, and are just a few examples of the different kinds of boards you might be looking at across a range of different materials.

In terms of pricing, all the boards we mentioned will cost you a few hundred bucks brand new – at the low-end, Softlite Surfboards are under $500 while the Rip Curl Mini Mal is closer to $750, and Torq is somewhere in the middle. This is a pretty consistent general theme – if you’re going to start off with a brand-new fibreglass board you’ll need to be willing to part with a little more hard-earned to get it. With that in mind, and also remembering the fact that the softboards and epoxy’s will be tougher to damage – particularly if you’re not used to lugging boards around tight spaces or surfing with loads of other beginners – this is why many new surfers opt against a fibreglass board, at least initially.

Alternatively, if this is less than you expected then there are some quality boards that you can get for a little more. Vern Jackson makes a range of great mals – you’ll be looking at closer to $1,000 for these – while a hugely popular board in recent years has been the Firewire. Looking like they’ve been carved straight out of a tree trunk they stand out like a sore thumb – in a good way – and are just as good to surf. You need to have a fair bit of spare change in the bank for these though as they’ll cost you well over $1,000, but if you take care of it this is a board you’ll hang on to well past the beginner stages of your surfing life.

And that just about covers it. There’s plenty to know about surfboards and for beginners, it can sometimes be a little intimidating. There’s no shortage of different options, and while those we’ve mentioned in this article are popular choices among new surfers they’re certainly not your only options. Hopefully though, the information we’ve provided over the past few pieces has provided you with some important background about what you should be looking for and why, and made it a little easier to sift through the range of boards available to you. 

Next up we’ll be taking a look at some of the accessories you’ll need before you head out into the water, and what you need to know about them. From leashes and fins through to wetsuits and wax, we’ll cover it all to get you as prepared as you can possibly to head out into the deep, dark blue.