Stable and beautiful profile with high quality materials
What you notice direct, is the stable looks and tension on this wing. Whether you hold it in the wind or not, the canopy never flaps! This gives the wing such a stable ride. Also after 3 months of use, the wing remains as high tensioned as when it was brand new. Besides using Dyneema for both the leading edge and strut, enabling higher pressure but a thinner LE. The canopy material from PPC is unique as it won’t stretch as easy as many ripstop materials do, commonly used in most other wings. Something some brands should think about more, when bringing out an expensive model with a premium LE, made from Aluula or similar.
The wing has hard handles that makes it easy to control. These ones are a bit thick. But they just released a newer design for these.
The windows on the wing are actually positioned quite well. With most other wings I tried, I don’t see much use of them. With the M1 wing I did notice I could look through them quite often, seeing what going on behind the wing.
Inflating and deflating the wing goes really easy with the SUP valves (Halkey Roberts valve) on both the LE as the strut. You can pump both up to 11psi for the 5.0 and 10psi for the 6.0, creating a very stiff frame.
Very nice backpack
It’s all about details, and I found the backpack really nice and large. The wing fits easily and it possible to add some extra gear in it. Also, to me the biggest plus, the whole bottom on the bag is an air vent. But more important, this allows all the sand that blows in from the beach, to fall out of the bag again.
The wing also comes with a decent wrist leash, but could have been slightly longer on the 6.0.
Range of use and speed
The 6.0 has a very good low end, and you can really feel the pull, it would get me easily up on foil while using a small 56l board and even a small 580 foil. I was impressed by the low end, there is really a lot of power in the wing. This does mean the 6.0 wing has a deep cut out. On maneuvers and riding waves the wing feel a bit slow, heavy and large. But once up the foil and when you sheet in, this wing goes really fast and it keeps accelerating! 45km p/h with 10-12 knots winds was kinda normal. The difference with the 5.0 is minimal using the same gear.
That said, the 5.0 is one of the best wings I have used so far! Whether I was doing tricks, race or ride waves and jump. This one is doing it all with so much ease!
The low end is still good, as the LE is very stiff, combined with the high tension canopy, it is very easy to pump it up in low wind conditions. Where with the 6.0 the power pulls you forward in the lightest of breezes, the 5.0 is a bit more moderate on this. But it still provides more power than many high end wings.
Both sizes accelerate really good, and make excellent use of the apparent wind. It just keeps accelerating, gust or no gust. It is very hard too loose speed with these wings.
Jumping the m1 wing
Jumping with the 5.0 is great! Because the wing goes fast really quickly, with a nice power feel feel. It pop ups really good and it really enabled me to jump very controlled once in the air. I actually almost didn’t fall with this wing. It’s hard to say if I went higher, but further for sure as it kept me up there for a long time.
Freestyle tricks
Doing tricks I really enjoyed the 5.0. The thinner Dyneema leading edge makes it easier to pull the wing trough the wind. For the 6.0 it felt a bit heavy and slow. This might also have something to do with the small foils I used with this size in really low winds. Wings tend to move less around in lower winds and deeper profiles don’t help in that regard.
Waveriding
On the wave I tested both wings in conditions both offshore and onshore, mostly using the 5.0. The wing felt really good in all of conditions. It followed me along, trailing, really well going in all directions. During this period I was using a very light wing under 2kg’s aswell. Then the 5.0 could feel a bit heavier after. But with some days in between and relating to other wings, the feel overall is still better than most.
Getting up on the board in conditions with a lot chop and currents, the wing did flip around from time to time. Some wings do this more, and some less. The M1 sits somewhere in the middle.
Conclusion
As I was looking for a wing that’s potentially really fast, durable, but also performs in all other disciplines I’d say this wing didn’t let me down. They really made a special wing that recently got some small updates. Making them a bit lighter and with new, longer single molded carbon handles. This is currently one of the best overall wings out here.