There are a lot of completely made up “top 10,” “top 5,” or “best inflatable paddle boards” lists out there that are all just fake rankings by unscrupulous marketers created so they can make commissions on Amazon sales. We discuss this at length in our review of SUP review sites. Sadly, these fake reviews make it difficult for consumers to find reliable inflatable paddle board reviews. At Tower Paddle Boards, one of our goals is to demystify the ISUP buying process and help you to buy a SUP that fits your needs.
While reading inflatable paddle board reviews can be helpful during the buying process, it’s best to ignore the made-up lists and rely on trusted media sources to find brands with a time-tested track record. Taking that approach ensures that you’ll be able to find your way to the best-quality ISUPs and the best inflatable paddle board brands... and likely right back here to Tower Paddle Boards.
Inflatable Paddle Board Pioneer and Market Leader
Tower has been a leading SUP brand for a good part of the past decade and a pioneer in modern ISUP design. After prototyping them in 2011, we introduced some of the first 6-inch-thick inflatable paddle boards to the market, and it changed everything. Inflatable paddle boards went from representing less than 1% of SUP sales worldwide to well more than 70% in a matter of five years.
In 2015, a year after being named the #1 fastest-growing private company in San Diego (out of all companies, not just SUP brands), multiple inflatable stand-up paddle board reviews named our SUPs among the ten most impressive products in the U.S. from the 500 fastest-growing U.S. companies (Tower ranked #239 on that list). In 2016, Tower was named one of the top five SUP brands worldwide, and in 2017, the prestigious Robb Report named Tower’s Chris Craft Special Edition ISUP as the #1 paddle board worldwide, over $2,400 and $3,400 offerings from Naish and Starboard (two leading retail SUP brands worldwide). The funny thing is that our Chris Craft inflatable paddle board sold for just $649 at the time thanks to our consumer-direct business model!
Media Accolades Are One Thing, but How About Sales?
Winning awards and some of the best ISUP reviews from the media is one thing, but where the rubber really meets the road is when consumers vote with their hard-earned money. In 2018, a Tower Paddle Boards review from People magazine named our company as one of the most successful products in the history of ABC’s Shark Tank, with more than $34,000,000 in sales at the time.
Four years after Tower’s Shark Tank appearance, our ISUPs were still flying off the shelves. In a single day in 2016, Tower sold nearly $400,000 worth of inflatable paddle boards (our wildly popular Adventurer 2 ISUP). Harvard would later publish a Harvard Business Review case study on our success entitled, “Selling on Amazon at Tower Paddle Boards.”
Today, Tower Paddle Boards is focused on selling direct to consumer through our website to offer the absolute best value. You can still buy a few Tower Paddle Boards ISUPs through Amazon, but we focus primarily on selling directly from our website to give you the absolute best value. If we don’t have to give a growing chunk of your purchase price to the growing Amazon monopoly, we can provide a better value for our customers.
Tower Adventurer 2 Inflatable Stand-Up Paddle Board Reviews
We introduced the 6-inch-thick Adventurer inflatable SUP in 2012, and it became one of the best-selling ISUPs in the world. Our Adventurer 2 improved on that basic design with a few minor tweaks, and it’s been pretty much the gold standard that every other SUP brand measures their boards up against since. There have been a lot of copycats: Some brazen brands have even used the same “Adventure” name for their boards. As they say, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery!
The Adventurer 2 has been made in three color variations. Today, we sell a classic gray-and-white board as well as a teal-and-white version called the Mermaid. For a few years, we also offered a Chris Craft Special Edition in blue and white with a teak-colored deck pad. The Chris Craft ISUP was named the #1 SUP in the world by the prestigious Robb Report. But other than the color and deck pad, these are all identical inflatable paddle boards.
With tens of thousands of these inflatable paddle boards around the world, there are a lot of reviews out there, and we’ve got a couple hundred reviews on our site. You can read these inflatable paddle board reviews on our product page, then purchase your own Adventurer 2 inflatable paddle board.
Mermaid Tower ISUP Review
This is a simple color variation of our Adventurer 2 ISUP. We added a splash of color so it would appeal more to the growing market of women getting into paddle boarding for everything from recreation to exercise to yoga. It comes in a beautiful teal-and-white color with a white traction pad.
While this is the same basic board as the Adventurer 2, the demographic that uses this board slants heavily toward women, so it’s worthwhile checking out the ISUP reviews specifically left for this board on our product detail page. Then, order this women’s paddle board online for the best value.
Racing SUP Review of the Tower iRace
The Tower iRace is a red board with white stripes. It’s narrower than the rest of the SUPs in our store, which makes it faster but also a little more tippy than our other boards, which are all 32 inches wide. Still, 30 inches is pretty wide and stable for most riders. Our goal was to make a high-quality racing SUP that competitors could purchase consumer-direct for half (or less) of what a racing SUP would cost them in a retail store. You can literally spend several thousand dollars on racing SUPs and then a bunch more to freight ship them all over the country if you are following a racing circuit. The Tower iRace kills two birds with one stone, as it’s a substantially better deal when you buy direct to consumer and it rolls up, so you can transport it with ease, even internationally, to follow any SUP racing circuit you want to take on.
This red variation is a fairly recent color change, since older models used a black-and-white design, so you may not see many inflatable SUP board reviews for this product yet, but some of our customers have left racing SUP reviews for the iRace on our product detail page. Read what they think, then order your own iRace stand-up paddle board for sale.
Inflatable Paddle Board Review of the Tower Xplorer
After we were one of the first paddle board brands to introduce a 6-inch inflatable paddle board to the market in 2012, other brands copied the success of our 6-inch ISUP, but not many copied our 8-inch-thick, 14-foot Xplorer. It’s hard to see why, since those who buy them usually leave glowing inflatable SUP reviews. The Xplorer is one of our fastest paddle boards, and the 8-inch thickness makes it 800% more rigid than the old-school 4-inch-thick SUPs. It’s a beast at this length and thickness, but it’s also inflatable, so it rolls up to about the size of a sleeping bag. Since it’s filled with air, it’s light and portable.
Read the SUP paddle board reviews for the Xplorer and check out its specs to see if this innovative touring paddle board is the right choice for you.
