€39.99 in Smyths, free delivery if you spend €25 or more, free click and collect in two hours. The practical side of this purchase is about as easy as buying a skateboard in Ireland gets, and that is genuinely worth something. The board itself has one design decision in it that you need to understand before you pay.
No nose means no tricks
This is a single-kick board. The tail is raised, the front of the deck is not. Every board sold in a skate shop has been double kick for roughly thirty years, and there is a reason.
An ollie needs a tail to snap. Fine, this has one. A nollie needs a nose. Riding fakie and popping a trick needs a nose. Landing in switch stance and doing anything at all from there needs a nose. Those are not exotic tricks for advanced skaters, they are the second and third things a child learns after they get an ollie off the ground, and this board cannot do any of them. Ever. It is not a matter of skill.
If the child in question wants to skate, in the sense of learning tricks, this board will stop being useful roughly six weeks after they get good at pushing. That is the case against it and it is a serious one.
What Smyths does not tell you
The listing gives you wheel size, durometer, bearing grade and a maximum rider weight of 100kg. It does not give you the deck width. It does not give you the deck material or the ply count.
Treat that as information in itself. Shops that fit Canadian maple say Canadian maple, loudly, on the box. A board that goes quiet about what it is made from is usually made from something cheaper, and without a published width you cannot tell whether it suits a six year old or a twelve year old. We are not going to guess a number here, because guessing is how bad advice gets started. Go and look at one in a branch if you can.
The things it does get right
95A wheels. That sounds like a small detail and it is not. Most boards in this bracket, including ones costing more, come with 99A or 100A urethane meant for skatepark concrete. On a damp footpath in Athlone or a stretch of cracked chipseal outside a school, hard wheels skid and stop dead on grit. 95A is not soft, but it is softer, and a light rider will notice.
The retail side is the other real advantage. Smyths has shops in nearly every large town, returns are done in person by a human, and there is no delivery charge to argue about. If a truck bolt strips in week three, you drive back to the shop. Try that with an online-only skate retailer.
Who should not buy this
Any child who has already been skating and can push confidently. They need a nose, and they will find out within a month.
Anyone who intends to skate a park. Ramps and transitions demand fakie riding, and fakie riding on a board with no nose is unpleasant and limiting.
Adults buying for themselves. The rider weight limit says 100kg but the shape is a child’s shape and the bearings are slow.
If the child is six or seven and this is a punt to see whether they like it, the convenience and the €39.99 are a fair trade. If they are older than that, put another €40 towards the Verb Reverb and get a nose.