Best Backside Freeride Skis

Faction Prodigy 3 - Review 2025

By: Derek Doyle & Annie Gunton - Updated: April 2025

About this guide

We gave our Gear Lovers one job:
Find the best and most popular products and review them.

Our review team always considers durability, price, quality, and value in their reviews.

Our review team:

Derek Doyle

Contributor at SlopeMagazine.com

Hailing from Aspen, Colorado, Derek began his skiing career in the illustrious Powder Pandas ski school program, eventually sort of growing up to ski professionally in slopestyle and big air, while moonlighting as a ski tuner and writer.

Now living in Colorado’s front range, Derek can be found among the i70 crowd racing to find hidden powder stashes on the back bowls of Vail, on Park Lane in Breckenridge, under the lights on Keystone, and returning home to the High Alpine steeps in Snowmass. When he's not skiing he’s wishing he was, or nerding out on mountain biking, climbing, and golf.

Annie Gunton

Editor at SlopeMagazine.com

Annie has lived on 4 continents and traveled through 6. Spending her time in places as different as London and the Kalahari she has adapted how she gets out and enjoys what’s around.

Disclosure: We are reader supported, and earn affiliate commissions If you find a good deal on Slope Magazine, you click to the retailer, and you buy the product, we get a commission of the sale. That's how we pay ourselves. It does not make the product pricier for you. when you buy through us.

Where to buy Faction Prodigy 3:

REI

Backcountry

Evo

Freeskiing is about freedom, being unrestricted from boundaries, and having complete control of your path. That really sums up the Faction Prodigy 3.

They are basically a toned down powder ski to open up the type of terrain it performs best in. The Prodigy 3, and all of the 2024 Prodigy line, features a pure poplar core, giving it a softer feel in the rocker sections, a solid camber section, and burlier edges (2.5mm) than previous Prodigy iterations.

The softer flex gives it an energetic feel and reduces unwanted vibrations. While being only 106mm underfoot, it still keeps the floaty feel of the 2023 Prodigy in deep snow, having an aggressive sidecut, beefy camber, and subtle rocker profile. It also transitions really well to the terrain park, adding stability, particularly on icy days.

The bigger edges, along with a tough fiberglass laminate, mean it’s an extremely durable ski, although this does mean it isn’t the lightest ski in its class. Overall though, we found it to be a fun, versatile, and hard-charging freeride ski and a solid option if you had to choose one ski for everyday use.