VIRON 8.8 £520

This is a type of ski that Fischer do very well; the piste cruiser hiding a fair bit more performance than you'd expect. The Viron 8.8 lives at the top of the range and quietly racked up very high scores for short turns, smoothness and overall piste performance. By the time we'd twigged what was going on the effing thing was out on test all the time...It's at the upper price end for a cruiser, along with Salomon's Aero X and Head's Icon 80, but it really does deliver proper high-speed slalom cruising (we've just invented that category) in a slick-looking package with all the proper construction details.