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Over 20 years CORE has earned a reputation for providing the highest standards of quality and performance in watersports products.
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Hannah Did my first few jumps on this kite. It's extremely stable and the bar pressure is great. Still really like it.
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BW What a fun kite to fly. I’ve had the opportunity to fly the CORE XR8 across almost the entire size range—from the 6m all the way up to the 13.5m—and it’s easily one of the most confidence-inspiring kites I’ve flown.
The XR8’s biggest strengths are its incredible loft and hang time. Once you send it, the lift is smooth, powerful, and predictable, giving you plenty of time in the air while making landings feel controlled rather than abrupt. Whether you’re boosting in strong wind on the 6m or chasing lighter wind sessions on the 13.5m, the kite maintains the same familiar feel throughout the range.
What really stands out is how stable and composed the XR8 remains, even when conditions get gusty. It tracks cleanly, inspires confidence on every jump, and rewards good technique with massive, floaty airs!
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Joshua A. The XR8 has everything you want in a high performance 5 strut kite. Super responsive in the air, delivers clean powerful boost and the landings feel smooth and feathered. Whenever I fly this kite I have an extra level of confidence. Highly recommend
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Josh S. Core did a great job with the XR8. It feels so quick and responsive while still being crazy stable. The bar pressure is really nice in my opinion and I found the kite super intuitive and easy to know where it is and what it’s doing. I’m still learning to send bigger jumps and I’ve just found this thing so confidence inspiring which is awesome for where I’m at right now.
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Mark S. I have been saving my review of the XR8 because my first impression of it was that it was too good. It was the first “new” kite that I flew after learning, like seemingly everyone else, on old Cabrinha Switchblades. In that moment I realized just how far kiting had progressed in the 20ish years since my kites were new. It reacted quicker, moved faster, felt 1000x more connected through the bar, and most definitely jumped higher. At that time for me as a relatively beginner kiter who was just throwing my first jumps and hopelessly botching the landing nearly every time the XR was the perfect kite. On my old kites I had to throw the kite across 12 o’clock as fast as I could and yank in the bar as hard as possible to get not much more than an “eh” of a jump out of it. With the XR8 you just casually drift it across 12, pull in the bar just enough to ask it nicely to jump, and it turns into a rocket ship. The mega boostability is one thing but what made it perfect for a beginner/intermediate rider was that if you just completely give up while you’re in the air, as long as you hold the bar all the way in and don’t steer, it will gently float you back down to the water. And when you do finally resurface, the XR8 is so stable overhead that it’s just sitting at 12 o’clock waiting for you like a loyal little puppy dog ready to go again.
As I got better at kiting and began to ride more kites, I found myself asking “Is this kite good enough for me to choose it over the XR?”. For most kites no, but for some the answer was yes. The XR has its limitations, mainly that it’s slow, heavy, and expensive. But what it comes down to for me is that, in my mind, it is the benchmark for excellence in the kiting industry. It seems that when you talk to kiters every other kite is judged by how it compares to the XR. “This kite jumps almost as well as an XR” or “This kite turns faster than an XR” and of course “This kite is cheaper than an XR but not quite as good”. I can say in all honesty that I catch myself doing this as well. When someone asks me my thoughts on a kite, I always end up speaking about it in terms relative to an XR simply because it is an excellent kite. Are there kites that I personally like better? Yes, but at the end of the workday when it’s blowing 20+ mph SW and everyone at REAL comes through the rental shop to grab kites for an after work slick session, 95% of people are grabbing XR8’s and that tells me that it really is that good.