2026 Armada ARV 106 Ti Review: A Game-Changer for Aggressive All-Mountain Skiers?

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Throughout the ski industry, few bands have marched to the beat of their own drum like Armada has, combining decades-long core street cred with creatively unorthodox ideas and extremely well-made skis. Leave it to one of the original freeskiing brands to keep things fresh year after year and not rest on their laurels. Since 2002, Armada has been pushing the envelope with skis that–more than anything–are meant to be extremely fun. Every ski brand has their reputation, and Armada’s seems to be “let’s never take anything too seriously.” 

Well, when I first saw the new ARV 106 Ti, I thought it might flip that notion on its head. It’s labeled as part of Armada’s “experimental” Zero series, meaning they wanted to try something new. That label is shared by skis like the Stranger, the Kimbo and Sammy Carlson’s Whitewalker skis. Did they take one of the most popular all-mountain freestyle skis (the existing ARV/W 106), slap some metal into it and make it serious? I mean the ARV was Armada’s Day 1 ski (then called the AR5 after the original five-member athlete team), and it’s seen its fair share of iterations over the last two decades, but why change a good thing? Turns out, in true Armada fashion, they made it burlier, but by no means took the fun out of it. 

Armada ARV 106Ti Specs

• Size skied: 180cm, 188cm
• Lengths available: 164cm, 172cm, 180cm, 188cm
• Sidecut: 132mm – 106mm – 125mm
• Radius: 22m (188cm)
• Profile: Freestyle rocker
• Weight: 2250g (188cm)

Shape, Flex and Construction

While we’ve been seeing some notable departures from the trend lately, most all-mountain freestyle skis still seem to follow some general rules when it comes to shape: they’re mid-fat twin tips with a somewhat directional mount point, medium amounts of tip and tail rocker, and a relatively long turn radius. For those of you already familiar with the shape of the current Armada ARV/W 106, you’ll notice little to no difference between that and the new 106 Ti. The 106mm waist is paired with a longer 22-meter turn radius and healthy amounts of tip and tail rocker and taper.

Inside, the ski quickly starts to look different than the existing ARV 106. Where the current ARV 106 offers a very soft flex for skiers wanting to ski playfully, bounce around, and jib everything in sight, Armada wanted to create a more usable freestyle ski for all-mountain conditions that also wasn’t afraid of high speeds. The solution? Take the tried-and-true shape of the ARV ski and add the shaped ATB-X Titanal construction from another hard-charging fan favorite, the Declivity X, into the core. That ATB-X technology takes Titanal bands and focuses them into the underfoot section of the ski (read: stiff and damp!), while reducing the amount and weight in the tips and tails to allow for a more natural flex and add pop.

Elsewhere, the ski is beefed up, with heavy-duty 2.5mm edges (go ahead and slide all the rails you want), thick and durable bases, and Armada’s proprietary sidewall construction called w3Dgewall–a 3D-molded, injected sidewall that forms an angle where it joins the wood core, creating a mechanical bond in the mold during ski construction, meaning fewer blown sidewalls and edges when you decide to channel your inner Tanner Hall or Henrik Harlaut and smash your skis into foreign objects.

On-Snow Performance

I’ve always been a fan of Armada’s freestyle and powder skis, having spent plenty of time on earlier versions of the ARV, the venerable JJ, and some of the more out-there and one-off shapes over the years. With the exception of the Tof Henry-designed Declivity X (and perhaps the Tanner Hall-built Magic J), I’ve found most of the brand’s skis to be too soft and floppy for any extended amounts of high-speed skiing. They’re certainly extremely fun, but get ready to spend a lot of time in the backseat if you’re looking to plow through chunder. 

The new ARV 106 Ti, and its titanal-infused construction completely changes that character. Gone is that noodle-y and floppy feeling, instead replaced by a hard-charging, “show me what you got” kind of personality. By stiffening the backbone of the ski, Armada added some serious cojones to the ski. The 106Ti is the Ford Raptor to the ARV 106’s F-150. 

However, on snow, the ARV 106 Ti isn’t actually just about speed and charging as hard as possible. Sure, it’ll allow you to more than keep up with your friends who only want to straightline chundery outruns and hit the biggest natural airs on the mountain, but you’ll also have plenty of fun jibbing sidehits on the cat track, spinning laps through the park, and railing long turns on icy groomers. In other words, Armada took their all-mountain ski, and made it much more “all-mountain.”

One tester said, “Finally a powerful Armada twin tip all-mountain ripper! Long in the turn, not super quick but loads of damping and power. It lind of skis like you would expect an ARV with metal to ski: no speed limit but still wants to hunt sidehits, air all the rollers, and blast around the whole resort.” Another added, “This was potentially one of the most fun all around mountain skis I’ve ridden! It was solid on landings and charging but did not sacrifice responsiveness and pop for stability.”

While a 106mm waist might imply deep-snow intentions, the one place I (and a few other testers) found it lacked some performance was when skiing fresh powder. It’s not that it’s an absolute slouch in this department, but the softer-flexing nature of the regular ARV 106 and other skis actually allow them to plane a bit better above the snow and stay on top. 

Comparisons 

Perhaps the most immediate comparison is to Armada’s existing ARV 106. As noted, the 106 Ti has the same shape, with a sheet of metal inside to stiffen things up. The old 106 is soft and jibby, with a speed limit, where the new 106 Ti is stiffer, more serious, and better suited for charging around the hill.

Outside of that, two additional comparisons are to the Faction Studio 2, and the Rossignol Sender Free 110, both playful twin-tip freestyle skis with a stiffer flex, plenty of metal inside, and burly constructions meant to take abuse in and out of the park. 

Compared to Faction’s Studio 2, the ARV 106 Ti feels extremely similar. Both skis offer excellent hard-snow performance, especially at high speeds, without sacrificing much in the way of jibbiness. However, the ARV 106 Ti might actually take the cake for soft snow performance. The combination of being a bit lighter, wider, and more rockered up front gives it just a bit more float.

On the other hand, the Rossignol Sender Free 110 is a much better powder ski than the ARV 106 Ti. While only a few millimeters wider, the shape is much more soft-snow oriented, making the Sender Free feel much looser and easier to turn in deep snow.

What type of skier is the Armada ARV 106Ti best for? 

When I first saw the lineup of skis we were going to test at Sunshine Village, the ARV 106 Ti was at the top of my list of things I was most excited about and interested to try. The idea of taking a fun, jibby ski and making it stiffer and more serious perhaps echoes how I’ve changed as a skier in the last 15 years. I almost never ski in the park anymore, instead opting to seek out natural, ungroomed terrain in and out of bounds, but I still really like skiing freestyle skis. That’s exactly who the ARV 106 Ti is for: perhaps let’s call that a skier a park who grew up a bit?