The Inertia just released their picks for the best pcoket wings of 2025 — and we’re proud to take home the title of ‘Best All-Around Pocket Wing’
“It’s 2025, and the latest revolution in wind and foil sports is in full effect with the explosive emergence of pocket winging. Even a year ago, it would have been hard to imagine that today we’d be zipping around on foil with nothing but a tiny, collapsible kite in our hands. But looking back, it’s easy to see the progression that led us here.”
Best All-Around Pocket Wing: F-One Frigate
“Best For: All-around, upwind, free riding, riding swells, upwind/downwind
Defining Characteristics: “Dynamic bridle system,” stash handle, waterproof canopy material, included harness line
Pros: Best upwind performance, very wide wind range, very stable, excellent refly, great bar, outstanding lineset and color coding, includes harness line
Cons: Lines are a bit longer than we’d like
A global brand with a full suite of wings, kites, boards, and foils, F-One announced their Plume K-Wing in early 2025 and the Frigate in June 2025. We’ve flown a lot of pocket wings in the last few months, and although there are now several excellent choices on the market, the Frigate wins top marks in more categories than any other.
The Frigate really makes its mark with its very broad usable wind range, going from the low end where you can really pump the wing thanks to an internal structure with cross-bracing, through a wide sweet spot of user-friendly power, to an extensive top end. While at first we didn’t expect pocket wings to go upwind as well as wings, nor to have the same breadth of wind range, with the Frigate, we’re getting a pocket wing that gets extremely close to the performance and versatility of inflatable wings. Not only that, but the Frigate is fast – we easily hit the same 20-25 mph top speed that we do when winging, without any struggle.”
“The Frigate is also very stable when highly powered. No collapsing, squirming, or yapping. On a day when a 2.5m wing was a better match to the wind range, we did finally get the 3.5m Frigate to complain a bit, but that shows – fair enough – that there is a point where any sail gets legitimately overpowered. In normal usage, and well up into the heavily-powered range, the Frigate feels very user-friendly. This versatility is thanks in part to what F-One calls their Dynamic Bridle System, which activates “certain bridles when the sail is sheeted out and others when it is sheeted in,” without the use of a pulley. One small bug is that when overpowered and flying off the extreme front end of the bar, the front lines can pinch your hand — a good signal, however, that you are indeed overpowered, and should switch down a size.”
“The mid-aspect, rounded shape of the wing also makes for intuitive trimming, excellent agility, and easy relaunch. We also give credit to F-One for building the Frigate bar at what we’d consider to be just the right length — being 33cm / 13in, the compact bar packs away really well, and it’s still wide enough to give plenty of grip and control. Furthermore, unlike almost all the other brands, F-One includes a harness line! This small but thoughtful and highly functional touch means not only that you can ride the Frigate right out of the bag, but you benefit from the designer’s thought process right down to the harness connection, which we find critical for riding upwind. We love the single-point harness connection. Although some riders may prefer a stretchy harness line, the benefit of the semi-rigid F-One harness line is that you can easily hook in one-handed.
The Frigate’s lineset is top-tier, with great line feel and color coding everywhere. The lines are shorter than the POW and the Ozone, but a bit longer than those of the Kanaha. Surprisingly, we found that the collapse wasn’t quite as clean as with the POW or the Ozone, which both rosette more cleanly, or the Kanaha, which wins the stash game with its minimal structure and short lines. Still, the Frigate has good collapse, stash, and packability, and a reliable, quick relaunch.
Overall, the top-flight performance of the Frigate reflects F-One’s deep history in kite and wing design, including the legendary Bandit kites and their killer Diablo parafoil race kites. Kudos to the entire F-One team and founder and chief designer Raphaël Salles!”