As ski manufacturers work to perfect the ski — and there is little question that this year’s batch of skis is the best ever — they are facing a new reality: perfection is becoming more and more elusive. The cause: skiing now is more diversified and nuanced than ever before.

With so many different bases to cover — park and pipe, deep powder, off-piste, moguls, carving, racing et al — no single ski can accomplish all tasks perfectly. The perfect powder board simply won’t be the perfect carver. What works in the park won’t work well on a racecourse.

So instead of pursuing the impossible dream — a ski that’s perfect at everything — companies now spend their design time focusing on specific niches.

The biggest area of diversification continues to be in the growth of skis specifically for women. Size, dimensions, flex patterns, and, yes, graphics differ from skis made for men. But genderizing explains only part of the broad variability in ski design.

Waist widths of tested skis ranged from about 65 millimetres to more than 120 mm. Sidecuts vary widely, too. Powder skis may have a tip-to-tail taper of as little as 20 millimetres while slalom skis might taper as much as 55 mm. Twintip skis not only have turned-up tails but often have flex -patterns designed for easier switch riding.

No wonder the number of skis a potential buyer has to choose from -continues to grow. In this year’s test, 340 models were run through the gauntlet, the most ever.

Testers found the skis, as a whole, to be consistently good, sometimes great, and at times even perfect, at least in some particular aspect. But in today’s complex world of skiing, all-round perfection just doesn’t exist.

That’s why it’s more important than ever to know yourself. Know what kind of skier you are, what kind of skiing you do. Know the snow and terrain you’re most likely to encounter. And by all means, know thy gender.

We’re here to help. Every year, Ski Press assembles more testers to test more skis than in any other ski test in the world. We put skis to the test on every type of snow and terrain imaginable at Mont-Sainte-Anne and Whistler.

We produce and analyze voluminous amounts of data.

So, if you want to make an informed decision about the skis you buy, you’ve come to the right place.