Atomic Bent 100 Skis, 165 cm review: specs, sizing and what it costs you

The Atomic Bent 100 Skis, 165 cm is a touring ski in the under-$500 budget tier, and this page is the short version of everything published about it: the manufacturer's own specifications, who it suits, what it gives up against the alternatives, and where it sits on the shelf it competes on. We have not skied this item and we do not pretend to have. Everything below is researched from published specifications, published certification standards and verified owner reviews.

A resort ski with a tech binding on it is the cheapest honest entry to touring, because it is one ski instead of two. It is heavier than any dedicated touring ski, and for the ten days a year a new tourer actually gets out, that is the right trade.

On a touring ski the advice inverts completely: every gram is lifted thousands of vertical feet, so weight is the specification you shop on and the ski gets less damp and more nervous as it gets lighter. The honest question is what fraction of the day you spend going up.

Published specifications

These are the manufacturer's figures, not measurements we took. Specifications change between model years and between sizes, and a listing tied to one size is exactly that, so confirm the numbers on the retailer page for the size you are actually buying before you commit.

Who it suits

A fifty-fifty setup for someone touring occasionally and skiing the resort the rest of the time.

What it costs you

You will feel every gram on a long climb. Once you are touring twenty days a season, a dedicated light ski is the upgrade that changes the most.

That trade is worth stating plainly because it is the thing a product page will never tell you. Nothing in snow sports is free: every gram removed from a ski comes out of its damping, every degree of cuff rotation added to a boot comes out of its downhill stiffness, and every dollar saved on a shell comes out of either the fabric or the features. The question is never whether an item has a weakness, it is whether that particular weakness lands on the days you actually ski.

Where it sits on the shelf

It is the least expensive touring ski on this shelf, which makes it the entry point rather than the compromise.

Compared with the rest of the shelf

Touring skis	Tier	Budget	Where to buy
Atomic Bent 100 Skis, 165 cm (this page) Do it with what you have	Beginner	Under $500	BC category Amazon
Salomon QST 100 Skis The one touring ski	Intermediate	Under $1,000	BC category Amazon
Blizzard Zero G 96 Touring Skis, 171 cm Dedicated touring ski	Expert	Under $1,000	BC category Amazon
Blizzard Zero G 105 Touring Skis, 172 cm Widest touring ski	Expert	Under $1,000	BC category Amazon

Prices are what the retailer listed when this page was last checked and change constantly. We earn commissions from Backcountry and from qualifying Amazon purchases, and every outbound link in this table is one or the other. A button reading "BC category" opens a Backcountry search for that category rather than that exact model, so it finds comparable gear alongside it.

How to shop this category

On a touring ski, weight is the specification and everything else is a consequence of it. Every gram is lifted through every vertical foot of the climb, and a pair that is 400 grams lighter each is a genuinely different day on a 3,000 foot tour. Manufacturers publish weight per ski at a stated length, and the only honest comparison is at the same length: a light ski quoted at 170 cm against a heavy one quoted at 184 cm is not a comparison at all.

What weight costs is damping. A ski calms chatter in proportion to its mass, so the lighter the ski the more nervous it is on wind-scoured hardpack and refrozen crust, which is what backcountry snow actually is a large fraction of the time. That is the trade every touring ski makes, and the honest question is what fraction of your day is spent climbing. A 50-50 tourer who skis inbounds on the same skis wants something in the 1,700 gram range with real material in it. A dedicated tourer chasing vertical wants 1,200 grams and accepts a ski that skis worse.

Waist width for touring sits in a narrower band than resort skiing suggests: roughly 90 to 105 mm covers almost everything. Below 90 mm you are giving up float you will want on the one deep day that made the tour worth doing, and above 105 mm you are carrying weight and buying skins wide enough to cover it, which are themselves heavy. Match your skin width to the ski tip, not the waist.

Why light is the whole specification here

A touring ski is lifted through every vertical foot of the climb, so its weight is paid for continuously and its stiffness is paid for only on the way down. Manufacturers publish weight per ski at a stated length, and the honest comparison is at the same length: a light ski at 180 cm and a heavy one at 170 cm is not a comparison. Expect a dedicated touring ski to give up damping on hard snow, because damping comes from mass and mass is the thing being removed. Match ski waist width to your skins, since a skin narrower than the tip leaves the shovel bare on a firm skin track.

The three mistakes this category produces

Comparing published weights at different lengths

Weight scales with length, so the spec sheet flatters whichever ski is quoted shortest. Normalise to the length you would actually buy before you compare anything.

Buying the lightest ski available for a 50-50 setup

A race-weight ski is miserable on the firm snow of a spring descent and unpleasant inbounds. If you ski the resort on the same pair, buy weight back deliberately.

Forgetting the skins are part of the purchase

A wider ski needs a wider skin, and skins are the one consumable in the kit. Budget the skin, the tail clip and eventually the reglue alongside the ski.

Looking after it

Dry the topsheets and edges after every tour, because a ski that lives in a cold car with wet edges rusts fast. Check the binding screws at the start of the season: tech bindings put a lot of load through a small insert pattern and a loose heel piece is worth catching in the garage rather than on a skin track. Keep the base waxed, and wax it more often than a resort ski, because touring bases spend hours under a warm skin glue and in abrasive spring corn.

None of that is glamorous and all of it is cheaper than replacing the item. The pattern across every category on this site is the same: snow sports equipment is destroyed by water, heat and neglect far more often than by use, and the difference between gear that lasts three seasons and gear that lasts ten is almost entirely what happens to it in the twenty minutes after you get home.

Which build this appears in

This item is a line in one of the complete build ladders on this site, which means it has been costed against everything else you would buy alongside it rather than picked in isolation. That is the useful way to look at any single purchase: what it does to the total.

• The first backcountry touring setup: A fifty-fifty setup you can also ski at the resort, plus the complete avalanche kit and the course that has to come before any of it.

What to read next

If you are still deciding between models, the full touring skis roundup ranks the shelf by tier with the same published specifications used here. If you have not settled on the rest of the kit yet, the first backcountry touring setup budgets a complete setup line by line with a running total, which is a more useful way to spend a budget than optimising one item.

For sizing, the calculators cover ski length, snowboard size, mondopoint boot sizing, skin width and the skier code your shop uses to set a binding. The reference charts hold the same numbers in printable table form, and the comparisons work through the decisions where two reasonable options genuinely pull in different directions.

If this is your first piece of backcountry equipment, read avalanche safety basics and how to get into backcountry skiing before you buy anything else. The order that keeps people alive is training first, then the three minimum items, then practise, then everything on this page.