Seems to be the season for demo days right now. I've gone to two different demo events in the last week. Everytime I demo a ski with Marker Demo Bindings I pre-release. This has been true of Marker squire demos, marker free 10 demos, and even the marker griffon demos.
I'm an aggressive skier but I don't exactly weigh much, 130lbs and only 5'2. All of the marker demo bindings I can either just lift my heel straight out of them, or get like a quarter of the way into a nose press before I just pop straight out. Everytime this has happened, the techs always triple check the din, forward pressure etc, and then just tell me not to huck anything and that I'm being silly for wanting my bindings to hold me so well. I've been told multiple times "you're suppose to be able to pop out!" Never mind the fact that I have some marker griffons and some look px12s both set at 7.5 (same as what they set me on the demo's) and I can full nose press, nollie, etc and my bindings don't budge.
Someone is lying around here. I was under the impression that a din setting is universal, that's why din calculators exist. A 7.5 on one set of bindings should take exactly the same force to release as a 7.5 on any other binding. Am I wrong? Shouldn't a 7.5 on the demo bindings hold the same as the 7.5 on my PX12's? When I complain about the flimsiness of the bindings, the demo techs just look at me, shrug and say "well it's set at a 7.5, I don't know what to tell you."
I refuse to ride bindings I can just lift my heel out. If I can't ride at my full ability level then I'm not going to get a feel for how the ski really is, since skis act very differently noobing around on a green run, versus bombing blues and blacks. I've had rental bindings fall off before just because I hit a mogul with some speed, so I'm not about to trust some my safety to some bindings I can heel lift right out of on some flat ground.
Beware if you go to demo, test the bindings before you take them on the hill, it's not worth a pre release injury. FYI I also demoed some skis with z12's and some atomic bindings not sure the model, but they did not have this issue.
