NilightRecovery Off-road Traction Boards Emergency Tire Mats For 4WD 4X4 Mud Sand Snow with 2PCS Mounting kit Zipper Bag 2 leashes (Red)

I own a few products courtesy of Nilight and I've found that their quality level to price point ratio suits my wallet pretty well. That is, while not of superior quality, I find their offerings to be a good value. No different with these recovery boards. I'll mainly compare them to another set of recovery boards I own by X-Bull. The X-Bulls cost $108 and have possibly one or two features I'd call superior to Nilight's product. But Nilight's boards have a few features I find to make them better than X-Bull and Nilight costs $21 less.Size-wise these two brands are almost identical. The Nilights are about 1" longer at approximately 43" and of very similar width at 12" each. Stacking of two boards measures 4.5" for either brand.Flex-wise there is some difference. The Nilights do flex more readily. Being that the profiles of the boards are very similar, I believe the flex is due to the different plastics used by these two brands. The Nilight has the feel of a more supple plastic while the X-Bull feels more hard/rigid. The question is: Does that matter. While the difference is noticeable with just a human's weight on the unsupported board, flexing is better than breaking, so this is still a question in my head. Unless you're trying to use these boards to cross a crevasse. In that case, rigid is definitely better. But that's not what these boards are really made for.Of course they're made to offer some additional traction when traction is lacking. Which brings me to the surface grip of each board. Here, they again appear very similar. Each employs a number of rigid plastic 1/2" diameter knobs on the surface to add grip. Although the X-Bull has more of these knobs, the Nilight makes use of some rectangular protuberances to add grip near the boards' edges.The Nilight boards excels with a few nicely thought out details which I believe makes it better, at least in theory. First, there is a spot molded into the middle of the board to fit the base of your Hi-Lift jack. This negates the need to purchase/carry a jack base to keep your jack from sinking in soft ground, sand or mud.Both boards might be used for digging out sand or mud around a tire. The X-Bull has four "handle holes", one near each corner. The problem is they're too small and quite uncomfortable, with sharp plastic edges that might even cut an ungloved hand. Nilight has put more thought into the design, with one handle at the far end where you want it for leverage, and two perfectly formed, comfortable hand grips near the other end, making digging about as pleasant as digging can be.Also Nilight's mounting hardware is obviously superior. Instead of the plastic base plates used by X-Bull, Nilight uses steel. Also the threaded hardware is superior, though I feel the Nilight system could still use some improvement.Both sets of boards come with a cheap carrying case.All in all I feel that Nilight spent more time on their design, included better mounting hardware and they even cost less. I'll add commentary when they get tested in a recovery situation.

We get monster snow drifts. Here on the high Plains of Colorado we get some brutal winds. These winds cause incredibly high snow drifts in our area every winter. Due to the lay of the terrain on our property, we end up with a sizable drift right at the end of our driveway. In most cases, if we can get past this drift, then we can usually get to an area that has been plowed. So, we have a tendency to just get the vehicle up to speed and blast through this drift. About 1 in 10 of these forays result in us getting the vehicle stuck in the snow. When this happens we have an awful time getting out. Sometimes, in other seasons, we also need to deal with some seriously muddy areas where flash flooding has washed the road base away.Enter the Nilight traction boards. These boards will make the process of recovery a lot easier and they have a ton of extra features to boot. First off, the surface texture of these boards is just insane (in a good way). It’s hard to imagine a surface that could be more aggressive but still safe for the tires. The plastic cleats combined with the deep recesses and small “paddles“ along the edges make sure that there is something for every part of the tire to grip, and that doesn’t just stop on the top surface. The bottom of each ramp also has deep valleys and high ridges to make sure that it digs in underneath.The handles built into the end of each board, make it easy to grab and place, even with gloves on. The kit also comes with strap loops (two straps that are tied off at the end to form them into loops) which you can feed through the handles. This makes removal and adjustment of the boards so much easier.Then, to top it all off, the kit comes with hardware for mounting it to your vehicle, which is a super nice feature. Bolts with hand wheels feed through the holes in the boards and holes in the included brackets, which then mate up with the included plastic threaded end caps. These caps act as nuts for retention from the other side.One of the bolts that came in our kit, had a couple damaged threads about a quarter of the way down which prevented the nut from screwing all the way on. It was a small defect in the thread, but since they are stainless steel, I just forced it past the bad spot and it was good to go. Another curiosity regarding these bolts is that one out of the three (not the one with the thread problem) had a tapered tip (see pic) but all the others had square ends). That was just weird.Finally, the last great feature that I want to mention is the nylon zippered carry bag. This bag has long strap style carry handles and a double zipper design that allows it to zip from either end. We decided to store our boards in the bag and, to prevent them from clacking against each other in the bag, I used a couple huge rubber bands to hold them together at either end (see pic). Garage sale resistance bands work great for this type of thing.All things considered, these recovery boards are going to make our life a whole lot easier and allow us to also help our friends and neighbors as well.

For starters, I love the color of the extraction boards, and I love that they have multiple colors for you to choose from to match the color of your vehicle or whatever color scheme you’re going for. The actual attraction boards themselves are pretty lightweight, but yet very durable. They worked extremely well to help me get out of the mud And I use them once at the beach in the sand. I definitely recommend having subtraction boards if you’re going off-road. These are definitely worth the buy and they are about half price of some of the other attraction boards on the market. They are also very easy to use And worked great.