Absolutely fantastic - if you are a good skater and if your boots are low enough and soft enough.
If you use the same ski boots as for your regular skis, you will be locking yourself out of more than half of what ski blades can do. For example, there is simply no way to scissor properly (one snowblade directly in front of the other) with equal weight on both snowblades in regular ski boots - so of course you will have problems in soft snow and on rough snow.
If you skate well enough to own the scissor skill and the skater crossover skill (where the left foot gets set down to the right or the right foot, and vice versa) there are absolutely no tight trees where you cannot go - unless the snow is completely rotten with tree wells. You can even do spin turns if you like.
THE big problem with snowblades/skiboards is NOT on soft snow. The big problem is that the turning radius is so short that most people have no idea how to ski them on hard snow/ice. They have turning radii down in the 8m range - which generally translates to making ~ 200 turns on a blue slope on a 700foot vertical hill. Nobody has hips flexible enough to keep doing that all day while using traditional ski technique let alone traditional ski boots. So they try to make the turns larger, which skids the edges - and there simply isn't enough edge on one of these to gain meaningful purchase on ice while skidding.
Therefore, for the overwhelming majority of skiboard buyers, they are absolutely horrible on ice. If, however, you are willing to stop using conventional ski parallel turns and actually skate all your turns, they can be more fun than 10 rollercoasters. Big lifters will make a big difference - and so will ankle strength.
They are also the easiest way to own one-foot skiing.
Current quiver: Kneissl Bigfoots | Fischer Radarc Spyder (asymmetrical with Tyrolia lifters) | Gauer (2 pairs, reverse sidecut and reverse camber) | Summit 110s | Rossi Free Venture w. Muller randonee bindings (and skins). Retired: 2 pairs of Salomons like Lauren's (one pair with black bases one pair with blue green bases, neither would take wax well no matter how hard I tried, and would have the most impossible base burn within 3 runs of being ground fresh), Floskis, Elan Freeline. Current skiboard-only boots: Black Diamond Factors in "walk" mode, Koflach Degre climbing boots.
Oh, yeah, I should probably say outright that they are *not* easy to keep well waxed, because the weight is on a significantly smaller running area. Jaw-clamp type ski vises work well; if the tip-and-tail supports are the primary hold-downs it gets annoying the smaller you go. Expect to use much harder wax than you think needed.
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